Heyyy, it's good to see so many Oddworld fans!
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Latest Oddworld redubbed, redated
EA's odd action game rechristened Oddworld Stranger's Wrath; Xbox version now coming January 25.
Electronic Arts today announced a new name and release date for the latest title in the Oddworld franchise. Originally dubbed Oddworld Stranger, the game is now titled "Oddworld Stranger's Wrath" because it "better reflects the spirit of the game."
The Xbox version has also been moved from its original vague release date of spring 2005 to a more definitive date of January 25, because as EA executive producer Scot Bayless puts it, "As with the film industry, we have to think strategically about release timing. We revisited our release date and asked ourselves, 'What's best for Stranger?'"
The sixth title in the Oddworld franchise puts gamers in control of the "Stranger" who hunts bounties for cold, hard cash in a surreal future Western setting. Spring 2005 remains the tentative date for the PlayStation 2 version, which is in development limbo and may never see the light of day. GameSpot recently sat down with Oddworlds Inhabitants president Lorne Lanning and Bayless to hear their thoughts on the game.
By Tim Surette, GameSpot
POSTED: 11/12/04 05:10 PM
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/oddworldtentativetitle/news_6113071.html
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A couple of days later, GS did a two-page Preview of the game.
Click <a href=http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/oddworldtentativetitle/preview_6113198.html>here</a> to read the full article.
Here are some notable excerpts (to be honest, I didn't read the whole preview myself; I know I'm getting the game, so I don't want to know too much about the story - or even too much about the gameplay):
The folks at Oddworld Inhabitants have a reputation to maintain. Since 1997, the quirky developer has used its Oddworld games to establish a particular tone--a particularly wacky tone--while managing to portray serious issues, such as oppression and the defilement of the environment, in a humorous but thoughtful light. Mechanically, the previous three Oddworld games have focused on thoughtful puzzle-solving with only light action elements, but the leaders of the company will be the first to admit that the industry is changing as a reflection of audiences' maturing tastes. In that light, Oddworld's newest game, Stranger's Wrath, is heading in an action-oriented direction that the developer hasn't previously explored. But don't worry, Oddworld fans--that endearingly crazy sense of humor is still intact.
Oddworld (the company) has since decided to rechristen its new baby as Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, first to avoid any pesky copyright conflicts, and more importantly to bring it in line with previous games' titles, such as Abe's Exoddus and Munch's Oddysee.
Stranger's Wrath takes place in an entirely different part of Oddworld than we've seen before, and Stranger himself is a totally new kind of protagonist for the series, too. He's a rough-and-tumble sort, even a bit of an antihero; he's a bounty hunter who, it seems, is mostly just in it for the money. At the outset, Stranger is a mysterious figure, one whose motivations and background are not entirely clear--and Oddworld wants to keep him that way until you've played the whole game and had a chance to experience the storyline in its entirety.
The game will contain a whopping 5,000 lines of dialogue, and much of it is both hilarious and relevant to the current task at hand.
But in keeping with Oddworld's views on gratuitous violence (and Stranger's as-yet-unexplained dislike of guns), you won't have to kill your bounties. In fact, most bounties will have two reward amounts: one if you bring them in dead and one if you bring them in alive. You'll be able to blast all your bounties to kingdom come and just bring them all in dead if you want. However, it'll be in the best interest of both your ethical standing and your pocketbook to find nonlethal ways to apprehend your marks.
In fact, Oddworld's goal with Stranger's Wrath is to give you as many options as possible for playing the game in the way that best suits you. Toward that end, the game has been made with both a third-person platformer and a first-person shooter at the same time, and you'll be free to switch between viewpoints at will depending on the situation. The game will present scenarios that lean toward one view or the other; platforming will be much easier in third person, of course, while fighting multiple enemies will be easier in shooting mode by using your myriad weapon types than it will by simply fighting with your fists in third person. Going from third person to first person and back again is as quick as clicking the thumbstick, and it became second nature for us to do so within minutes of first picking up the controller.
In addition to the increased field of view, which will make things like jumping puzzles easier, third-person mode will confer a couple of specific advantages. When you run for more than a few feet in this mode, you'll drop to all fours and begin to pick up a great deal of speed, which lets you get places much faster and also allows you to bowl over enemies that get in your way. Third-person view will also give Stranger a handful of melee attacks that pack a pretty hefty punch and can come in handy when Oddworld's frontier pests get in your way. According to Oddworld, one early tester who preferred the third-person gameplay to the shooting option managed to get a surprising number of hours into the game without ever dropping into first-person mode, relying entirely on melee attacks and jumping to combat enemies instead.
After the time we spent with the game, we felt that Oddworld would still have a decent game on its hands if it had left Stranger's Wrath with just the third-person gameplay, but the first-person shooting mechanics lend the game an entirely new level of depth. As mentioned, Stranger abhors guns--so what does he shoot with? The simple and strange answer is a crossbow loaded with real, live animal ammunition. You'll be able to load your crossbow with two different animals at a time, and each of the many live ammo types has a wildly different function.
Stranger's Wrath was originally conceived as an Xbox-exclusive game, and Oddworld Inhabitants has crafted a robust new engine from the ground up to take advantage of Microsoft's powerful console. As a result, Stranger's Wrath is easily the best-looking game the company has produced yet.
Whoa! Timeout! Now that is really saying something.
All of the previous Oddworld games had AMAZING graphics!
Oddworld's trademark artistic influence seems to be blended in well with this technical upgrade, from the wacky designs and expressive animations of your friends and enemies to the uniquely Oddworld signage you'll see posted above everything...
Oddworld Inhabitants places a lot of emphasis on characterization, and in the interest of maintaining full control over the development of the personalities in Stranger's Wrath, all of the dialogue is once again being performed and recorded in-house. Series creator and Oddworld mastermind Lorne Lanning will even provide a large percentage of the voice work, as he has in past games, and series fans should find that the acting has a similarly unique and bizarre feel to it.
To be honest, we didn't know what to expect when we went in to see Stranger's Wrath. The game was only announced earlier this year, and Oddworld Inhabitants has been pretty mum on specific gameplay details until recently, even though it has been working on the game on the sly for a good two years now. We came away from the demo extremely impressed by the seamless fusion of the first- and third-person gameplay types, not to mention the way Oddworld has managed to bring its distinctive sense of humor and social relevance to what is admittedly a new sort of game for the company. The release date for Stranger's Wrath was recently moved up to late January, so Oddworld fans won't have long to wait to see how the latest installment in this unique franchise has turned out. But from what we played, the game may just snag the attention of more than the typical Oddworld fan.
By Brad Shoemaker, GameSpot
POSTED: 11/15/04 03:36 PM
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And in closing...
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/915256_20041115_screen006.jpg
:D
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P.S.
The Fuzzles are back.
They are the only Inhabitants whom we've seen before tho' - everybody else is entirely new.