Now that you've read Eibu's long post, you can read my careful disection of Eibu's control's, and my rants on why Eibu is cool and should be hired by some game company (probably OI).
First off Movement. The first two paragraphs are pretty much what is in MO, except that clicking the analog stick makes Abe sneak fast (which I think is just ridiculous). I like having multiple levels of music, so I like you're version much better.
Now for Chanting powers, I'm at a delima (sp). I really hate spooce and the movement thingies, but if it is the closest creature than you might get stuck with someone through a wall, or a wimpy slig when you wanted to go a bit farther and get a Big Bro. I think one way that might work, while looking tacky, is to freeze everything and let the player cycle through all the enemies in range. That's kind of bad looking though, and takes the player out of immersion. But I'll go to the other powers...
Hidden Messages is awesome. 'Nuff Said.
Chant Circles seem interesting. In MO you make your Muds do most of the work, and it'd be cool to actually control weather, maybe through a cloud that goes around and can shock machinery/sligs, and rain on parched areas. But it might be too powerful, it'd take some serious testing.
Regrowing Plantlife, IMHO, should be left to the Treehugger muds, which is a different type of powered up Mud. In the perfect Oddworld game, there would be different kinds of powered up Muds, such as Tomahawkers and Mudarchers (duh), Medics, Treehuggers, some type of Shaman, and Stealth Muds. This would encourage a little more thinking than "Collect Spooce. Upgrade Muds." You'd have to think of what Muds would be best for each level.
Healing could also be used to heal Muds injured in Battle, or your partner(s).
Mmm...3D Shrykull...*drool*
Farts seem a little hard to fly at the moment, but it's kind of hard to visualize.
Gamespeak...what makes and breaks Oddworld games...I'm not sure about emotions again. Too many combinations of buttons are too confusing. I drove many a Mud to suicide in AE by acidently pressing slap instead of sorry. And the emotions were a little shallow, and it seems almost better to give different Muds different voices speech snipets. Sligs need to be able to control Slogs! In MO they don't
. Glukkon Gamespeak needs to be totally redone, so that Glukkons can do more than spit random catch phrases. I was so excited about being able to control entire factories. Paramite and Scarab Gamespeak, in a word, sucked. And Vykker gamespeak didn't have any point either. They should be able to control laboratories and Inters.
NON-LINEAR!!! THAT"S WHAT ME NEEDS!!! But in your game can you return to some areas after you've gone? I know that just combing over factories over and over until you find all the muds is un-fun, but tinkering with factories and tending to the enviornment. The best cure to this is to hide the muds better, so that it's harder to tell the amount of Muds/Fuzzles in each area.
Munch was kind of underdone in MO. He was good only in certain situations, while Abe was more all around good.
So, In conclusion, Eibu's design is very good. I've never given much thought to how the perfect MO controls would look, and an OI should definetly look over this. Bravo!