Yeah, you pretty much summed up all my thoughts in a couple of paragraphs.

Scratch part of my post. I finally got to the soulstorm brewery thinking okay, fair enough, 5 more zulags until I'm at some kind of ending. Completed those 5, get to a second bloody hub? Look at a walkthrough to see how near the end I am, this isn't even the final hub!? Sorry, I stop playing here, that's ridiculous. That's abysmal level design.

Now I'm starting to think Exoddus is more like the TV show Dexter. 'Good', to 'Great', to 'Excellent, I love this!' To 'Oh dear lord what have they done...'

The hub structure of the final puzzles has never personally bothered me. It allows players, if they get stuck, to try and complete other other levels. When I was a lot younger this prevented me from getting very frustrated with the game and adds a little variety in replays now.

I suppose if the game has bored you this far, and you're simply going through the motions or feel obliged to finish it, the constant hub structure is only going to frustrate. The level design and my enjoyment of these puzzles has always trumped this trope they always fall back out. When I reached the Brewery I was glad to have more levels to chew on because I was enjoying the game. I imagine it was similar to how you felt when you reached another Zulag in the finale of RuptureFarms - but because there isn't as many hubs, it's shorter, and you were enjoying it, you welcomed the extra levels.

How is giving you more levels at the end of the game "bad level design"? Not to mention they're all very good levels. (though the one with the drills can go fuck itself.).

It's meant to be part of the finale of the game. The whole reason Abe went on his journey. I loved how the SoulStorm Brewery was huge and complex. It was a long slog (heh) to the end making it more satisfying when you finally blew up the damn place.

I get this idea, however there's a point where it just starts to feel like you're not making progress.

If there were any more than 3 Zulags I could get that, but I feel like there’s just enough there to be satisfying. None of the levels drag on for too long either.

I do get that hub after hub could get a bit tedious for some players. But I never really shared the sentiment.

Looking at reviews in 1998 I haven't seen it come up. Any criticisms of the game's design extends to Oddysee - trial and error gameplay for example. So I don't think this is particularly a case of nostalgia goggles.

Perhaps, by modern standards, it's not particularly inspired but I get the impression that in 1998, reviewers at least, didn't have a problem with the game's hub structure.

It wasn't remotely complex, and that was the problem.
Also, it went on forever and got boring as fuck.

Agreed. Unfortunately I don't think shoe-horning in some extra filler to try and make up for otherwise rushed development equals a good game.

I think there are some valid points in this thread that, at the time, it wasn't as much of a problem, but looking back 17 years later (which is of course unfair in itself) the cracks are a whole lot more visible.

I think Nepsotic summed it up perfectly in that Exoddus is great but a little dated, whereas Oddysee appears to be timeless.

IMO, Oddysee is the one that seems dated. Annoyingly steep learning curve, no quicksave, and several other quirks that were fixed by Exoddus, like only leading one Mudokon at a time. It was also short. Like, really short.

Exoddus fixed all of these issues.
I love this game to death and it shows. On Steam, I played 8 hours of Oddysee and 16 of New n Tasty. Exoddus? 35 hours.

Agree whole-heartedly with the steep learning curve, I first played Oddysee as like a...6 year old or something, but I didn't manage to complete it fully until 10 years later. I kinda think that Exoddus is harder though, so it definitely needs the quicksave a little more. Oddysee was frustrating at times for sure, but never to the point where I gave up.

Perhaps I'd need to do a side by side comparison to be truly fair, but there have been times in Exoddus where I remember thinking to myself that I would've simply stopped playing at that point had quicksave not existed. So to me that sorta evens them out. Perhaps that's due to Oddysee being considerably shorter so the end was always in sight? No idea, all I know is I've somehow found the patience to complete it a few times.

Are those playtimes how long it's taken you to complete each game? Or how long it's taken you to complete them a few times? This is where I seem to differ from a large portion of the gaming community. I personally don't really see how a longer game automatically makes it better, nor do I immediately think a game is crap just because it's shorter than anticipated. If anything that's a pro, it means I'm more likely to play through it multiple times. I mean, I love Legend of Zelda games, but I doubt I'll ever complete many of them more than once.

If a game is consistently delivering a good experience then of course having it be longer is a benefit.

All in the eye of the beholder. We shall find no consensus in this place.

What do you think would be added if they were to instead create a new 2d Abe, or other odd-creature game that could ease your discomfort?

Absolutely agreed.

For your second question:
- Keep the quicksave idea, obviously
- Keep the ability to retread the exact same steps (if you know what I mean?)
- Focus almost absolutely and entirely on atmosphere, story and art style, the things which made Oddysee what it was
- Don't shoehorn in extra shit just for the sake of making the game longer. If after all your ideas have come to fruition and the game only takes 4 hours to complete, that isn't a problem. Going back and thus making it 8 hours to complete just for the sake of it, is

That's all they need to do.

Although I completely disagree with your opinion on Exoddus, Lorne has gone on record saying that when they developed the game he thought everything had to be more - more cutscenes, more levels etc - for it to be worth it for consumers. I'm not entirely sure he's still of that mindset anymore, though.

