I think in terms of basic progression (locations, pacing, difficulty) it should stay the same, but puzzles and path layouts should be altered. No point in building an entirely new game in a new engine just to build the same thing all over again.


I can’t wait for the ten-minute cutscene that details Abe’s life story.

There is absolutely nothing more tiresome than watching fans giving the developers of a game advice on how to make it. Especially since most of it is so stupid.

Not advice, suggestions. And we're counting on their expertise to judge if they are good suggestions or not. I'm sure there's been a thing or two suggested in this thread that proved to be a good idea and will make it into the game.

Don't be so negative, you old fart.

At the first sign of 'Do you want to play the tutorials?' I'm de-installing the game and never touching anything from JAW again, just so you know :p.

(b) How many revisions has the map gone through? How many faults were found in it? The current version may well be more accurate than the first, but I'm still not going to declare it correct.
(c) Because prophecies are tricky beasts and Big Face wouldn't be confident in them.

In any case, I'm not adding any more unseen details than you are. You're suggesting that Big Face keeps guard over the borders of Monsaic Lines, walking back and forth and curing the injuries of all who find themselves there. That seems unlikely to me.

On the other hand, it seems logical that the Native muds would have all sorts of prophecies and would watch the stars, birds and various other omens. The Mudokon paw moon/meteor shower idea has been dropped, but it would have been just one sign of many that the saviour was coming.

Nope. Take a look at the LED screen here:

Perhaps it may work if Abe could still chant to create bird portals and rescue his coworkers, but does not learn how to possess other beings until reaching Monsaic Lines? I figured (to explain away the gameplay mechanic) that chant suppressors and such were placed for a reason, that Mudokons chanted when they felt like it, but perhaps it didn't do much of anything except attract birds. And that the Glukkons were being superstitious.

And my two cents on Big Face and Abe's resurrection: my interpretation was that Big Face came to Abe in a dream, when he was hovering between life and death, and brought him back to the land of the living. And also had him wake up at the entrance to Monsaic Lines.

Well in that case, I was wrong and I agree that there should be no direct instructions to save Muds before the Monsaic Lines. Perhaps indirect hints (such as the “if you escape all 28 die” sign) could be kept around to give players some thought as to what they’re doing.

I'm not sure about that. When I saw that sign, I assumed I had missed something and went online to find a walkthrough. Looking back, I wish I had continued playing obliviously and only found out about possession in Monsaic Lines.

I never really liked that sign. It looks incredibly out of place since it looks like it has been there a while. It might as well be pointing out an escape route for everyone.

What's more, if you're not instruction the players directly to save muds and on the final screen you suddenly see: "Everyone dies if you escape!", it would feel like being slapped in the face. Many players won't get what they were supposed to do instead.

I love that sign! It strikes fear

surely finding out that you've been doing it wrong for the last hour or so of gameplay would be incredibly frustrating, especially when you realise that you would need to start again if you wanted to do it properly.

Hence my concern regarding chanting to open bird portals not being illustrated on some level in the first area.

Also, the sign makes a point of saying there's 28 muds in the area because a lot of them are in secret areas, all of which are very well hidden. This is the first hint you have that there's more to the levels than you can see.

Wouldn't it be cool to just expand on the backtracking you can do when you return to Rupture Farms? In the original game, even if you rescue all 28 muds before you escape, there are more of them to rescue if you go back to where you started.

You could put the mudokons there for the first part, without any bird portals around and without hints that they need rescuing. They would just make the factory look alive. Then on the way back, when Abe knows he can save everyone, the player can choose to backtrack to save all the muds he passed earlier. A status board near the Zulag 1 exit could remind the player that there are still muds stationed.

Then, the secret areas in stockyard would be useless and since you wouldn't have practiced in RF, they would be fucking hard...

I’d be cool with this, I guess. I’d prefer to keep the secret areas as they were originally and keep chanting available from the start, but this is an interesting idea as well and a possible sort of compromise.

That said, I think the gameplay element of rescuing Muds needs to appear fairly early on, otherwise there’s the risk of throwing a new task at players fairly late in the game, causing some frustration.

Nah because, surely Abe isn't so much of a heartless bastard that he saw mudokon pops and only thought to save his own skin?

That's what I was thinking. Perhaps the 'You escape and all 28 workers on this level die' board could be replaced with an LED board saying the amount of workers left in zulag 1, as opposed to (or in addition to) the amount left in the whole of RF. This would inform players there is something extra hidden, whilst addressing what people have said about the 'You escape...' board seeming out of place. The mudokons could still be there when you return.

I agree with what has been said about the chant suppressors being there for a reason. The fact that they are there implies that mudokons know about chanting to some degree. I suppose it would be appropriate for Abe to chant from the beginning to open portals- whilst not trying to save everyone in RF, I still think he would try to save those he ran into on the way out.

I still think personally that possession should be learnt later from a story point of view (in all honesty it doesn't bother me- I will be happy either way in Abe HD- I just think it makes an interesting discussion point :p). I wonder how many times you actually need to use it before Monsaic lines? I'll bet most (if not all) of the zulag 1 and stockyards sligs could be killed with trapdoors and grenades/mines. Think i might give it a go and see if it's possible! :D

Aww but the 28 workers die bored is so Orwellian.

Please God keep the 28 workers die board. It's one of the most memorable things pre-Monsaic Lines.

Yeah that sign actually made me want to go back and save them all. Saying that, I couldn't because the secret near the start of Stockyards is impossible for me. Seriously I have never done it before.

That is a tough one.

It's easy crashpunk, your supposed to hop over the trap doors.

I imagine you've helped.

I've beaten Abe's Oddysee with all mudokons when I was maybe 10. Try hard Crashpunk and don't give up.

I helped him with the secret area of Annex 7 of Bonewerkz, but even with my help, it still took him ages to do and he didn't even follow my technique the entire way.

It is a little tricky, but timing is everything.


Actually yeah - That sign gave me, as a player, a reason to go back and save all the mudokons, even though Abe, as a character, is never told directly to save them before they're fed into the flesh farm. It's purely a gameplay thing - The story doesn't do much to explain that Abe is equally concerned over the lives of his co-workers as much as he is about saving his own skin, nor does the game really set that moral choice to the player until that point.

Yeah, you do see an earlier LED sign telling you, as a player, to lead mudokons to bird portals, but you're not told why until you see the "28 workers die" board.

But I think you discussed this already.

Wow. Thank you all for the support. I guess i'll try it next time I play Oddysee. :lol:

These forums should be called Oddworld Support Forums :P

This is a new suggestion that only related peripherally to what we've been talking about over the last few days and was inspired by what Michael said:

Can you please add a section to each employee/escapee counter board to say how many employees there are in the current Zulag? AE did something similar and I much preferred knowing in advance if I'd missed anyone.

Yeah good one. I support this.

As I recall, AE didn't give a running tally on how many were left in each land. It was fine for the mines, where you only have to see that your 90 escapees matched the 90 Necrum workers, but after that you had to do subtraction in your head each time to see how many were left in, say, Slig Barracks, and then only if you're sure how many you had before you came.

Also the one-way tunnels were annoying. Every door had "Tunnel X No Return" but most lead only to more of the same tunnel. It was a nightmare tying to work out if the mudokon you had left was in the next part of the tunnel or if it was still around and that was the door that actually led to Tunnel X+1.

Agreed 100%. I kept thinking I forgot a few mudokons in Bonewerkz and there wasn't a way to check if any remained.