It landed back in 2017 at the perfect moment: the Ubification of the open world genre was more or less complete, we were all utterly sick of trundling along breadcrumb trails to waypoints while fending off swarms of sidequests, and here was this game made up of mile upon mile of relative nothing - not so much an open world as the artful devastation of an open world, trimmed back to its towers, dungeon mouths and campsites, a world that lets its misty, muddy, cartoon geography do the talking.
A few seconds later there's a trickle of high notes, as though in mimicry of that bird, then a series of chords which seem muffled, as though the pianist had drifted into the undergrowth and were circling a tree, one hand on the trunk, the other on the keys.
I don't have the technical vocabulary to really describe what the pianist is doing, but the vibe I get from them is a mixture of curiosity and irresolution, even reluctance, a butterfly-esque inability to settle on any single thing, and a touch of whimsical embarrassment about that inability.
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Eurogamer.net
