Ah, yeah. Now that you mention it, AO did much more horizontal level structure than AE overall. But if they ever remake it, there would still be hope for some extra areas peppered throughout the game.

I was playing AO yesterday and was thinking about this. I think since his legs are on the back end of his body, it threw my jump timing off. I find myself often mistiming his jump right when his front half reaches the jump instead of when his legs reach the jump.

It seems in New n Tasty that the Elum jumps are a little more forgiving now that Abe/Elum doesn't move along a fixed grid, giving them the ability to shorten the jumps a tiny bit while still having them wide enough for Abe alone to be unable to jump them.

I was thinking about Abe and mudokons riding some Elums in the desert at the beginning.

Insufficient memory, actually.

That makes sense. I'm impressed they were able to cram in all those features in the first place. And I'm beyond impressed that they were able to put out a gem like that in only 9 months!

You know what would be pretty interesting in an AE remake? More puzzles centered around pants-less sligs. They could potentially have pretty unique solutions/obstacles.

I wonder if they'll give Greeters different voices? Supposedly they didn't want to waste memory on unique sound files for them in AE...

I expect not. They're supposed to be mass-produced utilities, after all.

I hope they get their own robotic voice that isn't just a pitch shift. Great, now even I'm talking about it like it's confirmed.

Greeters having pre recorded non electronic voices would be the best and most unsettling imo

Or better yet, have them voiced by Microsoft Sam and Google Translate

That does sound cool, but pretty early in their design (pg. 128) it was decided they should sound "like an old tinkertoy". That doesn't really mean much to me (Google Images* just turns up some kind of wooden Meccano), but I imagine that buzzing, whining, unwinding-clockwork ring to their voice is probably here to stay.

It would be a good opportunity to expand their dialogue, though (and we all know how much JAW loves expanding dialogue).

They were originally programmed as robot shills, taking investors on pre-recorded tours of facilities, or just generally harassing people into buying useless cack. The whole electrocution thing was them taking forceful marketing a little too far, but the Glukkons found it more cost-efficient to repurpose them as guards than actually fix them. I guess we'll probably hear them dropping broken fragments of sales jargon like "SPECIAL OFFER!" or "BUY NOW!"

*Or "!gi" as I now call it - thanks, DuckDuckGo!

That would be really fucking cool actually.

*zaps* EVERYTHING MUST GO.

That would be quite cool. Greeters could also shout the various taglines for Magog products. "It'll cost you and arm and a leg!" "Say it, don't spray it!"

Damn right! And all the better for it I say.

I think it would be cool if some/most of them have distorted and broken voices to show that they're old and are malfunctioning.

Or even something simple like shouting freeze! If they start chasing you.

If they crash into a wall, they should switch to a random language.

I think I'd prefer the creepily friendly "Hi!"

I love it

I like that idea, Meech, but I can see some silly players thinking they've encountered a bug!

"Why are they speaking French in Oddworld? This must be the French dub files!"

The logic doesn't exactly hold (why are they speaking English, eh?) but I could see people complaining online about it.

I say playtest it and see how they respond. Then do it anyway because it's a cool idea!

I love how we talk about Twice the Flavour as if it's already in production.

I think it'd be fairly obvious that it's intentional. Games such as Portal feature this random language switch gag and it doesn't ever come across as a bug.

Ah, but the one in Portal 2 is very clearly established as Wheatley says something like "I'm a genius now!" speaks some Spanish and then says something like "I don't even know what that means!"

I was just feeding off some of Valve's game commentaries where they explain removing a couple of nifty features that were incorrectly perceived as bugs by some playtesters.

I was imagining the Greeters' language change to be more akin to the one heard around 1:02 in this video, but I definitely see where you're coming from.

I suppose some clear visual cues that the Greeters are malfunctioning would help sell it.

I'm sure a malfunctioning sound and some distortion at the start of the sentence should do the trick.

Ruined forever.

Yep. This is what I was thinking of too. Several elements inspired by Portal might be nice touches.

I'd like to hear them getting stuck on a word like when a game glitches out and makes a repeated sound.

Just another AE remake wish - I want Abe to make the sad noise whenever he's forced to kill a Scrab or Paramite, the same way he does when he accidentally kills a Mudokon.

They're not. It's just translated into English. The same way Lord of the Rings translates the common language into our tongue—ditto with Dune and their imperial language of Galach.

That's just because all gaming and video systems have the babelfish technology already integrated.