The Oddworld games thread

[Morgoth]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...m-looks-like-it-will-rewrite-series-rule-book

Oddworld: Soulstorm looks like it will rewrite series' rule book
Brewing up a treat.

By Vic Hood Published 22/09/2017

It's been 20 years since the release of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and the game, as well as it's peculiar protagonist, still holds a special place in the hearts of many. So it was music to fans' ears when developer Oddworld Inhabitants revealed it was working on a new entry in the Oddworld quintology - Oddworld: Soulstorm.

Until now we hadn't heard much about the mysterious new title, apart from sneak peeks and teaser trailers, but Lorne Lanning revealed a heap of new details and even showed a full-length trailer for the game today at an EGX 2017 developer's session (which you can watch below).

Oddworld: Soulstorm sounds like an overhaul of the Oddworld games we know - but in the best possible way.

This new entry continues on from Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, after the destruction of RuptureFarms and CEO Molluck's electrocution. As Abe "stokes the fire of revolution", he shakes up the pyramid of control which encompasses Oddworld and sends ripples through the world's economy. This results in our favourite Mudokon dealing with not only Molluck but his higher ups too. He is branded "the Bin Laden of Oddworld".

Soulstorm focuses on the Soulstorm Brewery, yet another corrupt organisation within Oddworld. In the dark trailer we see Mudokons being used for testing, with many ultimately dying as a result. After all, Soulstorm Brew is an addictive drink made from Mudokon's tears and bones. If this isn't intense enough, Lanning revealed the new game is even darker than others in the series. The game will include secret organisations, much like the Freemasons, who have their sway when it comes to Oddworld's economy and thus are not thrilled by the prospect of a slave uprooting their unethical practices.

Soulstorm will feature improved visuals, Lanning said, to allow fans to feel a closer connection with characters, giving them more personality - something which Lanning pointed out was more difficult 20 years ago.

Perhaps the most interesting change is that of the gameplay itself. Lanning explained there wll be a more robust inventory system to allow Abe to pick up items as well as craft objects such as fire extinguishers so you can put out your flammable followers.

Speaking of followers, you now have 301 Mudokons to manage. The slaves Abe freed from RuptureFarms stay with you and players must do their best to keep them all alive. The game's UI shows all 301 followers at the bottom, all of whom can be set tasks such as defence, but you can also tell if they are being attacked, working or killed.

Oddworld: Soulstorm is expected to release in 2018.

 

[Morgoth]

Hey cool Lorne is putting George Soros and Janet Yellen into his new game.

 

[Ash]

No pre-rendered backgrounds and animated sprites? It's weird when a multi-platform game from 1997 looks better than one from 2017. Especially when the aesthetic and the atmosphere was the main draw of that old game. Well, OK, that and the novel concept of trying to save, or intentionally murder your mates from/with meat grinders.

The furthest I got was somewhere in that mystical village place once you escape the factory. Years and years ago now. Was never really into the game. Not sure if that's because it just wasn't that interesting, or if it wasn't entirely compatible with my tastes. Probably a bit of both. It was in no way a bad game though, for what it was. Cool puzzle adventure.

 

[Morgoth]

That was hilarious.

 

[Deadass]

nice

 

[Darth Roxor]

why all these endless remasters and reimaginings instead of you know making an actual new fucking game

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Morgoth]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-13-oddworld-soulstorm-the-quintology-is-back-on

Oddworld: Soulstorm - the quintology is back on
"Today, there are more slaves on planet Earth than there ever were..."

Robert Purchese

Senior Staff Writer

@Clert

"Today, there are more slaves on planet Earth than there ever were in world history combined..."

40.3 million people in 2016, to be precise, there in plain sight, all around us.

"Who are these people to be put through hell? And what if one of those broke out, inspired their people and it led to uprisings, rumours, uneasiness and disruption, which would eventually spark a revolution which would topple financial markets through the disruption of commerce and produce and trade?"

