You are joking, right?

I'll do it.

I'm not joking. Having Scrabs just bite at the air around your corpse with no indication they're actually eating you may work with a sprite-based 90's game, but not HD.

You're right about the creepiness. But I think for consistency's sake, slig banter wouldn't be altogether inappropriate. In just about every FMV, sligs are having a discussion in some terrible, unintelligible, guttural language. I think recording 5-10 of these "nonsense" conversations, acted with a twinge of mischief and underhandedness, would not disrupt the atmosphere too much.

Not every slig you came across would be an insufferable chatterbox. This would only happen once in a while when they're idle in a trusted environment. I think if two sligs took turns beating a mudokon scrub while laughing and swapping disparaging remarks, it would add to the creep factor. The ones posted in the temples or at the free-fire zones would be no-nonsense and maintain that creepy stoicism because they're more on-guard in such treacherous territory.

Expanding on what AvengingGibbons suggested; if the default banter seems too tiresome, maybe just have some dialogue of interest at certain points in the game. Overhear slig's discussing the "escapee", etc.

Of course, maintaining this variation in slig personalities could be a bit of a programming nightmare. So there's that.

I agree with most of the ideas. Just please keep the atmosphere! AO's atmosphere is very unique! It added alot of depth to the story and quite frankly, is what keeps bringing me back for more. Keep it realistic, not cartoony like in MO. This game could revolutionise 2D platforming!

The thing about Sligs is that they've already been humanised a bit, unless you're not familiar with Oddworld at all and see them for the first time. Sligs were creepier in AO probably because the first time you played it, you knew very little about them - But even so, they had gamespeak, they panicked when Abe chanted, you constantly found them sleeping on the job, and in the FMVs they're briefly seen talking to each other and cowering before Molluck, so it's not as if they've never had emotion - And for this I've never really seen them as being too creepy. The only creepy things about them is that they're very efficient and deadly killers. Oh, and how they laugh after killing their own kind (when Abe possesses them).

Occasional (but not constant) idle dialogue between enemies in games can definitely add to atmosphere if done correctly, but I'm too tired to think of good examples at the moment. It could be used to reflect their cruelty and lack of compassion though, as Sekto Springs said.

EDIT: Something I missed from AE is how Sligs would react to Abe when Abe used Gamespeak near them in AO - That would be nice to see carried across to Abe HD, it was a nice little touch.

@Sekto Springs - This is meant to be an Oddworld game, not Mortal Kombat. A little gore like what exists in the original AO and AE should be perfectly fine for keeping the atmosphere slightly scary rather than cartoonish, but of course it shouldn't be overdone.

I appreciate most of the ideas, especially the last comment of Sekto Springs about the appeareance of Slig dialogue, but one main factor for me is the music.

If you have the possebility please don't change the style of the first two Abe ingame soundtrack. Maybe it's the most time only 3 or 4 notes which changes in a litte synthesiszer and some birds are tweeting but this minimalism fits perfectly to the ambiance of this great environments.

Maybe it would better suit an Exodus remake? I get what you mean. Like in stockyard escape, all you see is their glowing evil-red visors, and there's complete silence as they stand still, till they unpredictably swivel round, coupled with the sudden sound of their screeching mechanical legs as they move across the screen, and then he stops, and the silence resumes. This makes the sligs seem like a creature designed only to kill, taking military-like marches. And knowing of their little brain power takes away any hope you might have of them showing you any mercy. An unforgiving programmed killer.

...Could be wise to not try to humanise them. Good call Nate :) You could have them talking as Abe enters a new area, like a live cut scene, but not during gameplay. That way, the dialogue is relative to the current events and is only played once, and is not repetitive. On second thought, I did prefer the Exodus stylings, how it brought in a more light-hearted comical atmosphere, yet still had the necessary realness to keep the player in anticipation.

When I first played the game, I thought sligs were robots. This was due in part to the mechanical legs, but largely to their complete lack of depth and humanity(sliganity?).

