Odd-Fans: I Need Your Help!

[MrDeflok]

Hi everyone! I myself am quite an Oddworld fan but know not very much about the history and secrets of the franchise. Even so, I've tasked myself with writing an article on the rise and fall of Oddworld in the gaming industry for a video games website I write for.

I have a few questions, which I hope you can answer, to help me better write this article.

1. Did Lorne Lanning ever say he was done with the video game industry? If so, what did he say exactly?

2. After Lorne and OWI quit the video game industry what was the general reception to the news in the media?

3. Why was Stranger's Wrath on PS2 Cancelled?

4. Did Lorne ever say anything 'against' EA's way of doing business?

4. Citizen Siege, is the world it takes place in the same as the one in the games? And is the Oddworld world earth after a apocalyptic war?

5. Is there any news on the game for Citizen Siege?

6. Are there screenshots/videos of Hand of Odd?

7. Is there a good place to go online for high-resolution renders of the characters from the series?

If you have anymore trivia you think I may find useful, I'd be keen on hearing it.

As I go, I may come to ask more questions.

Any help provided will be fully credited to this community at the end of the article.

Thanks in advance!

[arkaznor]

MrDeflok I can't answer all of those questions but I can tell you two of them.

4. Citizen Siege does not take place on oddworld, that being said, the oddworld games take place on oddworld. I'm not sure, but I think that Citizen Siege takes place on Earth.

7. http://oddworldlibrary.net/archives/togg/ does have some good pictures of alot of the characters.

[Slaveless]

Hello MeDeflok. I hope these answers are good for you;

(credit gone to the Unofficial Oddworld FAQ)

1.

Oddworld Inhabitants are currently concentrating on showcasing their intellectual property on the big screen, and are not known to be working on any videogame project. They have not abandoned the game medium, but it is likely (though not certain) any games they work on in the future will be financed by publishers looking to release tie-in games to feature films.

2. I guess us Oddworld fans were not very pleased and actually very disappionted. Some members just left Oddworld Forums.

3.

When development of Stranger’s Wrath began, Oddworld Inhabitants were still obligated under contract to produce the next three Oddworld titles exclusively to the Microsoft Xbox. However, at this time Ed Fries left Microsoft Games and the company adopted a policy which involved abandoning all games that showed any signs of innovation, including Psychonauts and Stranger.
OWI found a publisher in EA Games, who were eager for the game to also be released on the PlayStation 2, but they miscalculated how long it would take an external developer to port the game to PS2. Either the releases would have to be staggered, or the completed Stranger’s Wrath would have to remain unreleased until the PS2 port was completed. EA wasn’t willing to do either of these, so the PlayStation port was simply dropped.

4. I do not remember Lorne ever being unhappy with EA in specifically; however he did not agree with how the gaming publishing system ran.

4. (part 2) Huh? CS will take place on a fictional form of Earth's near-future. And Oddworld is a completely different planet than Earth.

5. There are two games in the make for CS. One is Wage Wars and the other is something else.

6. Yes, I do believe so. But they aren't actual scenes from the game.

7. TOGG is always helpful.

[Wil]

1. Lorne closed Oddworld Inhabitants and got rid of all the game designers, animators, programmers, etc, so he’s stopped internal game development. But Lorne still has faith in video games as a medium to tell great stories, and will be outsourcing all future game development.

4. Lorne criticized EA for virtually abandoning advertising Stranger’s Wrath when they decided to give up on the PS2 port. He understood their reasoning.

4. The Citizen Siege universe is Earth in the near future. Lorne has looked at current political trends of fear mongering to scare people into basically giving away their civil liberties in return for protection from some fictitious threat (e.g. WMDs). Democracy has been replaced by global corporatism (U.S. states can become privatized) and martial law.

5. Wage Wars is an online game to be released before Citizen Siege the film to support a synergy between the two stories that’s yet to be revealed. Lorne was waiting to find a distributor for the film before seeking a publisher for the game to avoid having to relinquish creative control of the film to the game publisher. We haven’t been informed that he’s found either.

Best of luck with your article—​I look forward to reading it once it’s done. If you want any further info, just ask.

[MrDeflok]

Thanks so much for your help guys! You'd be surprised at how much conflicting information there is out there, thankfully I hadn't been lead too much astray.

Anyway, my draft of the article is done. It's short, but I think does the trick for the general audience (would've loved to write it for Odd fans but it's got to go both ways).

Remember Oddworld? You must. It was a phenomenal success on the PlayStation 1 and even today is highly regarded for its clever design and artistic direction. In fact, if you want a mint-copy of the original game you’d better be prepared to shell out a few pennies.

But how is it that a franchise with three platinum selling titles and a forth which garnered great reviews has fallen into the murky abyss of the forgotten?

