After last year’s E3 announcement of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, I couldn’t help but remember my long-abandoned review of the (frankly) stunning soundtrack to Ori and the Blind Forest. So, many moons after it was promised, here we go.
I want to start off this review by admitting that I haven’t played Ori and the Blind Forest myself. The game came out in 2015 for Xbox and PC, and my gaming consoles remain my Playstation 2 & 3 and my Mac (if that even qualifies as a gaming computer, which I am well aware most people will agree that it does not). The PC I had for gaming did not have adequate RAM to support the newer graphics in games, or conclusions of longer games. I tend to prefer RPGs, so getting to 90+ hours of something and having the machine consistently crash was beyond frustrating. (Oh, Dragon Age: Origins, how I would have loved to finish you.)
Moving along!
Ori and the Blind Forest
(Image Credit: Moon Studios and Microsoft. No Intended Copyright Infringement. It’s just so pretty.)
Composer: Gareth Coker
Number of Tracks: 32 (There are an additional 29 tracks on the ‘Definitive Edition’ soundtrack, but this review is of the main soundtrack.)
Price: $9.99
Availability: MP3 album only. You can purchase it from iTunes as well as Amazon*, but I haven’t found a way to get a CD version of this album. (When I find an album I like as much as this one, I prefer to buy the CD as well as adding it to my iPod. I’ve had a computer crash, and I’ve had iTunes get really snarky on me about re-downloading past purchases. I can always re-import a CD with no issue.)
From here on down, you should
BEWARE OF SPOILER SPIDERS
for Ori and the Blind Forest.
Tone:
The game itself is a magical puzzle adventure. Ori is the most adorable magic cat-rabbit I’ve found yet, and Sein is the cutest glowing puff-ball sidekick of 2015. I’m just going to put that out there. (We will come back to glowing puff-ball sidekicks when we talk about Child of Light.) The game is a side-scroller that the game developers say is their love letter to old school puzzle games.
The tone of the album is one that supports the magical events that are triggered by Ori. Without spoiling the gameplay or story, I can say that the musical sequences support all of the big actions within the game admirably while still sitting comfortably within the realm of puzzle solving music. There is a greater emotional content than most puzzle solving music, but there is more story to support in this game. The tracks themselves give a sense of wonder to the listener. There is also a refreshing sense of curiosity as you move along with the music. And of course, where it’s appropriate, there’s a wonderful sense of accomplishment as well.
Re-Play Value: 10/10
I’ll be honest. My initial impression was that this OST reminded me of a well done Pixar score, and re-listening to this OST only reinforces that opinion. Think of Pixar music that you found touching, and that’s the journey you’re taking here. (Think Up or Wall*E or The Incredibles.) Purely subjectively, I have found that the music on this OST can improve my mood if I’m frustrated or having a bad day. And yes, it’s a game soundtrack so helping focus is in the design of the music, but it goes beyond that.
The craft of the music itself has the appropriate highs – crescendos and strong sections – that you find in any game score, but the music also makes a good use of lows – soft moments in which a particular instrument, voice or theme stands over the bulk of the track – for emotionally different sections. Game OSTs and score music in general tends to make a better use of this than, say, pop music, and I would hazard a guess that all score composers for any end-use are aware of how effective silence can be as a tool, but I have found that often composers create moods by layering and creating big sound. There is a time and a place for that, of course, but I find that I appreciate the musical experience of score music that has both simplicity and complexity within it. This particular game was based more in puzzles than sword fights or shoot outs, and I think that Coker went above and beyond in the use of range to create a really involved experience of the music without just layering sound on sound to make noise to accompany the gameplay. (I feel it also bears that while there are sound effects within the game a lot of the ambiance is created by the music rather than additional sound effets, so this particular point about how well-done Coker’s music creates environment and experience means two or three times what it means in other games.) I think it is Coker’s use of varying intensity that allows for the sense of wonder that I mentioned in the section on tone of the album.
There’s an emotional journey in the music, and I find it relaxing to let music move me like that when I am having a stressful time.
Soundtrack Cohesion: 10/10
One thing that is wonderful about game OSTs is that when the game itself has a story that runs through it, and the music is arranged according to its position throughout the game, there is a natural journey forward and upward. This OST was arranged in that manner and so functions the way a designed album would. (This is as opposed to a collection of songs into a less narrative sound track to a movie.) This OST has both a logical progression of how the path of the game went as well as an emotional path to the order of the tracks with both peaks and valleys along the way. With those peaks and valleys comes some loud builds, and some softened sections.
Listening Tip!
If you are wearing headphones to listen to this and are conscious of your hearing the way that I am, I would recommend about a 75-80% volume level to keep the builds from distorting in your headphones or being uncomfortably loud. I can’t speak for in-ear headphones as I do not use them, but it works well on over the ear headphones. When I listen to this on my standing system at home, I tend to put it at the volume I do when I am playing games. (I won’t bother to put that volume percentage in here because my receiver is old enough that it doesn’t even have the ability to turn on and off by remote. Suffice it to say that when it comes to sound equipment, newer is not always better.)