I think greater characterization is possible without diminishing the threat the sligs present. I understand what Nate is saying. Giving sligs more personality could potentially dampen that raw danger they made you feel. A soulless enemy is far scarier than one with a personality. This is why it's such a popular design choice to remove the eyes when creating a fearsome creature.
On that note, the early slig masks with the visor made the sligs far more intimidating than when they were given eyes. Perhaps to split the difference, add the personality but keep the visor.

HUGE THIS^
Ellen Meijers' music has been a huge influence on the music I compose to this day. The minimalist charm and focus on percussion and world instruments is so incredibly iconic of Oddworld. I'd almost say you should re-use the old soundtracks, as they're so unique, but I know their quality isn't quite up to snuff with today's standards for game scores. If you remake it, don't do what they did with Tommy Tallarico's score for Earthworm Jim HD. Take the opportunity to recreate those bizarre nuances that made the original soundtrack so utterly amazing.

I've been working on some Oddworld-related music things for some time, including carefully constructed remakes of some of the pieces from AO and AE using world instruments. I feel like offering my services as a composer to JAW pro bono. That's not very professional though ;)

Sligs would be much scarier with visors, I think.

+1 :fuzsmile:

Remember, the sligs shouldn't be worried or scared of Abe in the first run of rupturefarms since Abe is a nobody. So if you're going to do dialogue, let it reflect that. The sligs would probably be laughing at the fact that an employee is trying to escape.

Agreed with these, AO's soundtrack is incredibly integral to its atmosphere.

I think the soundtrack could be improved by tweaking the dynamic aspect of it. For example, in the Scrabanian Nests, where the music would seem to restart every time you saw a scrab. The increased intensity was good, but it needed to flow more.

I reallywant to see a preview of what the current in-game visuals are like! :D please???

+1 for keeping the original soundtracks

Damn, I could have sworn I posted something else on here last night. I think I wrote it and then got distracted by something shiny.

Basically the gist of what I wrote was that, first and foremost as a designer my job is going to be to make the old game fit the new engine with as few changes as possible to the core game and storyline. However, enhanced visuals are a definite, at least from my point of view, so epic backgrounds, maybe even realtime cutscenes to replace the old ones, and general fleshing out of the world will be on my agenda at least.

Added canon isn't something that I think we should do with the first release; it's not our place to muck around with people's memories of this excellent franchise. After that however there's no limit to what we can do, providing we can keep it within the accepted history and rules of the Oddworld universe.

Hmmm... to sum up what I agree with:
I also like the idea that some sligs might smoke cigarettes, from dev's view it's neither hard, nor much-time-consuming to make a model, two or three animations, a particle effect, and a few scripts, and the effect would be worth it

Ok, now my stuff:
-Remember the Guardian Angel, which never got into final game? You probably won't add him here, but that's not what I mean: As far as I remember you can see him in final game at some background... just keep him :)
-Please, pretty please (with a sugar on top), don't mess with difficulty! It should NOT be easier than AO, sure, you can add Quicksave feature, but let the player decide when he begins a new game if he wants or doesn't want to use it.
-This type of visior LINK > this type LINK, it fits sligs much more
-I don't really know how to describe it, but first two games have something I call "the step system" - it's basically the fact that everything there is based on steps: jumping is like 3 steps forward, jumping when running is like 4 steps... and you can't make like 1/2 of step, so it's possible to perform some action identically twice (you'll end up in exactly the same place, not e.g. 2pixels further)... it's awesome

It just sounded far too gratuitous for me. Gibbing has always been a part of Oddworld, but detailed disemboweling has not. When a slig's head or Abe's scalp bounced off the screen after an explosion or meat grinder mishap, that was funny. Seeing Abe's viscera spread out is not.

Sure, let the animals tear out chunks. But I don't want to come away from the experience feeling sick. I don't expect they'd get that far in anyway before the screen faded to black. Or before the body dissolved, if that's back.

I would go for a golden mean here, too cartoony violence like in MO sucks and too realistic is not that great

I just hope the HD remake would not look like a child game..... funny gibs and slig shoots ''sleeping darts''........

So yeah heres what I agree on.