What if?

"More slaves on planet Earth than there ever were in world history combined…" This is how Lorne Lanning rolls when it comes to video games. Nothing should be off-topic for video games. More video games should use those secret ingredients - interactivity, empathy - in the service of things that truly matter in the world. This is part of the brilliance of Oddworld, why the series grabs people so strongly even after all these years. It's why, more than two decades after the first game was released, people still flock to hear creator Lorne Lanning talk. There's a magic here.

"Why don't we set forth to see if we can't ... get the quintology done in our lifetimes." -Lorne Lanning

But the magic was nearly lost.

To put it another way: once upon a time there was a dream. Five games, one character, one Oddworld.

"I looked at a world where I thought people were getting disengaged from what they saw happening on a global landscape," Lorne Lanning explains to me over Skype. "Politicians could no longer be trusted, corporations could no longer be trusted, pharmaceuticals and medicine could no longer be trusted, law enforcement was questionable. The world was increasingly becoming more Orwellian."

(As if, Lorne, as if!)

That "what if?" became Abe's story.

"Abe, this lowly slave, would slowly start having an impact on the major economic forces of the world and really start fucking shit up," Lanning says. "And then the holy hell of the law, the political landscape, the fake news media - all of it would come raining down on him. And he would become labelled 'the Bin Laden of Oddworld', the public enemy number one, who's causing everyone's Happy Meals to go up 200 per cent in price - the unforgivable! Your coffee's more expensive: unforgivable! Kill that guy!

"That," adds Lanning, "was the essence of Abe."

And in Abe's Odyssey, the debut release in 1997, that essence was intact. "Of all the games we built, Abe's Odyssey was the purest vision in terms of the overall Oddworld quintology," he tells me. On the back of the box it apparently even said Abe's Odyssey would be the first of a five-part series. Remaking Abe's Odyssey, then, made perfect sense, so Oddworld Inhabitants did exactly that with Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty in 2014, and it was good. Very.

Its success bred the natural assumption Oddworld Inhabitants would go on to give Oddworld game number two, Abe's Exodus, the same treatment. Fans were apparently polled and wanted it - we even assumed that was the case when Soulstorm was first announced in 2016 (for 2017 release, ho ho). But there was a problem - another big but (I wish I hadn't used that phrase now).

"We were like, 'Ah shit, man!'" Lanning says. "Exodus was the one that took us off track. That's the one we had to get done in nine months. It killed me. It was a horrible memory. It was just terrible - I aged like 15 years on it."

You know this story. The success of Abe's Odyssey was "a curse". "The curse was we were taken off course from what our plans were, which was to build the second part of the quintology," Lanning tells me. “Abe was a success, great - we had carved our way into the industry. Now I thought, naively, that was going to buy me the time - another two and a half years - to build part two. But that's not what happened."

Instead, publisher GT Interactive wanted another game out pronto. Abe's Odyssey had saved Christmas and GT wanted a repeat performance the following year. (The irony of a game as passionately furious as Abe's Odyssey being drafted in to save Christmas was presumably not lost on Lanning.)

"We were asked like your wife might ask you - we were 50 per cent partners so I can't really say we were told - 'Why don't you just do part two and do it in nine months because we need it for next Christmas? You're the only ones we can rely on, you're the only ones who came through for us, and we need to count on you next year."

So, reluctantly, Lanning agreed, knowing full well he couldn't build what he wanted. And that - "that was the beginning of us getting derailed off what the original vision of the Oddworld quintology was." A fan described Exodus, released in 1998 as instructed, as being twice the game but having half the heart, "And as much as it stung with me, I really had to agree with that."

But Soulstorm, as I said, represented a chance to do over - to go back and do it properly, to "bite the bullet and go back to that original vision". So that's what Soulstorm is: the quintology resurrected, ignoring all the games that followed Exodus. ("They're valid for the world but we wanted to bring Abe back to his real, true mission, as Abe is the centre character throughout.") Part two as it was always meant to be. "And if we're going to do that," Lanning adds, "why don't we set forth to see if we can't, before we get much greyer, get the quintology done in our lifetimes."

