No breaks involving Ferrari's or jet fuel though, Lanning stated that at Eurogamer :p

I'd have neither thanks.

Man I am so envious of you and the rest of JAW, you get to work and develop ideas with the best gaming franchise in the world. I really hope NnT sells fantastically, which I know it will, because you guys deserve nothing but the best. Respect :)

Guys just to say in terms of the *health birds*, remember the puzzles, hell the entire gameplay, has changed. If you got shot and died in one go you'd probably spend 30 minutes just trying to get through one screen.

You are.

This. The entire game is based around instant deaths. With a health bar you could theoretically skip 90% of the puzzles.
It would also be a little disappointing. AO/E were some of the last and best truly retro style games, back when games didn't spoonfeed you. With a health bar it's like they're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator and in doing so they'd be patronising old fans of the series who played the originals. Wasn't the entire point of AO that you don't have a health bar?

All that being said, everything would be fine if it was simply a difficulty setting for the shitmunchers. Still don't see how it'd solve the puzzle problem but I'm sure they've sorted it all out.

The idea of a bird health system makes me cringe, to be honest. Difficulty modes would work there though, provided the harder mode was unlocked from the get-go.

I am expecting (and hoping) that the puzzles have been altered to accommodate for the health bar, so it doesn't become ridiculously easy.

Either that or the health bar is optional, that'd be nice. I have faith that the old difficulty will be retained.

You're misreading what I said, I was coming out in defence of the health birds. Remember this is a scroll action game now, it makes more sense to have health. All I would say is just wait and see how the mechanic works out before you pass judgement because I would probably say the puzzles have been built with that new mechanic in mind.

Is it hard to transit? I honestly don't know, but I'm curious

A second question: Will some sligs still wear the old visors? I didn't spot any there, and it's probably just a coincidence, but I wanted to be sure

I would be OK with a health system if it worked along the lines of Abe being able to take a glancing hit or two without immediately dying, but isn’t a bullet sponge. So a Slig can catch you with a bullet as you run away and Abe could survive, but you couldn’t just stand there and take a dozen in the gut and walk away.

His health system should work like COD, where if Abe is hit a few times within a small amount of time, then he will die. But if he gets hit once or twice, it may impair his functioning for a short while, but he will return to normal. And how can he return to normal? Well, Abe is revived by the birds, so maybe a bird can fly into Abe's body after a short while and Abe's body absorbs it and heals him back to full health.

That's stupid.

Am I the only one who saw the boombat?

Yes :D

Where is it?

To justify you saying that, tell me a non-stupid alternative.

As long as the health system is only applied to sligs im sure i could cope. I wont be able to handle being molested by paramites and scrabs for 5 minutes before finally dying.

I actually didn't know it was a boombat till I read the description of the screenshot on the website. Does it actually do anything or is it for decoration?

I always digged the instant death in AO as it made the game very tense at times. So it would be cool to have different difficulties levels with the hardest one being just like Abe's Oddysee.

However I can imagine NnT to be just as hard so perhaps it's not needed.

I would imagine being a boombat, it would explode on impact of abe instead of just biting him to death

Is that the thing giving off blue sparks hovering near the spike balls?

Do they die when they explode? :'( Kinda like a swarm-based species mechanism, like how bees sting the enemy and die, for the survival of the swarm. Poor things...

Yeah Manco, but I didn't notice blue sparks. Presumably it'll follow a flight path like the original bats.

@AvengingGibbons I hope they explode! >:D if they didn't want them to they should have used Thudslugs to knock abe off the platform. Besides there's a trophy for hitting a boombat with a rock, how amazing would it be to be able to use it as a grenade if you knock it out of the air?!

Gibbons NO!

I like how the boom bat is eating the fire flies as he moves around lol.

But there still is instant death in game with the saw blades and the electricity fields. But taking bullets to a non protected Abe should result in instant death too. I have a feeling it's in game as part of the alpha/beta build so that they can test things and still not die.


Oh! You guys think there will be cheats in this game? Circle, triangle, square, X. Down down down, circle, triangle, square, X. Haha how do I still remember that?

In a way I kind of hope there is still cheats, I used to put that invincibility cheat on for my younger sister when she wanted to play but was too scared of dying haha!

did someone say...bees?

I would have thought it would be difficult/impossible. I'm sure it would be entirely possible to transition from say, 4.5 to 4.7 because it still uses the base program only with several new features/fixes. What with 5 being a completely new edition, I'm not sure the transition would be very smooth if possible at all.

Do games still use cheats anymore?

I don't care if they put cheats in the game, cheats are not only used for fun, but mainly used during the age certification process, since the review board needs to see every nook and cranny of the game to give a verdict, cheats are given to them so they can see all the game as quickly as possible, would be a bit annoying that a games release date got delayed because the review board is stuck on a certain part of the game...

As long as it disables trophies when you use cheats then that's fine by me, would be awful to get somebody get that speedrun trophy with the invincibility cheat.

@Jordan it seems so, Grand Theft Auto uses more than a handful of cheats. As for abe's exoddus using the invincibility cheat, i had lots of fun with it, it adds more gameplay time. I agree with the disabling trophies mechanism though. Not that i know any games that still reward trophies when cheats are used..

I saw it. It looked kind of buggy, too; popping in and out. Also, fireflies.

I agree that Abe's iconic frailty is part of his appeal. He's a hapless unhero. That said, anyone who thinks that Abe taking a couple of hits before death is a cop-out evidently doesn't remember Fleeches.

I do not miss that at all. Stack 'em high, and let a few slip off the platform if it gets too much.

I wonder if there are any curved platforms in this version, now that the camera can pan around.