The Oddness of Stranger's Wrath

[Many Arms of Odd]

Only some time recently have I been able to truly appreciate the Oddworld series. I've bought all the Oddworld games on GOG.com, and I made sure to play Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey first. Despite it's difficulty, I managed to get through much until I was stuck on one Paramite level (you know, the one with the three spike rocks, the two poison bats, the bomb, the lever and the slog?). Abe's Exoddus is easier to play, though extremely. Still, what I love about the first two Oddworld games is the art style, atmosphere, gameplay, and sprite animations.

When I saw what Stranger's Wrath was like, I thought it didn't seem quite Oddworldian. Maybe it was because I missed the art style of the first two games. However, when I looked at the gameplay of Munch's Odyssey (GOG doesn't hold it) I saw that both MO and SW looked almost similar, so it was keeping with the tradition of Oddworld. I started imagine what Stranger's Wrath might have looked like if it had been a pre-rendered 2D game, and I can actually see all of SW's characters functioning in the graphics of Oddworld 1.

It is interesting, before I played it, I originally thought that Stranger could be a more morally ambiguous character. Yes, in game, he thinks about getting a bounty on one of his own kind (even though it seems like he's the only one), but if he had been living in Abe's part of Oddworld? Could you imagine Stranger pursuing runaway Mudokons like Abe or Munch because he needs the money? How more complicated would the game be, would you think, if Stranger's targets varied between unsympathetic and sympathetic?

All in all, it is more gratifying to have Stranger go after targets who aren't sympathetic, and are incredibly nasty as well. It's shows off OI's skill in conveying their themes of an oppressed people showing off their skills against the arrogant and self-satisfied monsters of the world. The boss fights with all the thugs are certainly very inspired. It makes me want to be a Steef-styled bounty hunter... if I lived in Oddworld, anyway.

Still, what would Stranger's Wrath had been like if it had the atmosphere of Abe's Odyssey. Could you imagine the Sekto Springs Dam as having the architecture and mood of Rupture Farms or SoulStorm Brewery? Or for Stranger to be able to fight the Slig security? Well, it's more likely that I imagining a sequel where Stranger fights against the Glukkons on their own turf.

Before I actually played the SW, while I was playing Abe's Odyssey, I thought Stranger might be some kind of half-Scrab rather than a centaur (I knew that Stranger had four legs before I played the game because a friend told me, but I didn't know that they were horse's legs). I worked on some fan art postulating what Stranger would look like he were half-Scrab, and how he would hide his back legs. One drawing I'm working on has him holding Sekto's Spring Water bottle, with the game's title on it.

But what did other Oddworld player's thinks of the game before and after it came out?

[Job McYossie]

After the horror I felt MO was, I really didn't know what to expect. I mean, MO had an awesome storyline, but the in-game atmosphere was terrible, and the gameplay itself was just plain bad. This is about SW though. SW had brought much of the atmosphere back, though it felt different. It wasn't the same atmosphere as AO/AE, but it was still good. I felt like most of SW felt just a little too different from the other games. It would have been nice to maybe see some mud tribe, or have a chase with a scrab. Now, I know that Oddworld is huge, like, HUGE, but SW is supposed to take place in Mudos, which isn't really that far away from the other games. I dunno, SW just didn't feel as connect to the rest of the world, but it was still great.

[MeechMunchie]

Oh, this thing again.

Basically, the reason why everyone thinks Stranger's Wrath is less "Odd" is 1) It lacks the iconic characters that most people associate with the franchise, 2) It uses modern(ish) Wild West tropes as opposed to ancient mythological ones and 3) The Western frontier aesthetics are closer to home for most players than the Eurasian mish-mash of the first three games.

The important thing is that the game was good and it was different. Whether it met our former expectations isn't particularly relevant... threads like this notwithstanding.

[Manco]

Basically, the reason why everyone thinks Stranger's Wrath is less "Odd" is 1) It lacks the iconic characters that most people associate with the franchise, 2) It uses modern(ish) Wild West tropes as opposed to ancient mythological ones and 3) The Western frontier aesthetics are closer to home for most players than the Eurasian mish-mash of the first three games.