That's totally fair enough, perhaps that's where I was doomed to feel this way all along. I've always been of the opinion that video games should be seen more like any other art - be it music or film for example - where length/size is generally not something that is even once considered. If it conveys what you want to say then that's all that matters, even if that is relatively succinct.

But I totally understand why a games designer may not be able to have that view. Video games consumers are always going to be a lot more concerned about getting bang for their buck, so this is understandable.

Ha, I say this, yet I work for a video games company. We make football games though, so not really the same thing...

You know, this has made me think about AE in a slightly different way – what exactly was OWI trying to say with this game?

The overall themes are made apparent in Necrum and SoulStorm Brewery.

Necrum is a criticism of the exploitation of the native population, the theft and exploitation of their ancestral lands, and (indirectly) a criticism of the industrial exploitation of natural resources. This makes it an important area of the game, and the Necrum vaults underscore this by contrasting with the industrialized area – showing what the land used to be like before its spoiling.

SoulStorm Brewery meanwhile serves a similar role to RuptureFarms in AO, showing the harmful effects of rampant consumerism – the Brewery exists to create Brew, which is made through exploitation of slave labor and natural resources and destruction of land. There’s also commentary on how Brew is used to keep the Mudokon slaves subjugated through addiction, which is something that has an unsettling resemblance to areas of human society and history.

The other industrial areas in the game have less clear messages. The best I can guess is that Feeco and Bonewerkz are parodies of Victorian-style industry, sprawling masses of brick and metal that are filthy and produce masses of pollutants; while the Slig Barracks are perhaps making a statement for how industry and military force often go hand-in-hand (private militaries do exist in real life, after all)?

But it does make me think twice about how necessary those areas of the game were. Without them, I feel like the game would have been two short and would have placed too much focus on the two main environments, but at the same time there isn’t much of a narrative purpose for them. They’re distinctive locales with lots of personality, but that doesn’t contribute much to the overall message of the game. Bonewerkz and Feeco are at least tangentially linked to the main story (Feeco transports the raw materials, Bonewerkz processes) but even then it’s not a strong link.

I guess you could say technically that AE drags on, or that it's not as good as AO. I really just think that it's a game I enjoy playing through occasionally and haven't delved too much deeper into that. I definitely find it more playable than AO, even though AO is a better experience

I'm all for analysis, but my god why does everything anyone analyses on the internet have to come off in a negative light?

This is probably the core of the problem. Hubs are annoying because you always keep returning to the same place for no reason and feel like you're not going anywhere. I've never really understood the hub design to begin with. Necrum Mines and FeeCo didn't have hubs and that's probably the most enjoyable level for that exact reason. Because you feel like you're making progress through the level.

The Brewery would have been much more enjoyable if all the zulags would have just been a linear path instead of the hub design.

I believe the Hub Design is there because it prevents players getting stuck on difficult puzzles - and thus decreases frustration from the inability to progress. It's just that Exoddus and Oddysee are cinematic platformers.

I dunno, I think all the areas in AE are necessary, they all add something to the game; the length of the areas is something else however. The multiple grinder areas in...is it Bonewerkz? Those areas are a drag, the bits where you yell KILLEMKILLEMKILLEMKILLEM as a Glukkon in the industrial areas are pointless and repetitive, the area with the slam doors and the sprout gassed mudokons was absolutely pointless, if you cut those bits out I think the game would be more fun.

I liked FeeCo, it was cool to see Glukkon industry on a grand scale, the inflated self importance of sticking their faces on the trains. I suppose it was a freight hub though since there were no passengers anywhere? I never really understood but maybe in AEHD (if they make it) they could have passengers walking around on distant gangways, it would be nice to see chronikklers, luskans, maybe even grubbs or wolvarks running off to catch their trains, but I suppose at the same time it would be odd to have them all around in the midst of what is effectively a terrorist attack.

The slig barracks was another pretty great area, I think it actually would have been interesting to explore the place in more detail and uncover a little about Skillya, slig society and that sort of stuff, the way MO went with putting sligs on steroids to create big-bros, that's definitely something they could put into a potential remake, perhaps the forcible injection of these steroids. Abe could have had a real impact in the slig barracks and created some real morally questionable situations, i.e. we know there is a birthing complex in the barracks, shutting that down and killing thousands of unborn sligs would make life easier in creating a shortage of new guards but at the cost of the death of so many as of yet innocents.

That makes no sense.

1. You need to do all puzzles so you'd get stuck sooner or later.
2. The door closes behind you once you enter a puzzle, so you're instantly stuck anyway.

Yeah, it's definitely not that.

It's just lazy and boring level design.

I don’t get the criticism of the hub system. It divides the levels up into discrete sections, and it provides the player with an easy reference of how close they are to completing each section. For the large amount of levels in the Brewery it gives the player a much better indication of progress than just putting each level end-to-end in a single path.

It reminds me of parts of NES Megaman games where you have to beat all the bosses again from a hub.

I like hubs a lot. I mean, a LOT. In just about any game, it's a fun decorative place where you can view each level.

So it does. I guess I was thinking of other platformers with the hub system. But what I was getting at was that players could take a break from a puzzle - try some others - and come back to it later. But I guess it doesn't apply.

Also, Abe games have never had mind-blowing, complicated puzzles

It’s in the temples in AO – the entrance doors wouldn’t close until you activated the Flintlocks.