Ori and the Blind Forest opens with a prologue in which Ori — a small white spirit being — falls from the Spirit Tree during a storm and is found by Naru, the creature who raises him. This prologue plays before the title screen and has no gameplay. It is a two-minute animation.
What Moon Studios built into the prologue: twelve visual references to locations and objects that will appear across the game, arranged in Naru’s home as decoration. Players who completed the game and returned to the prologue animation identified each reference as a foreshadowing of a specific gameplay section.
The most significant reference: a specific rock formation visible through Naru’s window that matches the exact silhouette of the final level’s boss arena, visible from a particular camera angle in the Mount Horu section. The prologue and the final level share a horizon composition that is only legible from the exact camera positions Moon Studios used for both sequences.
Moon Studios built a visual rhyme between the game’s emotional start and its climax using environmental geometry that players would have to actively seek to connect.
This is why I always check every corner. You never know what’s been left for the observant player.
The environmental storytelling in this game is on another level. Thanks for documenting it so clearly.