A game-breaking glitch in Ori and the Will of the Wisps

As far as I know this only applies to the Nintendo Switch, which is what I am playing the game on.

THis is a fantastic game: one of the best I have played in quite some time. It is difficult, as Ori games tend to be, but there is one part of the game that is "difficulter" than other parts of the game because unless you do a search for it and figure out the issue, it isn't possible. We expect these games to be tough, but good lord this was frustrating and the fact that Nintendo never patched it is a bit shameful considering they never seem to discount any of their products like other manufacturers do.

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Like most of the game this is a very cool part of it that slightly differs from the playing dymanics of other parts of the game that you have gotten accustomed to up to this point. It can be a little difficult to figure out how the hell you actually get in there in the first place because they don't really hold your hand to let you know that in order to get this giant bear out of the way, you have to use your "Breeze weapon" to tickle his nose and wake him up.

If you found that frustrating just prepare yourself, because the upcoming puzzles are some of the most tedious in the game. They aren't unfair, but if you haven't been using the burst ability a great deal up to this point you are going to have a lot of trouble.

In order to get past the 4 stages that I can recall in this zone you have to fan the flames of a cauldron, then burst through the resulting fireball and bounce it across Just so in order to light something that is normally across the room.

You get used to it and for the most part they aren't throwing a bunch of trash mobs at you to get in your way. This is tough, but doable.

You just need to time your burst so that the fireball gets thrown in the direction of the thing you need to light up and then it thaws out a surrounding area that allows you to move forward. It's not that tough once you get used to it. However, as is often the case in Ori, they make it progressively more frustrating as you go on.

in one of the later ones you will have to "bounce" that fireball multiple times while also avoiding spikes and these snap-traps that will interrupt you as you make the flame move off your screen to the right. Trust me, this is going to take you a bunch of times to get it right.

That's all fine and dandy because there isn't a bunch of crap attacking you at the time but it's on the next one where things get truly difficult, especially if the system you are playing it on has a glitch that makes the area that you are in impossible to get past.

The next and last one of these that you have to do involves getting the flame pot to throw the fireball to an area that is "1 story" below where you are standing. You need to get down there before the fireball gets down there, and then redirect it towards the torch that is down there. This would take a few tries or maybe a bit of frustration to accomplish and I am sure that was the experience for anyone not playing in on the Switch. On the Switch - and I have no idea how or why this happens - the system puts a couple of extra pixels on that bit of wood right before the drop and it intercepts the fireball before it even has a chance to go down to the bottom level.

The fireball is not supposed to make contact with this ledge but for some reason, on the Switch it does so and it isn't possible to get the fireball down there any other way or at least if there is, it was never intended for mere mortals like me that are playing the game.

I've searched far and wide and have not seen any video or claims by even hardcore gamers that were able to get past this with these couple of extra pixels blocking the path. Maybe there is some autistic person out there that refused to give up and figured out a way to do it.

The fact of the matter is that this is a glitch, it is not supposed to be like this at all.

Thankfully, the solution is extremely easy: You simply completely exit the game and then restart. Your progress is saved standing right next to this cauldron so don't worry about having to do a bunch of stuff again.

When you log back into the game, which is a pain on the underpowered Nintendo Switch, those extra couple of pixels on that ledge are no longer there.

It will likely still take you a couple of tries to get past this as it is necessary for you to arrive down on the bottom before the fireball gets there but at least it is now possible to get past this point.

_{it's tricky for sure, but at least it can be done!}

Now this brings me to the point of even bothering to write this: How in the hell can a company as large as Nintendo as well as Xbox Games Studios put a game out to market with an impassible glitch like this still in it?

even though this game is 6 years old it is still pretty high-priced as Nintendo is not really in the game of ever discounting anything. I find it a bit shameful actually. I would understand if this was some silly indie company that was basically giving away their games but these are two of the biggest names in the world as far as gaming is concerned. It still hasn't been patched and it is now 6 YEARS since the game was released. They are aware of the issue, you can be assured of that. They just don't care.

Anyway, if you get stuck here, exit the game in the software (a hard restart of the console may accomplish this as well) and then enter back in. For whatever reason, this sorts the situation out.

_{all images unsourced are my own gameplay screenshots}