-Don't ruin the atmosphere.
-Keep in original objects and dangers such as Mines, Bombs, Meat Grinders, Falling Meat keep in the orignal sounds! I wanna hear Abe's "BLAGH" when he dies or runs in a wall and the Slig's "FREEZE!" and Agreed with STM, keep in the slizzle when inhabitants die, Its most satisfying...in a odd way.

Okay heres my ideas
-I wanna see some neat little animations to Abe and Mudokons to add the there characters for example: Abe starts to pant if he runs to much, when he stops still, he puts his hands on his legs and tries to regain his breath and panicing if he is getting chased by a Scrab, whilst running, looking behind him time to time to see if its still there.

Yeah, that sort of thing makes a game world really come to life. It would be great if you make AO an even more immersive experience.

Well as long as we don't see Abe being torn to bits I'm good. Sekto you worry me.

It needs some gore, but not over the top blood everywhere disgusting stuff that abe619 would like.

Tasteful gore.

I don't want to see Oddworld taking the Gears of War approach to maturity. Compare how Limbo approaches the subject.

One thing. More cutscenes of Abe etc, very rare cutscenes in both abe games but they were world class, just would prefer a LOT more cutscenes in the games to understand more of the characters, and the storyline.

But you don't need loads of cutscenes, if you have too many they are devalued and game play breaks up.

Like in Metal Gear Solid.

First person Well transits, anyone? Monsaic Lines to Scrabania at the low low price of your lunch.

That's an idea but I can imagine it would be very intensive on the graphical capabilities and might be better as a cut scene if it were to be included, alternatively...it would ruin the mystery of how they work wouldn't it?

I preferred the use of FMVs, and I hope it stays that way. The graphics for the FMVs were that good anyway, they hardly need a HD update.

^ this.

I really want you to keep the scene transitions, both with respect to transitioning from FMVs to gameplay and (far more importantly), moving around from one gameplay area to another. One of the things that really made the world feel real to me was walking in one door and seeing the camera move across/around the landscape to the next one. This is especially true of the Monsaic Lines, but Paramonia did it well too.

A related thing is the way that some screens showed paths in the background that you walk on later in the level. That was cool.


Yeah, well... unintelligible, guttural language would not be inconsistent with what I said. I just don't want to hear Sligs gossiping about the weather.

I have the opposite opinion, I wouldnt mind hearing sligs talking about the weather

I agree with what you've said. I would just like to see more dialogue and more story because in the abe games the FMV's in total all together must be below 5 minutes worth. That was acceptable in the 90s for most games, but I think there is a massive importance in the story and character development in games now a days to the player. Its almost like a film or a book etc, you want to understand more of the characters and relate to them or want them to succeed or fail and the times I saw abe etc in the FMVs were great I just felt that there wasn't enough. I know theres that old saying fans will call for more cake but sometimes you need that because if you give them too much they get sick of it, however somtimes you can starve the fans and its not enough, and I feel there needs to be more FMVs.

Repeated every single time you see them on screen?!

I don't think I've ever seen NPC dialogue done well. Ever. In any game. In any genre. Not once.

Keep it to BS, SMO'BS and the occasional hi in my opinion.

This feels like a good place to repeat my suggestion from another thread on how sligs could behave with smooth scrolling :p

If the camera is panning, with Abe being (presumably) fixed in the centre of the screen, then think about where that slig would have to be- right at the edge of the viewable area, to the point where it is close to going off screen.

With the flick screen system, if we walked into a new screen to see a slig shouting 'FREEZE!', we had to turn and run straight away or be shot. Also think how, if you stopped running whilst being chased, the slig had to stop to shoot- they couldn't run and gun. In fact, if you were quick, you could stop briefly then carry on running, and the slig would do the same :D

Point is, the slig needs to stop to shoot you. He will only stop if you do, in which case you'd be shot anyway just like in the classic games. But if he tries to shoot while you are running, he will disappear off screen- and just like AO/AE, you can't be shot from off screen! This way, the slig can try to catch up (for example if you stop and eventually he enters the screen), or it might go back to sleep, revert back to it's original location, etc. Just a thought- it doesn't seem too different to the original's mechanics actually! The only ways a slig would appear in the middle of the screen would be if you dropped next to one from a ledge, or woke one up whilst sneaking- either way, you'd be shot just like in the original game.

