Humor was never really Oddworld's strongest point. They came up with some pretty great shit (exploding farts you can possess? genius.), but overall I feel like a lot of the humor was forced and it took way too much from the games. Also most of it ends up just being toilet humor. I'd like just a tad bit more of the dark atmosphere. Something that'll let you feel the severity of the situations the heroes are in. They can still be light and goofy characters. They can be incredibly optimistic through the entire game. It would be a nice contrast, with such a dark and dangerous for lack of a better word atmosphere the characters still being able to find something to laugh about, or get into ridiculous situations that they might not find so funny but the audience could.
I think one of the main things that gave it that atmosphere in AO and AE though, wasn't the characters or the art. I'm pretty certain it was the sound. The background music mixed with the sounds that were made by whatever happened to be nearby: Sligs walking in the next screen or sleeping, the way the music would change when a slog/scrab/paramite/fleech was nearby, the chord that was played after walking through a door or entering a dangerous screen, the sound the meatgrinders and saws made, etc...
In the games after AO, there was not nearly as much attention to detail regarding the sound. I'm pretty sure that's what took away a lot of the atmosphere, and why AE feels significantly more lighthearted. Then, when MO came around, you lost nearly all of the original atmosphere. The only part that even came close was probably the bad ending, but even then that might have been too dark for Oddworld. It was the whole: "Shit, you're in serious trouble" feeling in the pit of your stomach that I got the first few times I ever played AO.
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