A change of direction was needed at that point. It wasn’t necessary, but it was needed. For one thing, Munch’s Oddysee broke Lorne’s heart, and he wanted to distance himself from that disappointment for a while. At the same time he was recognizing the abundance and popularity of FPS titles at the time, and decided he could do something that would suit this very proven market while also making it very Oddworld and special. Thirdly, half of the reason for MO’s truncated story and gameplay was technical limitations, so Lorne decided to wait until the next generation of game consoles to continue with the Quintology.
Ironically, it was the next generation of consoles that finished of OWI as an independent, internal game developer. Microsoft outright stopped supporting game development on the original Xbox, leaving The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot to flounder without technical support, and the Xbox 360 had an architcture that was radically different to its predecessor instead of having evolutionary improvements. Fangus couldn’t survive this, and Lorne’s optimism for the video game medium was set back rather. But this is not what you asked.
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