Gamasutra: Were there any tracks that didn't make the cut? Perhaps some you felt missed the mark, emotionally? You've previously said you don't what to tell people what to feel, so how do you step back and sort the hits from the misses in that regard? There’s a constant back and forth with the team when it comes to pacing, aided by everyone constantly playing the game and experiencing for themselves everything that the team is putting together. This ebb and flow / peak and valley approach in the game’s design and pacing is key to helping me be able to write music that fits the mark. If you look at the overall design of Ori, over both games, you’ll see we have pockets where things build and get to a peak in terms of how involved we expect the player to be in a scene, and then things flow away after that.
Ori and the will of the wisps music how to#
It’s a challenge that I imagine a lot of game developers face when they give the player freedom to explore, namely, how to add weight to scenes when the player has control over when exactly these scenes will occur in their experience. But I have to re-emphasize that my approach for any game, sequel or otherwise, is dependent on what is presented in the story, the game’s design and the visuals.Īchieving emotional storytelling in games through music isn’t simply a case of thinking "I will write a music cue here." The effectiveness of how a player might respond to what one plans as a key scene in the game is not just dependent on the scene itself but also the flow into and out of the scene. This combined with the overall tone change would result in a score that sounds different to the first game but retains the overall aesthetic DNA. New visuals, environments and gameplay with a greater emphasis on combat would naturally push me to write music in a slightly different way. In terms of freshness I was never too worried about that with the game being in a completely different setting to the first game. Additionally, the main antagonist, Shriek, has an extremely morose story that overshadows Ori’s time in Niwen. Niwen, the setting of Will of the Wisps is more foreign, with greater danger throughout. If Ori’s first outing was something of a naive voyage of discovery, then Will of the Wisps is the realization of a larger role to play in a new environment. However, tonally the feel of the second game is quite different to the first, and it became pretty clear that there would need to be a much weightier feel to the score.
For example, Ori's Main Theme from the first game, the core of the music from the chase scenes (‘ Restoring the Light, Facing the Dark’) in the first game, and secondary themes from the first game such as ‘ The Sacrifice’. Gareth: A lot of decisions like this are dependent on the story, however one thing that was very clear is that we would need to re-use and continue to put into new compositions.
Ori and the will of the wisps music trial#
How did you carry that emotional core into Will of the Wisps while adding something fresh? Was there a lot of trial and error, or did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to achieve from the start? Gamasutra: The score for the Ori and the Blind Forest clearly resonated with a lot of people.
Speaking to us during an Q&A, Coker recounted the five year journey from Blind Forest to Will of the Wisps in extraordinary detail, and much like the game itself, it was an adventure filled with lofty challenges and rich rewards. While that success is undoubtedly down to the collective efforts of Moon Studios and its collaborators, we were particularly curious to hear how composer Gareth Coker - who was tasked with creating the enchanting score for Blind Forest and then building on those sonic foundations for Will of the Wisps - managed to pull the franchise forward while preserving its musical soul. The acclaimed franchise has quite rightly won plaudits for refining and iterating on the metroidvania formula while using stunning painterly visuals and an emphatic score to create an emotionally resonant experience that feels wholly unique.
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