[Havoc]

Even though Im not completely trough the game yet, already I can say this is one of the better one's. My current list goes AO, AE, Stranger and then MO. With MO being a total outcast.

I think its kind of hard to compare AO and AE to Stranger, cuz their two completely diffrent games in so many diffrent ways, the perspective being the greatest of all. We all agree that Oddworlds roots lie in the 2D games, but lets face the fact that Oddworld would go bankrubt the second they make another 2D game. And the whole FPS shooter thing, thats one of the reasons they made Stranger apart from the quintoligy in the first place, they wanted to try something new without interferring with the true story. And they did a great job. Even though the game has a health bar, a 'gun' and a hero which will barely die, Oddworld IMO still did a great job giving it that Oddworld feel. Live was everywhere and you could interact with everyone and everything. Hunting for ammo was also a real nice touch.

I think we can blame EA for the lack of CG movie's, as well as for a whole bunch of other stuff that went wrong in the game.
EA is all about money, time and money are two things EA does not have. I wanna bet that Lorne and co would have put a CG movie after every bounty if it were completely up to them, and I would also want to bet that they would have taken the time to fix those engine glitches (even though they did a great job in the engine). And, Im pretty sure Lorne and co had great and better designs planned for the random machinery like cranes and vehichles, but that EA just simply didn't give them the time. A company like EA games can not respect a great gameing company like Oddworld Inhabitants.

Most of the games which are made by company's mainly funded by EA are 'good' as to the opossite great games they could have been. Cut backs, cut outs and time restrains are part of EA's daily bussiness. And thats not an opinion, thats a fact.

None the less, I think OWI did a great job making Stranger one of the best games they did so far both engine and story wise even with the presures from EA.