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I'm not a big reader of science fiction—I dabble in the genre, but it's more of a guilty pleasure than anything else—so I've yet to encounter a book that included a purely alien cast. There's been alien creatures, such as in Saga of the Seven Suns, and in Asher's Polity novels, but I don't ever recall a core alien character, at least from my library. Humans are usually the focus, and rightly so, but I have every faith that it could be done. If Dante could take us to hell, heaven and what comes between, and if Tolkien could whisk us away to the world on the other side of ours, there's nothing stopping a talented author from taking us to an odd world far away.
The lack of a visual element is hardly detrimental anyway. Authors are authors because they can express a vision via language, a fair portion of them anyway. A good author can describe the indescribable, and the reader's imagination fills in the blanks. Regardless, as I've already said, including auxiliary drawings of Oddworld's people, places and things—such as Brandon Sanderson included within The Stormlight Archive—would solve any issues of perceptibility.
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The key point is that Dante had a human protagonist exploring Hell, and Tolkien had a variety of characters and cultures in his stories they were all very comparable to humans and human cultures. The least comparable creatures are always the antagonist, and aren’t explored thoroughly because their difference is what makes them effective antagonists.
If your story hinges on understanding an alien culture it makes more sense revealing that to your audience in ways that they find easier to process and understand. A short video clip of a living creature in motion conveys information about it far more effectively than a text summary.
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EDIT: I'd just like to emphasise that if you prefer a visual story to a literary one, that's fine, I'm not trying to attack anyone's preferences, merely trying to stress that a novel could definitely work with the right author and artist combination.
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I’d honestly prefer a visual story and I think that’s what Oddworld is best-suited to. The vast majority of the creatures and environments in any Oddworld story would be much better conveyed in visual form than in text. I’m not saying a novel
couldn’t work, but it’s not the best way to convey those stories.
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Ok Nate, I didn't know. But the Abe you described is totally different from the games, so what about the canon ?
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Who says there needs to be one canon?