We’ll come to that, but I think first and foremost it would be wiser to give a brief run-down on the series so far, and I say so far intentionally as even though there are no more Oddworld games coming soon, there is still a glimmer of hope.

The franchise was actually planned to be a set of five computer generated films from film studio Oddworld Inhabitants. However, during the design process for the first film it was decided that the franchise could be aptly made into a series of five games with numerous spin-offs.

The first of this quintology was Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, released on the PlayStation 1 in 1996, it proved that 2D platformers would never be obsolete in the face of polygons provided they adapted to the times. Odyssey was designed wonderfully. Its art direction was unparalleled and how it evolved the platformer genre is the thing of fond memories.

It told the story of a young Mudoken named Abe who using mind over matter fought his way through a factory run by an evil corporation who was using his race as a fuel source. Ultimately, Abe brought down the factory and freed the captive Mudokens. The game introduced a mechanic where you could possess enemies in order to get them to flick switches or even kill their buddies. Simply, there was nothing out there quite like it.

Then in 1998 the sequel hit titled Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. Though it didn’t add much to the formula of Odysey it quickly became a classic and is the most famous title in the franchise. A feature unique to Exoddus which was the ailing of your fellow Mudoken’s moods. Characters stricken by laughing gas would need to be slapped to bring them to their senses, you could comfort sad characters, or goad them into suicide; even a good old fart would bring a smile and giggle to your friends.

Oddworld then jumped ship from Sony to Microsoft with Munch’s Oddysee which was vastly different to its predecessors being a fully 3D game with breathtaking visuals (for the time). The switch in platforms caused quite a bit of controversy, and many fans forsook Oddworld in light of it. Regardless, it became one of the Xbox’s first “Classic” titles alongside Halo and Dead or Alive 3.

The franchise also entertained some rather uninspired ports on the GameBoy Advance system which were dramatically different and not regarded as part of the central quintology.

The last title released in the planned quintology, actually, in the franchise, was Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath in 2005 for the Xbox. It was originally planned to release simultaneously on the PlayStation 2 as well, however, technical issues prevented the title to be ported in a timely fashion which resulted in EA having it cancelled. After this, EA, the games publisher, decided a title releasing on only one platform wasn’t worth promoting. So instead of the title hitting the Xbox with a bang it hit it with a very T S Eliot whisper. The game was served with mostly positive reviews but many marked it down for not being as inventive as previous Oddworld titles in spite of its critter-based weapon system and fantastic art design.

Unfortunately, it sold poorly and was considered a critical flop.

Lorne Lanning threw in his hat, turning his back on the gaming industry and disbanded the game development side of Oddworld Inhabitants. He decided then, that he would go back to the drawing board Oddworld came from and that Oddworld Inhabitants would create a film like they had originally planned. In light of the new direction the studio took, work on another Oddworld title, Hand of Odd, was cancelled. Hand was going to be a real-time-strategy with online multiplayer set in the Oddworld universe.

Here marks where the game franchise died.

Obviously, many fans were furious, and with good reason; it’s a sad day when a high-quality franchise kicks the bucket. Ultimately, Oddworld died because of the game the industry works, the politics of it all, the separation between developer – the artists, and the publishers – the businessmen. However…

Here marks where the film franchise began (again).

Citizen Siege was born. Currently in production, it tells the story of Earth in the near future after an apocalyptic war with a very strong political and theological angle. Lanning has described Siege as 1984 for the modern-age, a big call. Further details haven’t been released but the fact that the film has no current announced distributor makes that easily justified.

One must wonder why this film isn’t common knowledge amongst the games fans and this is because many publications and websites decided to shun him just when he turned his back on the industry, some even going so far as to ridicule him. It has been said several times that an Oddworld film starring Abe may surface to finish of the quintology but with Citizen Siege being in production it's guaranteed that such a film won't see the light of day for a good while yet.

Despite Oddworld Inhabitants not having any in-house games developers the concept for Citizen Siege was conceived to be both a film and a game with unique storylines which supplement the other. Again, details regarding the game are next to none and many believe that it remains to be seen whether or not a game will ever eventuate. Lanning has stated, however, that he hasn’t sought a publisher for the title to get around the evil necessity of relinquishing creative control on the project. Artist vs Businessman.

And finally, here marks where Oddworld was forgotten.

Though it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see a Mudoken grace the cover of game any time soon there’s still the Citizen Siege film and game to look forward to as they will likely represent ideas fans of the franchise will be familiar with and echo the unique Lanning vision. And, of course, let's not forget the distant possibility of an Oddworld feature film.

If this glimmer of hope isn’t enough to lift your Oddworld loving spirits, then perhaps a well timed fart from a friend will.

