"Sigh. Another remake? I want to do something new!"
According to Lorne Lanning, president of Oddworld Inhabitants and creator of the Oddworld series, Abe HD is going into production, courtesy of partner developer Just Add Water.
Speaking with EGM, he said “it’s basically Abe’s Oddysee being redone in a 3D physics engine as a 2D side-scrolling platformer. So the way Just Add Water wants to approach it, we thought was very smart; they are not trying to reinvent any wheels. It’s like ‘Can we make that experience in a new engine, with new tech, in the old way?’”
For the uninitiated, Abe’s Oddysee is a PS1-era puzzle-platformer that casts players in the role of the titular Abe, a member of the “Mudokon” race. His job is to rescue his enslaved friends from certain death at the hands of the RuptureFarms meat processing factory’s master. Rather than going about this in a conventional platform game manner, however, Abe has a number of tricks up his sleeve. One of the most memorable of these is the use of “GameSpeak”, a combination of farts, whistles and other weird noises with which Abe can communicate with the numerous non-player characters throughout the game.
This is the second Oddworld game to get the remake treatment. Former OG-Xbox exclusive Stranger’s Wrath is due to hit the PlayStation 3 via PSN some time around Easter of this year. Developer Just Add Water is also working on this version as part of their self-professed “long and fruitful” relationship with the original Oddworld team.
Lanning is keen to highlight the differences between Abe HD and the port of Stranger’s Wrath.
“For Stranger,” he said, “it’s the same game, but being redone. All the normal maps and the PS3 rendering tech is being taken advantage of on all the characters and on the environments.”
Apparently Stranger’s Wrath is also “all ready to go” on XBLA, but unspecified problems mean that “the answer keeps being no”.
These remakes are good news; there are plenty of people who have either never played the original games, or no longer have the hardware on which to play them. Some long-time fans of the series are wishing Oddworld Inhabitants would release a new game, though. As far back as April 2005, a new game in the series titled The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot was informally announced via Game Informer. Little more was heard until June 2009 when Lanning revealed some concept art and story details—and some company politics which means there’s a chance we may never see it.
“Sometimes developers get fired by publishers,” said Lanning in conversation with Game Informer back in 2009. “And sometimes developers fire publishers. That’s probably all I should say about it.”
Still, at least a new generation of gamers gets to enjoy Abe and the Stranger’s adventures now. And that’s a good thing.
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