thomasmahler
Moon Studios
Hahahaha, where did you hear about that?
At the very start, I sat down with our guys and had them all play games like Super Metroid, ALTTP, LA, etc. - and our Lead Programmer was just a PC guy who never grew up with Nintendo games, so he struggled with Links Awakening and I kinda made fun of him because of that... but it's all in good fun. We have _extremely_ passionate gamers in the studio that have all been inspired and grew up with these classics and I recently finished the 8 and 16 bit Zeldas in every language just for shits - So beat that
Frankly, as a gamer, I sure hope Ori will become a game that people can still play 10 years down the line and stll say: "Holy shit, that game still holds up and is as fun to play now as it was back then!" - To me, that's the sign of a great game. I can still go back and play Super Mario Bros. 3 and just enjoy the hell out of it. And I think that boils down to the core mechanics and the core design and for Ori, we were very aware that that's the most important part. I didn't even care at all about graphics until like 1.5 years in cause a lot of us in the team had pretty great Art Resumes (I myself was a Cinematic Artist at Blizzard before I started Moon), so I knew that we could make it look great, but gameplay was always more important and i hope you guys will be able to agree with me that we tackled that part
Oh, I know what you mean
You'll be the judge... I was never a fan of Shadow Complex, especially when compared to games like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night... It's just no comparison, those games were on a whole different level. I'm generally not particularly fond of 2.5d treatments and to me, the pixel perfect controls from sprite-based games always take a beating once you go 2.5d and use physics and all that kinda jazz.
Compared to Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, I always felt like the actual platforming aspect in those games was still fairly 'basic'. Yes, you can pull of crazy acrobatics in Super Metroid if you really understood the controls, but it just takes a long time to learn. For Ori, I wanted the platforming to not just be a means to an end, but become an integral part of the design and ensure that platforming and combat works perfectly together, so you'll be able to somersault over enemies while hitting them, bashing off their bodies and tossing them into spikes while you're then using that force to bash from another enemy, etc. etc. - it was super important to us that all of that feels super fluid and isn't as awkward to pull off as it was back then.
But again, you'll be the judge