Again, you guys will be mentioned at the end of the article, I'll let you know when that happens!

[mudling]

The questions I know have been awnsered, so instead I will say goodluck with the article!
I'm actually looking forward to the end results!

[Wil]

Great job, Mr Deflok, your article makes for an enjoyable read. Like you say, it’s well sculpted for a general audience. There are just a couple of things that get me as a fan niggling, though nothing at all serious. Abe’s Oddysee was released in 1997 on the PS and PC, and the Mudokons were going to be used for food, not fuel. There are a couple of instances where you’ve used the ‘Odyssey’ spelling, I don’t whether intentionally, or whether your spell checker got the better of you. I haven’t heard anything about an apocalyptic war in Citizen Siege. I think the idea of it is that their universe is what our world becomes if it’s business as usual rather than anything catastrophic.

Stranger’s Wrath was never part of the planned Quintology; only the first and second parts of the five‐part Quintology were released (AE and SW were bonus games created as Lorne saw various market needs and opportunities). Squeek’s Oddysee was set to be the third story.

The Hand of Odd was shelved while Munch’s Oddysee was still in development. It was The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot that OWI was working on when the company closed down. Fangus wasn’t set on Oddworld either, but it used the Stranger game engine. A big motivator for Lorne stopping development on that was that Microsoft stopped supporting game dev on the original Xbox.

[Crig the Slig]

Fangus wasn't set on Oddworld? I read that it was just on a different continent (I can't remember the name, but it sounded a bit like Kazakhstan).
But with you being the Zulag One Super Moderator, I won't argue too much.

[Wil]

Lorne told Xav and I directly that Fangus’s story isn’t set on Oddworld, then added ‘or possibly a different continent of Oddworld,’ but we were showing great enthusiasm for the not‐Oddworld idea. Fangus just doesn’t look like Oddworld, which I don’t want to be populated by so many essentially human characters. The story, on the other hand, suits Oddworld just fine, if it is a little darker than what we’re used to.

[Bullet Magnet]

Someone relayed that there were two dominant species in Fangustan: those descended from felines and those of canine descent.

[Wil]

Those of feline descent are the invaders. Those descended from canines are the native people.

[Bullet Magnet]

And the caprines get caught in the middle, as usual.

[MrDeflok]

Abe’s Oddysee was released in 1997 on the PS and PC

Thanks for that (I've been writing a Shadow of the Beast article too... dates got mixed up!)

and the Mudokons were going to be used for food, not fuel.

Too right, I remember the cans and everything, but I had people tell me otherwise on another, less respectable forum.

There are a couple of instances where you’ve used the ‘Odyssey’ spelling, I don’t whether intentionally, or whether your spell checker got the better of you.

My own carelessness, really. Thank you.

I haven’t heard anything about an apocalyptic war in Citizen Siege. I think the idea of it is that their universe is what our world becomes if it’s business as usual rather than anything catastrophic.

Hmm, I heard that this the case after the catastrophe?

Stranger’s Wrath was never part of the planned Quintology; only the first and second parts of the five‐part Quintology were released (AE and SW were bonus games created as Lorne saw various market needs and opportunities). Squeek’s Oddysee was set to be the third story.

Will get that fixed!

The Hand of Odd was shelved while Munch’s Oddysee was still in development. It was The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot that OWI was working on when the company closed down. Fangus wasn’t set on Oddworld either, but it used the Stranger game engine. A big motivator for Lorne stopping development on that was that Microsoft stopped supporting game dev on the original Xbox.

According to Wikipedia Hand of Odd was canned due to the studio's new direction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworl...Hand_of_Odd.22

See what I mean about conflicting information :P

Thanks heaps for your help!

[Wil]

Normally I consider Wikipedia to be a relatively reliable source of information, so long as you check citations and the article histories, but its Oddworld articles have always been dire, I’m afraid to say. Hand of Odd was definitely put on hold while OWI rushed to finish Munch’s Oddysee in time for the Xbox’s launch.

I also have this slight thing against Oddworld articles on Wikipedia because some unscrupulous individuals have been stealing articles from TOE.

[Xavier]

Good to see someone who cares about if what he reads is true or not...

and good to finally see some that some good informed article is going to be published
carry on.

[MrDeflok]

And the article is up! CLICK!

Thanks once again to everyone who helped!

[Wil]

Top stuff, man! Your article is being reported on OddBlog.

Might want to change your thanks from linking to oddworldforums.com (which doesn’t exist) to linking to oddworldforums.net, though.

[alf's brother's mate]

Cool, nice work mate. i dont normally sit and read many articles, but when they are of such interest to me (oddworld) i'm all to happy. This is really good.

[MrDeflok]

Top stuff, man! Your article is being reported on OddBlog.

Oh! Which one?