meeches must stay extinct
 

KEEP MEECHES DEAD! i dont give a rip about the "potential" of meeches. and i think they should not be "lost in some wilderness" somewhere. the game needs to keep its touch with reality, and i think extinction is a poetic and sad fate for some of the over hearvested creatures in oddworld. thats part of the reason we like the first game, was because it was a sad place and we want things to improve for abe. moreover we already saved the gabbits, i think the meeches should stay done for.

changing the story line now would be like trying to take one of abes fingers off each hand to save money, or selling out to sobe. ;)

Oddworld is ODD! not happy all the time. i think there should be SAD FMVS (despite sucessfully completeing a level) as well as happy ones to balance the story. Dont belive me? watch a film called Grave of the Fireflies.

thoughts? comments? ideas?

Keeping Meeches dead shows the consequences of an over-industrialized world. I just love the design of the Meeches, and hope to be able to play as one of them. Maybe as a secret feature?

However, an online daily deception mentioned the South Meech Diet, so I don't know if that means they're alive or dead.

Alcar has mentioned that OWI have hinted the return of the Meeches as well.

-oddguy :cool:

I wholeheartedly agree with you. They should serve the purpose of teaching us what can happen when the industries, food or not, go too far and when basic values are lost.

Meeches have to stay dead, that's for sure, or else it would spoil the whole message
anyway, we might be able to see meeches in a game if this one is taking place before the start of the quintology.

or in one of Abe's many flashbacks...

So true. They should stay extinct. I mean once a species is obliterated from our planet, that's it. They're gone. They can't just magically return somehow. I think the message is stronger and more realistic if they don't reappear, unless as it was mentioned, in a flashback or earlier time period.

Yeah but what about Hand of Odd. Thats supposed to be set BEFORE the quintology. So naah. Meeches for all! ...maybe!

It could be that Meeches are somehow brought back via Vykker technology. It wouldn't exactly be far fetched, since there have been many-a-rumour about resurrecting the Mammoth and Tazmanian Tiger.

Although, if they did do this as a plot twist thing, they'd have to make it so that the Vykkers are creating them, treating them badly and then hacking them up for meat. Meaning that if Abe and co want to stop this, they would have to stop the creation of the Meeches and "restore natures balance" by actually making them extinct.

However, i hope they stay extinct, unless the reason for their survival is credible.

..
 

Let us not forget the bit of Vykker's lab concept art depicting various creatures in tubes, including what looked like Meeches.

yes. good memory shell man (heh, that name makes me laugh) and good thinking jacob. That would be a plausible way to get them back but I'm not sure that they would have to re-extinct them. The glukks wiping them out is out of the natural balance so bringing them back would restore the ecosystem on mysterious misty plateaus

Oooooh, great plot line. That'd be very interesting.

-oddguy :cool:

'The glukks wiping them out is out of the natural balance so bringing them back would restore the ecosystem on mysterious misty plateaus'

True, but i think it'd be a good "Doing something good, that has bad consequences" sorta moral...thing. Where the heroes could either let the Meeches carry on being bred, poorly treated and hacked up/experimented on. Or, they could stop the animal cruelty, but evidently cause the extinction.

And just so you don't have the whole "Let two go and make them breed" or something, you could just say that the clones are infertile [which i think is true anyway].

Jacob, this is an excellent idea, it is quite complex and I like it, not one of the lots of moments where everything is 100% bad or 100% good.

subtility, that's the word

I agree with xavier

I say; keep em dead, but give us another creative way to enjoy the creatures. (Burial grounds, ghost, pictures, posters, stuffed animals as collective item off rich glukkon,...)

I essentially agree with everything that's been said. Keep Meeches extinct, definitely. However, that's not to say we can't observe them in a flashback. Spotting a mounted Meech head in the corner of some Glukkon office would also be a nice easter egg, provided it wasn't too obvious.

