About the Western theme, I don't think there's anything wrong with drawing off of that kind of material. After all, almost all of the second half of Abe's Exoddus had a very strong 19th Century look to it, not only in environment and character design, but the whole MOM News and other stuff I'd probably missed. A lot of the promotional material for Munch's Oddysee had that 1950s American feel to it, in particular the 'Passport to Oddworld'. So giving Oddworld 4 a Western quality I don't see as a problem, but I see exactly where you're coming from.
As for character design, I completely agree with you - although I think plenty of what I've seen is good, none of it has the same Oddworld quality as most of what was included in the other games. After all, even the ring pulls in Abe's Oddysee were distinctly designed, but now a lot of the characters have practically no originality at all, most noticeably the salamanders and the blob creature. Personally, I'm willing to live with it for OW4, since the best production designers have actually left OWI.
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