The use of this varied intensity of sound makes this OST function better as an album as well, creating an experience rather than just a set of tracks put together. Album craft is a much larger discussion that could encompass any kind of music, and I have had discussions with other music-minded friends about the difference of quality of musician in terms of album artistry. I haven’t listened to any of Coker’s other scores to see if this OST is an exception or just his manner of working on OSTs. Game OSTs lend themselves to an experience of an album the same way that ought to work with movie scores, but are often put together without as much attention to the progression of the tracks as they deserve. Each game is, of course, different. I would expect the arrangement of the OST for a game to be appropriate to the game itself. A Call of Duty game has a far more adrenaline charged, conflict based story and so the album cannot have the same feeling that something like Ori and The Blind Forest does. Neither type of game is superior to the other, both are games and have their audiences and uses, but with any type of game (or music) it is possible to craft an album that creates an experience for the listener, and in the case of Ori and The Blind Forest Coker has delivered on that with the track order.
Coker has also delivered on a crafted album in regards to the emotional experience. As I mentioned, I haven’t played the game, but I have watched a playthrough of it, and as I understand from what I have watched, this game’s story focuses on relationships and emotional experiences. I find that the range employed in the music helps not only to establish an emotional connection, but to maintain involvement in the emotional progression through the score.
Henceforth I’m going to go ahead and call this OST an album.
Play Through Ability: 10/10
Some game OSTs (ahem, Biohazard, ahem) have tracks that end abruptly or start awkwardly. All of the tracks on this album end rather than fading out to conclude the song. (A particular pet peeve of mine is when tracks do not know how to end. The song “Kashmir,” for instance? There is absolutely no reason I can find that the song did not find an ending. It has all the rhythmic set up for it.)
The way the track endings on this album either end or lead you out of the song rather than being sharp cuts or fade outs means that this is the sort of soundtrack that you can put on and not notice that you’ve listened to nearly the whole thing by the end of it. (Granted, I rarely run into this problem because I almost always have my settings on “repeat” in either one or album mode.)
Track to track progression is such that while individual track changeover may occasionally seem abrupt (for instance the changeover between tracks 1 and 2) that is mostly to do with a change in mood from song to song.
Despite change in emotional tone the tracks all musically belong together, even the obvious climactic builds (”Breaking Through the Trap”, Track 15; ”Restoring the Light,” Track 17; “Escaping the Ruins”, Track 21; “Racing the Lava”, Track 29; “Fleeing Kuro”, Track 30) and the asides (“Kuro’s Tale I – Her Rage”, Track 10; “Kuro’s Tale II – Her Pain”, Track 22) all belong in the musical world that Coker has created to accompany the stunning visual experience of the game.
Overall any changes that feel abrupt or jarring (with this album all that means is that you notice the change) between the tracks are changes in mood / emotion rather than any great or jarring change in the arrangement of notes or instruments.
As you listen through the album, the beauty of the music and the emotional journey will make a greater impression than any of the transitions.
Extended Use of Music: 6/10
I will be honest and say that this section of the review is the reason why I took so long to finish the entire review of this album. Coker’s Ori and the Blind Forest is such a complete album with such an experience to it that I have yet to absorb it properly enough to parcel off any of the tracks for use in writing soundtracks where I have arranged an experience for myself with them. I was, for a while, trying to see if I could reach the appropriate saturation point with the music, but that didn’t happen. (I should probably take this moment to apologize to the coworkers at my Bruce Wayne job for playing this soundtrack twice a day, three times a week for a month. Sorry, all!)
Legitimately, though, this music is best suited to a book that I have started writing but have had to put on the shelf for a while, so the problem is most likely with me rather than the music. I did, however, go pretty far in familiarizing myself with the music in its setting before I acquired the music as a stand-alone, it may be easier for someone less familiar with the game to apply the music to other applications.
When I start working on that book, I fully intend to post an update on this, because I have nothing but faith that Ori and the Blind Forest will be a solid part of that writing soundtrack!
For me the album is just too good at what it does to attach it to some other narrative, and as that is what I am most concerned with when I consider applying the music, I have to give this category a low score. I hate to give the album a low score on anything, but this is the category that (for me in this moment) the album doesn’t shoot the moon on.
I look forward to changing this in the future.
Overall Impressions (tl;dr)
There’s an emotional journey through this album, and that journey is going to peak in volume from time to time. I found that this was the kind of album that plays well straight through and can play many times without me getting stuck on the repeats. It has an enjoyable, magical/wonder-filled experience to it. The music is beautifully arranged and tells a story as you listen to it. I would recommend this album to anyone who likes instrumental or score music.
Despite my inability to use the soundtrack (currently) for other stories, I still give the Ori and the Blind Forest OST a:
10/10
You can find the Soundtrack on Amazon, and iTunes. As I mentioned above, there is a Definitive Addition soundtrack that contains additional tracks, and it is available on Gareth Coker’s BandCamp page.
#game music #game music review #original soundtrack #game ost #music maven
*The Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which means I earn from qualifying purchases.