EDIT: Well spotted, Nate. *thumbs up*

you mean "not too obvious" don't you?

that would be a freaky memento. Meeches are one of the wierdest-looking oddworld creatures

Anyone who has seen a picture of a meech cant have missed the fact that they have three jaws... weird...

this is for the ones who don't know how a meeche look like...

and indeed 3 jaws

I hadn't noticed the 3 jaws before. Do we know anything about their behaviour? My guess is that they are quite aggressive. I think Alf once said that they ran in packs. What else do we know?

Actually, it should have four (unless it has an empty space on the right side of it's jaw.

Symmetry, people! Symmetry!

Hang on a minute - are those three jaws as in jaws on top of each other (so kinda two seperate chewing gaps) or three jaws as in two normal jaws and another coming from the side (looking a bit like a slig mouth in a way)

Anybody seens the Tremors 2? They have three jaws, too... Like the meeches... and i read it before in the forums, the meeches hunting for elums in packs in desert or they was cave dwellers...

they have 3 jaws...
for all the known info about that dreature you should ask a pro, like Max the Mug

No, it's two mouths devided by a third jaw.
I put forward a suggestion that it may be a scavenger- two mouths mean that it can eat more faster, possibly before something more dangerous got to it.

Yes, you right.

What do you think those hands are for? They are so small and claw-like that they look like they are just vestigial appendages. They're like T-rex arms. Do you think they can use them for anything?

Also, it looks like there are hard plates on the back similar to armadillos. Do you think they can curl into a ball in order to protect themselves?

seems higly possible to me...

and true, the 4 arms/fingers are not realy usefull, maybe to cary litle and light objects

According to Lorne, Meeches have four jaws. This interview is from way back in the day, before people knew there were other Elums, so forgive the question-asker (whose identity I know not).

Max, aow that's quite a scoop!
I can't see the four jaws, only 3.
"trying to bring them back" but maybe not succeed, sounds like Jacob's theory could make sence :p

I think meeches are a very cool I would like to see one in a game. I wonder if they would put them in hands of odd.

Top, bottom and either side. We are looking from the left so we can't see the one on the right.

That quote from LL is incredible. Note that he's very vague in how they will be brought back, so Jacob's idea may have some merit.

I would agree with the majority of you, in that Meeches should remain extinct. For the reasons such as the pinacle result of the over-use of a race, etc. However, as the quote with Lorne in it implies, there is even greater potential in reviving the creatures.

Would make for a good gene / cloning kind of game. Though those things are not directly related to reviving a species.

Alcar...

hmmm, I would like to see the meeches stay extinct, for me the heroes have to fail in their attempt to bring them back :p

Yea, keep them extinct..

I bet they were like lazy, stupid creatures anyways. ;)

I hope not.

You know, i thing theres lot's and lot's of these promblems, the indusrtal don't care, becuase there's so much creatures in Oddworld, they don't care if there's is'nt any Gabbiar left, even though they liked IT. Becuase there's so much in oddworld. It's like apples, each apple is worth a specias, if one get's destroyed, you wuon'nt care, becuase there's so much apples.

I also remember that somewhere it said that there are so much species, that they never heard or seen eact other.

true, some spiecies could be like aliens for other spiecies...

plus I don't think meeches were lazy creatures, more like raptors and such.

Maybe not so much meeches brought back.You could have sorta failed clones with mutations on them.the vykkers could be cloning meeches trying to create a perfect one.but they dont care about te mutated ones suffering so then abe/stranger/munch/whoever could try to help them.they would be more like scrabs in the game basically

i don't think meeches to return soon but maybe in the last game of the quintoligy. when all native space will return and the bad guy's (industrialists) sadly die (explode).

Ewww, no. I don't want all the Industrialists to die. Then Abe would utterly fail his mission by shifting the balance of Oddworld even further off centre than it had been before. I know Jacob would enjoy it if the Quintology 'failed', but in that scenario, so many people would imagine they won. Pah.

I've heard it said that Meeches are clumbsy creatures, rather oafish. The connection to the Mudokons being a bunch of klutzes would be no coincidence, but the same source said Meeches fly around using air pressure.

Which could be true - we have a sketch and an obscured cartoon image, but no definitive final render. That would explain how Meeches have four jaws, while the sketch only shows three (I looked, I don't think on of those jaws is on the side, but it is tricky to tell).