Caracal and Max both bring up good points. I hadn't really thought of it before but most of the live ammo (And of course the Clakkerz) are Earth creatures that have been oddified. Not "native" to oddworld in the design sense. Perhaps this is simply because Farzad left, though it seems unlikely that this alone could cause such a disjunct. This leads me to my next point.
I believe that Stranger was created game-dynamic first, and story second. Meaning that I think OI wanted to make a different type of Oddworld game (which is cool) and simply put the game-play first. Since it isn't a quintology game, they got a chance to create a story to fit the dynamic that was already in place. I'm by no means implying that the story won't be good or interesting; its Oddworld after all, and they won't likely leave character development behind. Hopefully that part of who they are is unshakable.
Even so, all this I say primarily to draw attention to the fact that the design seems less authentic. And I feel OI might justify this by saying that they created the system first and the means with which to fit it second.
So to sum it up: gameplay first; story second; lesser character design third (or last). We've seen that the emphasis is put on the expansive environments, is it so hard to believe that OI might skimp on the investment of truly Odd-designs? Eh.
And to Khanz's implication that this thread is intended to malign OI, (And I could be imagining it) as Max makes thoroughly clear, and as intend to do so, I think OI is possibly the best game development company currently around. The first couple of games showed a truly revolutionary bent, and my current concern is just that they might drop some of their ambitions because MO fell short of them. In-game menus is just one symptom of that.
And a last note: I think Stranger will be really fun to play. I think it will have a good storyline, and I'm positive it will critisice the money over ethics mindset. I'm excited about the opportunity to play in the Oddworld Universe from a different gameplay perspective. I'm just concerned about the steps they're taking to grab a little more mainstream audience (that's the earth silly-creature design aspect, not the EA publishing thing. That's cool.)
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