What influenced Lorne Lanning
 

I always thought Another World was the one main game that influenced Lorne Lanning (at least the Scrabania design), but if you look at flashback

the parallels are pretty obvious

woah.. i'd be suprised if Lorne HADN'T got his inspiration from this! It's like Abe with human sprites!

In a Game Informer article that I read in the 90's he said his dreams played a large role in inspiring Oddworld, unless he took that back later down the line?

There were a lot of 2d platforming games like that back in the day.

i dont know if this game was inspired by oddworld but...


It look inspired by another world to. But back on topic in one blog that lorne made he said he was also inspried by Prince of Persia.

Question:

Lorne I was always curious if you guys were inspired by the games Out of this World and Flashback? Also if you are friends with Eric Chahi can you let him know that we all need Out of this World in 1080p HD on the PS3? Thanks! :)


Answer:

Totally. I loved those games and they were major factors in our decision to start the company. To me, they were the first games that made me feel like I was controlling living creatures. As well as the original Prince of Persia, or course.

The creator Eric Chahi of Another World also worked on Heart of Darkness, that is why you see similarities.

OH! i didnt know that

Didn't you just love Another World, I was thinking of buying an AMIGA just for this game!

If only Abe had a gun

That would kind of ruin the game and the message don't you think?

Yeah, it would ruin the game's message, and make it way too easy. Plus, I think Abe would get hit by the gun from the kickback of firing it.

Rofl, well he does have grenades, maybe if there were those gun dispensers that the big bro sligs use, and Abe can get some nice weapons from there. That would be pretty sweet. Of course there would have to be an ammo limit on it though -.-

I'm trying very hard to imagine an Abe Rambo crossover. Someone should photoshop that.

In other news I added myself to my buddy list, seems this site still has a few bugs.

Any time you use the phrase 'In other news', it should be a sign to yourself that what you're intending to say is spam.

This.

Around that time 2D platformers like that were the norm, much like FPS's these days. They were everywhere. Oddworld was different to any game back then that I know of as Abe was not a violent character and he was unarmed. The other thing that the vast majority of games back then lacked (that Oddworld had in spades) was a deep narrative.

I'm pretty sure Lorne got his inspiration from the film industry that he worked in. As he mentioned, he wanted to tell a story and he saw games as the way of the future. They would have looked at how the more popular games worked at the time and adapted the story to work with that sort of gameplay.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't lorne work on a 3D motion simulator ride for Disney land back way before Oddworld? I think that's where he got the inspiration for the 3D Sprites in AO and AE

He also helped make Coca Cola’s polar bear adverts. It seems to me that Lorne intentionally moved from traditional to new media art before he worked on these things because he'd already realized that it was the medium that was affecting more people.

Visually it would seem to be the artists who have most control, with Lorne approving them once they match the essence of his vision. Though we all know Lorne is a talented artist, as creative director and president in general he doesn't have the time to work like that.

Primarily, it is the stories that will bear his fingerprints, and the inspiration for those comes from the real world, particularly those aspects that the media doesn't like to portray.