No, I don’t think that’s it. It has more to do with the aesthetics of the environment, specifically the scale and detail of it.

Consider how in both Oddysee and Exoddus, Abe explores spaces that are implied to be absolutely massive and intricate. While each locale’s aesthetic is informed by the themes and tropes you touch on above, it’s the depth, scale, detail and texture in the matte painting backgrounds (combined with the ambient sound) that bring the world to life.

Now consider how both Munch and Stranger fail to live up to this with their real-time 3D environments. For one thing, the amount of developer work that would have gone into designing and building 3D environments on the same scale as those matte paintings would be a Herculean task that probably would exceed the budget of both games – consider the amount of planning for player paths and interactions, object and character placement, texturing, etc. And even if they had the money and development time to create those environments, they could never have rendered such vast and intricate spaces on consoles without either having a constantly unplayable framerate or having completely unacceptable draw distance and pop-in.

Look at how simple the environments are, even in Stranger: mostly linear paths with simple blocky geometry for building models and other props. Compare this to some of the concept art produced for the game.

I think the biggest reason Stranger looks less “odd” than the older games is because of the limitations of environmental design for 3D games combined with the technical, budget and time limitations of the time.

It may also have something to do with the differing perspective – the old games were a side-on view that gave you a generous view of the background and its depth, whereas Munch and Stranger have a camera constantly following the player character much more closely, which I think forces you to see the world around you differently. You can see a lot of the concept art focuses on a large environment dwarfing some character, and it immediately feels more Oddworld-ish.

[Bullet Magnet]

Actually, when I started finding native rock art in the game I realised how odd it really was.

And certainly the Doc brings it all crashing home. I wish the Wolvarks used Slogs as originally planned, though.

[Job McYossie]

Actually, when I started finding native rock art in the game I realised how odd it really was.

And certainly the Doc brings it all crashing home. I wish the Wolvarks used Slogs as originally planned, though.

I definitely think SW felt like it was in Oddworld, but it felt like it was more than just a continent away.

[Nate]

I definitely think SW felt like it was in Oddworld, but it felt like it was more than just a continent away.

I suggest you visit Arizona and then Maine and see how similar they feel...

[Job McYossie]

I suggest you visit Arizona and then Maine and see how similar they feel...

Oh you're going there. Well let me tell you what I think of that! That is a perfectly valid point. I'm going to stop complaining about that now.

[Slog Bait]

Hell, just go directly north for a bit and see how similar it feels.

[Job McYossie]

Hell, just go directly north for a bit and see how similar it feels.

If you're referring to where I live, then I definitely think Washington state is almost identical to north Oregon state. Up into Canada, things do start changing a lot though.

[Nepsotic]

You could even say the same about the first two games. Yes, they're all in the same style, but look how different every environment is to the next one.

[STM]

If SW had had the funds Skyrim or GTAV had, to produce a massive, evolving world that stayed true to the original art direction then maybe it would have looked a bit more as Manco explained. I'm salivating over the mere prospect.

[Xavier]

Actually, when I started finding native rock art in the game I realised how odd it really was.

And certainly the Doc brings it all crashing home. I wish the Wolvarks used Slogs as originally planned, though.

What he said. Also the abandoned building vehicles that had quite an "odd" vibe to them.

[Manco]

If SW had had the funds Skyrim or GTAV had, to produce a massive, evolving world that stayed true to the original art direction then maybe it would have looked a bit more as Manco explained. I'm salivating over the mere prospect.

I would love to see a Stranger’s Wrath-esque game based around an open world. Red Dead Redemption and Just Cause 2 both do a great job of building a really cool, varied environment to explore, and seeing an open world on that scale with the kind of architecture and terrain seen in AO/AE would be brilliant. Probably not something within JAW’s budget or timescale though.

[Phylum]

This is the fundamental problem with Oddworld games, and the reason that I doubt we'll ever see anything like what MO was originally planned as. Even with a good team behind MO/SW they had to cut so much back.

Even if NnT is a huge success, they're such ambitious projects that noone would want to pick up the pitch.

