Ori and the Blind Forest: A Musicologist’s View

Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Blind Forest is fantasy style, single player, platform adventure game which requires the player, as a small innocent puppy-like sprite to navigate levels, collect items which help the player on their journey and progress the story. The plot contains a melancholic story which follows a small creature after its only known family dies, attempting to overcome a disruptive environment which is slowly dying and filled with aggressive monsters.

The music boasts a strong woodwind section, working closely with the oboe, flute, and clarinet. The instrumentation symbolises the small creature that the player is controlling, with a recurring melody throughout the game which semiotically acts as the game’s main theme. Cues such as The Crumbling Path and Racing the Lava occur in more dangerous and less wondrous areas of the game, and therefore use a heavier body of strings, brass, and piano, to emphasise this danger; an opposite to the lighter woodwind theme, a glimpse of this woodwind can be seen darting in and out of this heavier material, reminding the player of their small and frail character in these situations.

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