Real Talk From The HipHopGamer

Why Oddworld’s Return Will Breathe New Life Into The Gaming Industry

Posted on 30. May, 2009 by Master Samo in Microsoft, Real Talk with the HipHopGamer

This development studio is responsible for a list of games that are considered, by millions, to be some of the most innovative games of all time. Lorne Lanning, President and co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, is a genius; he is one of the most creative minds in the gaming industry. In fact, I would go as far as calling him “Kojima of the West!“. The only difference would be that he has more talent than the Metal Gear Solid creator. After all, he is a Writer, an Artist, a Creative Director, a Game Designer, a Voice Actor, and an Animated Film Director! He developed both Oddworld Munch’s Odyssey and Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath for the original Xbox, which were considered to be two of the best games on that platform.

Munch’s Odyssey was one of the best adventure platformers in the last decade, and Stranger’s Wrath was one of the most creative and innovative FPS titles in gaming history. In fact, when asked by TeamXbox what makes Stranger’s Wrath stand out as an FPS title, Lanning replied: “The sheer size of the acreage in our playing fields, the number of characters and animations on screen when in full combat, the AI combat and NPC witnessing behavior, real time music scoring that relates directly to the NPC AI mind states, memory management and streaming, set decorators (plantlife), the number of destructible objects, Depth of Field and other various real time distortion visual effects, etc. All of these aspects and more were pushed hard to try to make Stranger a unique experience“.

Moreover, there are a few more creative and innovative elements in Stranger’s Wrath that have not been mentioned. For example, it was the first title to introduce depth of field in games. It was also the first FPS title to introduce First-Person to Third-Person instant shifting. Meaning, you were able to switch from FP to TP and vice versa seamlessly and instantly at anytime during the game rather than in certain situations, which gave you the ability to play through the entire game with either perspective! Furthermore, in addition to it being the only title in gaming history that requires hunting your ammo, it is also the only title in history that has live ammo! In other words, throughout the game, your ammo is composed of living creatures! In fact, when it comes to stealth kills and setting traps for enemies, Stranger’s Wrath easily surpasses Farcry.

For those of you that are not familiar with the franchise, Oddworld is a fictional universe presented in video game form. It is a planet with the main continent being Mudos. The games that are set in the Oddworld universe have a common theme: the planet’s peaceful nature is in danger of being consumed by the industrial ambition of sadistic corporations.

Originally designed as a quintology, the only official Oddworld titles were Abe’s Odyssey and Munch’s Odyssey. However, there were other spin-off titles like Abe’s Exoddus and Stranger’s Wrath. Despite the fact that there were three titles remaining in order to complete the quintology, Oddworld Inhabitants decided to put aside these projects due to their decision to move into animated films. Titles that were expected from the studio but never actually made it out the door include Squeek’s Odyssey, Nod’s Odyssey, Munch’s Exoddus, SligStorm, The Hand of Odd, and the rumored game titled “The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot“.

The studio is currently working on Citizen Siege, a CGI movie produced by John H. Williams, the Producer of Shrek, that will also spawn a game. According to an interview with Gamereactor back in 2007, when asked about the movie, Lanning replied: “Citizen Siege is scheduled to be a computer animated action political thriller with a little bit of Sci-fi. It’s kind of intense, so it’s much more mature than we would expect for animated films out of America today. So it’ll probably be PG13, but it’ll have a lot of intensity that we’re familiar with from more live action films. It’s dark and uplifting for dark times that need hope. The inspiration that created Oddworld is very similar to the inspiration that’s creating Citizen Siege’s universe, except it’s more relevant to exactly today, and what’s going on today in the political landscape. It’s sort of a menacing view of a possible future“.

Despite being hard at work on their upcoming CGI movie, according to several sources, they are also developing a new Oddworld game. It is not clear, at the moment, whether or not it will be the third quintology title or another spin-off game. According to an article posted on Gamasutra in May of 2008, Jeff Braun, co-founder of Maxis, the studio behind The Sims and Spore that was also co-founded by Will Wright, confirmed that they are working on a new Oddworld game. In fact, Braun told the audience that the game would feature a “revolutionary new 3-D animation system” that would feature “cinematic quality on a ‘1 to 1 scale’ to that of computer-generated motion pictures” and would utilize the same assets as a CG film version. No further details were reported on the game or any potential film or television versions, apart from the fact that the Oddworld title could be delivered in episodic format.

In addition, according to Destructoid, a week after the Jeff Braun confirmation, Lorne Lanning made the following statement: “I can confirm that we’re working with Jeff on Oddworld stuff. That’s all I can say at this time. [Braun] was giving a talk to a school, but there hasn’t been a formal announcement, yet”.

Moreover, according to an article posted on Gamedaily in September of 2008, Lorne Lanning is working on a next generation Oddworld game, as well as some other interactive products. During the Gamedaily interview, when asked about the next Oddworld game, Lanning replied: “Something’s next and we haven’t been talking about it“. He then went on to say: “Ideas and innovation are like a fetus in the womb. There’s a reason no one gets to see the baby for nine months. Ideas incubate in privacy better, longer. We have been taking a while (with Oddworld) and that is disappointing to some fans. But we believe if we deliver excellence, they’ll be thrilled. All is forgiven if you do it right“.

To make things even more interesting, according to an article posted on gamesetwatch in December of 2008, when asked about upcoming projects, Lanning replied: “We’ve still got secrecy around another “Hollywood meets gaming” project that we’re very excited about, and while it’s taken us a while, we’re also working on something new for Oddworld. He also went on to say: “We’re open to exploring how to best maximize our existing library, but haven’t been focused on creating huge story games with 40 hours of linear gameplay recently. We’ve been focused on a slightly different chemistry that we believe will prove appealing to gamers and Oddworld fans alike, but it’s a big risk because it’s way outside the box“.

Back in 2000, when Oddworld Inhabitants announced that they were switching development from Sony’s PlayStation 2 to Microsoft’s Xbox, they specifically stated that the main reason for the change was due to the shortcomings of the PS2 hardware and the difficult task of programming for it. By keeping that in mind, it would not be far-fetched to assume that the studio would prefer to develop their title on a developer-friendly next-generation hardware, which, in this case, would have to be the Xbox 360. Regardless, one thing is clear, we are only days away from an official unveiling.

Lastly, as we have seen so far, this studio has delivered so much for this industry, and more importantly, is currently in the process of bringing to life some of the most promising projects in quite some time that have the potential to break through the common trends, that we are currently experiencing, in gaming, and take this industry in an exciting  new direction.

God Bless You All

Master Samo