Secondly, I feel an important aspect of the gameplay in AO and AE was that it was frantic and tense. All in all, I think it comes down to risk- in Munch, there was a health bar, meaning Abe could take multiple hits from enemies. With this, the risk of approaching an enemy is reduced and the player is not afraid of the enemy since they know the odds of survival are good.

The key to immersing a player in a game is to effectively place the emotion of the protagonist on the player. I think the back of the AO box said it best with 'In a world where everything wants to eat you, you're the skinny guy with no weapons'- I want to feel scared playing as Abe, to feel desperately outmatched just as somebody would in that situation. One hit kills are a must! Running away from a slig/scrab needs to feel like a life and death situation.

On an extra note, I don't know if anyone has suggested this before, but it would be great if Abe's grenades had some physical effect on the machinery when they explode- the level would function in the same way afterwards, but maybe there would be some damage to the metal, a charred patch and sparks from grinders, etc?

Apologies for the long post!

@Michael - Agreed with this on the whole, one-hit kills is a must indeed.

Agreed with this, this is the right attitude to have. Bear in mind that you won't be able to satisfy everyone, but don't let that put you off - There are many people who don't think many things should be changed at all, but so long as you intend to keep the core of the games, everything else should be subject to improvement. After all, what people forget is that the old games aren't going anywhere - If they want the old experience, they should play the old games.

As a community we should continue to identify what is "Core" about the Abe games like we have been doing, but I really hope we won't start being too afraid of change - Abe HD should be a refreshment of the old games and it would be a shame to see the opportunity of improving things going to waste if too many things are imported as-is from the old games.

The FMVs for example. If the new graphics and engine are good enough, I don't see why real-time cutscenes couldn't replace the old ones. The old ones are nice... For the old games. If remastered and used in Abe HD, they'd look a bit out of place unless Abe HDs graphics and style were EXACTLY the same, which they probably won't be. So yeah, go for it. :)

I'm actually not a huge fan of real-time cutscenes, even in high quality next-gen games. Maybe that's just me. Of course, I'm speaking of games that only have real-time cutscenes. Stranger's Wrath had a good balance by making the less significant/involved plot points in real-time, and the pivotal points as cinematics. The cinematics act as a thesis for the next chapter of the story, and the real-time sequences are sub-points.

Considering that AO/AE are not highly interactive games with multiple "lesser" missions and the whole thing plays like a movie, I can't imagine where real-time sequences (other than scene transitions and the like) would be necessary.
If you insist on redoing the old cinematics, do it with top notch computer graphics like in the originals or polish up the original sequences. The stunning matte paintings, the music, the cinematography... all of those things cannot be touched! If you're going to reconstruct those iconic sequences, it has to be done shot-for-shot, word-for-word, color-for-color. I don't mean to be a stickler, but I think you'll find most of the good folks here will agree with me in saying that the cinematic sequences cannot and should not be subject to too much change. I wan't these HD games to be a polish of the classics, but losing that sublime atmosphere in translation would be a damned shame.

I can't be bothered to look if this was suggested already 'cause I'm sleepy, but anyways:

It would be cool if there was a bit more variety to the gamespeak. What I mean by that is that there could be like three or four different ways of them saying the stuff, like if a Slig were to say 'hi', it wouldn't just say 'hi' in the same way all the time, but it could say something similar like 'whazzup' or 'hi' in a slightly different voice. It's a minor idea that I've had in mind and I would appreciate if you'd put that in the game. :)

+1 Seconded. The sligs' tones of voice should definately vary reflecting a range of different personalities. Nothing too comical, save that for Exodus HD. ...Or maybe they should all sound pretty much the same in Oddysee, and say the same as what they do in the original, just with a slight variation in tone.

Yeah that was already brought up numerous times, but I guess that just means it's something the fans have come to a definite consensus on. :p