EGX presentation impressions
 

Tower defence? Mudokon management? Inventory? Literally what was that I'm not sure how I feel about it ��

How do you even get 301 mudokons on screen at the same time how zoomed out is this game? Is it even a sidescroller? Why did nobody in the crowd ask any of these questions?

I'm so confused. On the plus side, Toby is precious.

please let this be a joke....

Nah I think lorne was just making some analogues about the tower defence genre. I think Soulstorm will be a puzzle game for sure, just a bit different.

I was confused, I'd have liked to see gameplay to show the UI better, but I guess we'll have to wait.

I think there will be the sidescroller aspect as normal but some other mechanism where you have to control the other 300 mudokons. I doubt they all will literally be following you around.
The video at the start and the improved Mudokons and Glukkons though! <3

Honestly, my first thought when seeing the items pop up on the screen was: "...Oddworld: Breath of the Wild?"

Being completely honest, if someone was trying to get me to buy a game like that and that was their pitch, it's the type of thing I'd steer clear of completely. Group management and little pickups and transactions is not my kind of game. If this had nothing to do with Oddworld it wouldn't grasp me in, but that's just me.

I'm a puzzle platformer guy pretty much thanks to Oddworld as a kid, so that's influenced my taste in games for years to come. It was quite worrying how Lorne was almost like "hey there'll still be puzzles and stuff". This shift in focus was unexpected, to say the least.

Granted we haven't seen ANY gameplay so I refuse to be that guy that starts bashing it already, so I'll hold off full judgement.

To not be a complete negative nancy, the concept art looks BEAUTIFUL. The character details and environments look so professional and the uniqueness of each character is fantastic. Toby is my new favourite dude. Hopefully the game will be as gorgeous throughout.

im sort of angry and confused, what the hell was that ui and inventory all about? im not sure what they are trying to do but i expected a clean straight sidescroller with new mechanics and updated story, the feel of those banners showing the landscape and corresponding gluk feels like it will be a massive rts game... if it is i will give up on oddworld as much as im haing to type that

I couldn't agree more.

I'm curious to see how the gameplay will look like.

I loved how Necrum looked in that banner.

not being funny but the first two hardly had intelligence... they even asked unrelated questions and one tried to pull her bff on screen.... tools

My 2 cents,

Art direction: Fantastic and interested in the new characters, but strange we lost the original gluks, they were good personalities. New muds also look great.

Story line: Getting deeper and richer and it looks amazing.

Game play: I thought this was an adventure game to help slaves who don't know any better escape? I gotta see what the gameplay is like before I jump the gun, but its definitely different.

I'm optimistic because the first thing I think of with the whole crafting thing, is the game Alone In the Dark. Adventuring through the game and finding things to help you get by. That could be neat, like strapping brew to a grenade to make a fire bomb.

The currency system? Probably going to be like strangers wrath with the shops for items for crafting.. I mean Abe is in a complex which houses products, as if there wouldn't be any shops in side. Again, curious but optimistic.

Micromanagement? Ok this part made me tilt my head. Is it going to be like lemmings? or fallout shelter the ipad game? or sim's? Definitely gotta see more on this.

I get Mudokon's cant jump gaps and do the things Abe can do, but thats the point of slaves. They only know work, eat, get beaten, obey. Abe's whole purpose was to have them follow him so he could set them free because he's the hero.

I really want to see how this all works, I'm excited and scared, but in a good way.

@Xavier, is this what they showed you behind closed doors? or did you see something else?

The artwork that they've shown does look beautiful, and if the teaser is any indication the game is gonna sound great too.

Another thing I'm not a fan of though is bringing back elements from Munch. Arming mudokons, and health systems and the like. Remember how no health and no inventories were literally a selling point of Oddysee? I kinda feel like a lot of the difficulty of this game is gonna stem from forcing you to manage shit instead of actually dodging bullets and scrabs.

At least muds can jump now lmao

Hopefully people are open minded for this game.

personal opinion is owi have just dug their grave

Oh definitely. I guess there is just a stigma with some people around seeing the word "Crafting" in games that don't normally have those elements due to many other games doing it a lot now days.

I mean, if done correctly it'd be neat. But really all we can go off is amazing art, and some UI elements that lead to speculation that worry a few folk. All part of the build up. Like when we saw the wrong green.

This is so true. I'm sure they knew what they were doing when they decided to introduce these new concepts.

Although if I am going to be a bit of a nitpick for a second, can't say I'm a huge fan of the way the menu UI looked. I don't think it meshed all that well with what they've shown off of the visuals so far. Obviously it goes without saying it's a still a work in progress blah blah blah, you get the idea.

Got me hopeful though! Can't wait to eventually see gameplay footage.

As a UI design student I can 100% guarantee that HUD was just a placeholder.

Yeah, people are wasting energy if they're worrying about the look of the UI itself. It would be more weird if it didn't change by the time the game hits shelves.

Concern over the fact that kind of mechanic is present in an Oddworld game however is a different story... Time will tell though. I'm staying open minded for now. :)

When I saw the UI I was thinking Soulstorm as a mix of every game they made: Abe's games, Stranger's Wrath and Munch's oddysee. All of them mixed in one. Because it'd be a platform (Abe's) with shooting commands (SW) by controlling other muds and it could also be a 3d open world game again (MO).
Not much is clear, a game like this could turn out in a very good way. I think tho showing the UI was a too soon move. They weren't showing the gameplay, so don't show the UI yet as well in this case OWI. We're all confused now lel.

Anyway anything else I saw was AMAZIIING!!!! , I was going to cry watching all of that. Exoddus was my favorite game and watching it as a new game after almost 20 years is so great. The new models are fantastic (different shapes for every gluck, that's sweet!), the ambiental concept art is awesome too, everything I saw (except the UI which we shouldn't have seen it yet) was beautiful. Also Abe is blue! No more "wrong green" jokes lel :D

I think I'll post a more serious post about all what we saw later, when all the screens they showed are gonna be released on socials at high quality.
Can't wait for Soulstorm. Can't wait to rise and join the storm!

Are you serious? We get beautiful artwork, a placeholder UI, Mudokon... Micromanagement?.. and... currency. Where's my mic? I'm going to go out and find a way to drop it on whoever keeps stalling an actual gameplay reveal.

Woah,

Seems like this time I'm gonna be the positive, optimistic one, as I genuinely liked most of the presentation.

The 2D art is great, the backgrounds are stunning. I don't mind redesigns, they look awesome. The cutscene was cool. The HUD UI looks great!

There was little to nothing in the presentation about the gameplay, I think it's because there's no footage to be shown. I hope they're keeping it from us knowing that it's the most important aspect of the game (more important than all that lore, graphics and movies [which, again, look great]).

Oh, and also:



I hope this is merely a mockup of the crafting UI, because it is really bad-looking, to the point that I wouldn't use it in the presentation.

That looks just like an idea of how to organise it. Like a sketch made in a simple application. We'll see a better view of it in the future for sure, don't worry about that. Also:
And I second this because I'm specializing in this stuff as well.

I could third this, but I'd hate not to point it out in case I was wrong.

Please Varrok, do you really think that after showing glorious concept art and wonderful models they will include an UI with that look in the actual game?
Gameplay is still in great development, so must be the graphic side of it.

as one of the guys working on the UI i'm happy to say that - no - it's not final!

Thank Odd, I say! Thank Odd.

we crafted it.

Whole thing's up on YT now we can meticulously nitpick every minute of it (jk)

I'm glad that I finally get to compare my lousy photoshop of Abe to the real thing:

https://i.imgur.com/RBIgkVa.jpg



I was kinda close? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