My first time through Nameless Pass, the only way I could find to progress was scaling the western mountain to the top, then getting to the elevator, and then going from there to unlock the eastern gate. When I was doing this, I unlocked all of the shortcuts as I went, but I was also a bit underpowered (I farmed, but the weapon I was trying out wasn’t my favorite), so I died a bunch of times. When I was towards the top of the mountain, every death felt very painful because there was a bunch of walking I needed to do to get back to where I was.
It was frustrating because getting back to where I died was easy but time consuming, so it didn’t feel like I was overcoming a challenge, but rather overcoming an annoyance.
I think a few different things could have made this feel better:
-
Adding another whisper in the middle of the mountain to reduce the amount of walking to get back to where you were. Probably somewhere around the fallen tree that you walk up would have helped?
-
Tweaking the shortcuts to be more hub-and-spokes and less linear. I’m not sure if this is the right term of art, but usually in Metroidvanias (including in Ori and elsewhere in Wicked), once you do something challenging, you unlock a shortcut back to a central location, so as you’re going through a level, no matter where you die, you don’t have to go very far to get back from your last checkpoint. Whereas in this location specifically, it feels like the shortcuts build off of each other, so if you die right at the elevator, even with the shortcuts unlocked, you have to access the first shortcut, then the second, then the third, etc, all in a row.
-
It’s possible that I just missed an alternate way to get to the next whisper / unlock the eastern gate. If so, clearer signposting towards that alternate way might have helped as well.
Overall enjoying everything! Keep up the great work!