 

[Darth Roxor]

"a scavenger's economy" + taking junk out of a trash can

this will totally have craftung won't it

fucking hell

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Darth Roxor]

kraaaaftuuuuuuuuuung

Also, I dislike all the messy UI elements that are plastered or popping up all over the place. I think the lack of any UI was actually a very significant part of Abe's aesthetics.

 

[lightbane]

Obnoxious graphics, worse UI, collectibles, crafting...

It has been modernized, indeed.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[skacky]

I don't know if it's because I played Exoddus to death when I was younger, but the game looks FAR too busy. There's popups everywhere and even the screen itself is hard to read for me.

 

[toro]

It's like watching an accident in slow-mo.

 

[Metro]

Platformers were great in the 90's. Now they have been done to death. As someone else said, just make a new game. Hell, I'd rather play something like Stranger's Wrath.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I don't know if it's because I played Exoddus to death when I was younger, but the game looks FAR too busy. There's popups everywhere and even the screen itself is hard to read for me.

Yep, it's a mess. Not even Munch's Oddysee looked like that despite being full 3D :/

 

[Machocruz]

What happens when you have to design games so mediocre and forgetful minds can grasp them.

 

[catfood]

The first two Abe games were about atmosphere, carefully examining the environments, assessing the situation and then taking action accordingly. Yes, there were some frantic moments such as when a trap was being sprung but for the most part it was a slow experience. This game looks like it was made for the modern dopamine addict low attention span gamer that can't keep his interest in a game unless it constantly flashes BUTTENZ!! LIGHTZ!!!! ICONZ!!!111 CRAFTINGZ!!11!!! NEW ITEMZ!!111111 at him.

edit: the old games also had carefully selected colour pallets that looked like paintings. This crap looks like a kaleidoscope on LSD. There's just no attention to aesthetics anymore.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/06/14/oddworld-soulstorm-review-e3-chaotic-alien-snooker/

Oddworld Soulstorm is a loud and chaotic alien snooker

“It’s a little bit like a molotov cocktail,” says Lorne Lanning, the head of Oddworld Inhabitants. He is holding a bottle full of flammable soda pop with a rag stuffed in the top. “So if I was about to use that on a guy who was pretty helplessly bound up,” he continues, gesturing at an alien henchman lying on the floor wrapped in duct tape, “that would be pretty bad, right?” He throws the bottle of fiery liquid. It explodes in a shower of flames, engulfing not only the struggling alien guard on the floor but two bystanding factory workers.

“Oops, everybody’s on fire.”

This is Oddworld Soulstorm, the latest game about Abe the clumsy Mudoken. It’s chaos.

Lanning is demonstrating the game to me. He observes Abe’s flaming alien pals with the calmness of a man who is not legitimately sorry for setting them all alight. Still, he wants to show me what a player should do in this situation. He whips out a fire extinguisher, one of the many tools Abe can find in lockers or vending machines, and starts splooshing white powder over his the alien workers to “put ‘em out fast”. But the alien workers have already melted.

“Not fast enough,” says Lanning, chuckling.



It’s far more action than I expected. Abe has rarely been an action hero, instead often hiding in the shadows of the puzzle platformer genre. In older games your only weapon was the power of possession, where you’d take over gun-toting Sligs and monstrous creatures of Oddworld to get from one place to another. But in my short time with nu-Abe there were countless explosions of gas and fire. I lobbed many gassy bombs. Sligs can shoot metallic panels from under you, or takes pips off your health bar. And one sequence sees the gang of extraterrestrial escapees board a lift with a turret on top, allowing you to blast all around you.