[Manco]

I think their work on NnT shows that they can build detailed 3D environments that they weren’t able to before. Perhaps they’ll never build a fully-interactive open world on the same scale as Just Cause 2, but I can see them taking their work on NnT and applying it to larger projects.

I think with a decently-sized team and timescale get they could pull off a modern Oddworld game on a large scale. Gaming platforms are getting more powerful (game development tools are as well), and they aren’t beholden to publishers any more.

[Slog Bait]

If you're referring to where I live, then I definitely think Washington state is almost identical to north Oregon state. Up into Canada, things do start changing a lot though.

Actually I was continuing from Nate's post, but I was hilariously tired and out of it at the time I posted that so you can ignore it altogether because I posted it about 50 minutes after intended.

[Phylum]

and they aren’t beholden to publishers any more.

Yes but, excluding Kickstarter games, almost all big-budget games are.

[Manco]

Yes but, excluding Kickstarter games, almost all big-budget games are.

Right, but that’s partly because the industry has always been structured that way. We know that one of the goals Lorne has for Oddworld right now is to become completely self-funded and slowly accumulate the cash for bigger and bigger projects, and thus be able to build exactly what they want.

I’m not saying that’s going to be an overnight thing, or even that it’s a guaranteed success, but if it works then the logical outcome would be the ability to make AAA-scale games without publishers.

[Job McYossie]

I think their work on NnT shows that they can build detailed 3D environments that they weren’t able to before. Perhaps they’ll never build a fully-interactive open world on the same scale as Just Cause 2, but I can see them taking their work on NnT and applying it to larger projects.

Just Cause 2: Steef Edition

But really though, I think OWI/JAW could do something big like this. One of the forums users seems to be making a 2-D platformer that would appear to be a large open world type of game.

[Jordan]

Hopefully in the future JAW will become capable of building huge, beautiful worlds that retain the Oddworld atmosphere. Who knows, maybe they're capable now. Gotta get NnT out of the way first though.

[STM]

I'm thinking it would take years of savings to be able to pull a AAA game off. You're looking at a budget in the millions or tens of millions of quid are you not, after all. If they follow the structure of the Quintology, doing the bonus games we've seen and maybe smaller, estranged spin-offs (Sligstorm and Fangus), then that should give them more than enough practice to refine the process, making it as financially tight and sound as possible, whilst putting money in the coffers to make something big.

[Phylum]

Actually, wasn't AO largely funded by Lorne and Sherry?

[Nate]

Perhaps the original demo. I believe that they used that to pitch to publishers to get the money to make the rest of the game. The game as a whole was funded by GT Interactive.

[OANST]

MO had an awesome storyline,

The story in MO was almost non-existent. That game was poorly made all around.

[Job McYossie]

The story in MO was almost non-existent. That game was poorly made all around.

The story is what kept me going through the game. The story was good enough, that I was able to make it through the fog of unatmospherical levels and poor level design.

[Auriel]

In all honesty, I fail to see the problem some fans of the first two games seem to have with Stranger's Wrath. It is very much different from the gritty, survival-based two dimensional sidescroller, yes, and it does have its fair share of tropes associated with other media (give me an example of any work that doesn't, and don't say Abe's Oddysee/Exoddus because that's beyond ignorant). All that in mind, it integrates beautifully into the universe OWI gave us a glimpse of back in the first two games, chiefly because said games were just that; a glimpse. They followed a unique formula and that formula worked to bring us two amazing experiences, but I feel like people are forgetting that Oddworld is meant to be a colossal fictional universe, and confining it to the formula used by the Abe games would defeat the purpose of what made them unique in the first place.
That being said, there is plenty more in common between Abe and SW. The atmospheric quality is of course subjective and your opinion may differ, but playing Stranger gives me a feeling of a greater world out there beyond the confines of the television screen that equates that given off by Abe's Oddysee. Even the earlier parts of the game which were far more rooted in, as another poster put it above, Western tropes, felt like they have a unique place in Oddworld and it is ultimately the unique factor that makes Oddworld what it is.
Now Munch's Oddysee is an entirely different half-botched animal altogether and imho is by no means comparable to SW, however I'm hoping we're all aware why it turned out the way it did and not turn this topic into another MO-bashing thread.