It’s maybe even a little too busy. But a lot of the old green blood still flows. Abe can still sneak around (and even pickpoket slumbering Slig henchmen), and he can still possess an enemy (although there’s now a time limit on this). But there’s also a lot of crafting to do – that’s something new. You rummage in bins and lockers for junk, then piece it together in a menu to make throwable weapons. There are also pacifistic ways to go about your jailbreak. But to do that you might have to play some alien snooker.

In essence, Abe can throw certain objects like his molotov cocktail. Bottles and jawbreakers are the main thing. But to throw these “sticky fizzy pows” into hard-to-reach places you have to wrap elastic bands around them, letting them bounce off walls with each rubbery circlet. Basically, you end up playing a game of pool with your lemonade grenades, bouncing them around corners and off the ceiling to set distant enemies alight. If you use a bouncy jawbreaker with some duct tape attached, you can wrap up your foes without killing them. Which is important if you want to avoid bad “Quarma”.



This is the Oddworldian morality of previous games remade. In past Abeventures you would get good or bad endings depending on how many workers you managed to save. Something similar will happen in Soulstorm, I’m told, but now your Quarma level matters moment-to-moment as well. Your spiritual powers, like possession, will depend on how sullied your Mudoken soul is. When your pals die, a black trail of smoke floats into Abe’s body. Will you still get bad Quarma, I ask Lanning, if you kill the bad guys?

“Yeah,” he says, “because, you know, it’s murder.”

The Oddworlds are silly, dark comedies in a strange place. And yet they have often been surprisingly conscious of big human problems – the planet is dying, the animals are being wiped out, native people are oppressed, big business is destroying nature. It’s a strange appeal of Abe that he is capable of making a simple, environmentalist point while periodically pausing to possess an exploding fart.



Over the course of the game you’ll collect followers to join your growing squad, and here too you can choose to play Soulstorm with slightly less chaos (although nothing in the demo was exactly “the quiet route”). You could arm your followers with bombs and set them to “aggressive mode” which makes them lob bombs of their own automatically. Or you could make sure they’re in passive mode, in which they “start doing yoga and shit.”

“We really wanted that feeling that you’re building a gang every level,” says Lanning. “There’s probably about a thousand [workers] in the game that you’re gonna rescue ultimately.”

That’s the heart of an Abe game, really. It is about being the head Lemming, and sometimes accidentally covering your friends in cheap napalm. Lanning is gleeful while playing, so much so that he often gets distracted by looking in bins, or throwing dozens of fart-gas grenades that pop into clouds of sewer-green mist.



“We like making effects and colours that are derivative of pop and consumer products,” says Lanning. “Junk food colours.”

He intermittently bursts into giggles at accidental deaths, he mutters “bastard” at troublesome Sligs, and there’s something infectious and refreshing about his enjoyment. I rarely see industry names as storied as Lanning even playing their own game, never mind playing it in such an absorbed way.

“I’ve only had two guys get whacked this time,” he says. “It’s a record for me.”

Lanning reaches the end of the level, where a circle of flapping birds expands into a portal through which Abe’s brethren can escape. I recognise the portal well. I’ve always seen Oddworld games as funny stories with a dark undertone, the tale of an underclass trapped in the machinery of a big business that is uncaring and environmentally destructive. Oddgames have always had that sort of message, between the burp jokes. Lanning says that message is still there “big time”. But he sees Abe’s story more as that of a people who have been lied to for generations.

“It would never occur to him to be left or right,” he says, “they’re just on the run trying to save their own skin. And then they [the Mudokens] find out everything they knew was a lie… that almost everything everyone knows is a lie.

“They’re really magnificent beings that have been taught to believe they’re nothing.”

 

[MapMan]

I just found out about this and the previous game and I got really depressed. Xmas ruined.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[toro]

It looks ... overcrowded with pointless shit. Nowhere near the elegance of the first games.

 

[MapMan]

A yeah has passed and it still looks unappealing. Even more so.