What is that?

[Cullen Heath]

In Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, what is the device that Stranger uses to suck up his enemies, after they have been knocked out or killed so that he can take them to the Bounty Store?

It's not his CrossBow, is it? I've tried looking at it, and it's so hard to see while it's in action.


Any thoughts and ideas would be great.

[Xavier]

it's the "high-pressure vacuum bounty can"...
and we don't have much info about it, sorry

[Matriar]

A very practical thing anyway...

[Dark Elite_H2]

A very practical thing anyway...

Very.
It sucks, bags, and literally cans enemies in to cans.
'member what Stranger said when he captured Lefty, and talked to the townsfolk?
"So who's the good guy now? ...or the Stranger that put him in to a tiny tin can?"

[Wil]

It's a pokéball.

I would have a problem with the plausibility of the Bounty Can, but it's such a cool gameplay issue the reality is suitably suspended.

[Xavier]

true... at first I was sceptic, but when I tried it in the game it was just perfect.

but we still can have theories about how it works

[Wil]

In order to actually suck a bounty up, you would think it's actually to do with air pressure, or similar. Maybe it's applied well technology of a sort.

[Ninjaxe]

This builds up to something rather complicated. A few questions raised:
So the captives shrink in the bag? Does this fit in his belt?

I gave anything to have this piece of technology. If it is some kind can/bag, surely it requires some expandable flexi metal that allows room for the captive. Sucking up elbowz alive or dead. He is such a big outlaw.

But one let down is you dont get to see stranger pass the bag/can to the bounty clerk. Does he pour contents out or blow them out. I going to add, there's must be some sleeping or knock out gas to prevent the outlaws from escaping or does stranger bolamite them before the clerk stick them in the cosy jail.

oh oh oh that reminds me. In the first town there is a jail. In which you can talk to the captured outlaws. Later towns don't have jail houses. So if you captured them alive where do they go? Locked behind the bounty clerk! Surely not, It looks more like a office - I see a series of metal file cabinets.

[Cullen Heath]

The Outlaws are probably shipped somewhere where they can be kept.


My question is, Does Stranger have multiple cans, or do all the Outlaws get sucked into the same one?

[Xavier]

well I have no idea, imagine the number of outlaws you can fit in it... that's pretty awesome


maybe this device only teleports them somewhere

[Slaveless]

Like Max said, it's like a PokeBall. Perhaps the can dissolves the molecules of the Outlaw, to form one compatted molecule. Also, the insides of the can would have some sort of substance, like plasma, to retain the Outlaw's current condition. After the Outlaws are released, their form is reassembled. That's my theory.

[Wil]

I don't think there's any complicated physics involved. This is only Oddworld. I'll bet the Outlaws just get squashed in there real cosy like. Promotional literature suggests the Stranger only has the one.

As for emptying them, I think we just have to use our imagination on that. It wouldn't be fabulously exciting to see them all pouring out at the end of each of 12 missions. Those numbers of characters generated at once would also be quite resource-heavy. Maybe the jails in Buzzarton and New Yolk City just aren't open for public visits.

[Bullet Magnet]

It may be bigger on the inside than on the outside, like the TARDIS.

Like all dimensional physics, this can be best described in terms of a 2D universe (because you can't really imagine three dimensional space curved in a different dimension). Imagine the universe as a sheet. A small hole in the sheet in the bounty can. But under the hole the edges curve downwards into the third dimension, and out into a fish bowl or baloon shape. Remember that in a 2D universe you can only exist on the sheet, so in the space of the small hole is squeezed a much larger area. Now increase the power to a 3D universe (technically 4D- time). The hole is now the bounty can and the area of the fish bowl is now the volume of it. Easy.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that all this is beyond the technical advances on any Oddworld race, even with teleports (wormholes work on a similar way, however). That's why in my fan fic, the bounty hunter employs a Clakker who flies out his Meetle to shift the bounties back to jail (Stunks McCoy's Yolkswagon Meetle)

[Nate]

Somehow I don't think that anything Stranger owns is hi-tech. Everything else is so low-tech and self-sufficient, like the crossbow.

It's probably just something you can buy cheap at a general store.

[Xavier]

I agree, I don't see stanger with some high tech gadgets...
perhaps it's something totally common on Oddworld, who knows

[magic9mushroom]

It's in my opinion likely an artifact of the Muds. They could alter time and space in the way Bullet Magnet suggested it

[Nate]

We've seen no evidence that they could do anything of the sort.

[Bullet Magnet]

Um, hello? Bird Portals? Even if it is magic, they are still making wormholes (Rescue Portal FMV, MO) or transmuting the characters into birds (Good endings, AO and AE, AE bad ending).

And the invisibility powers are either bending light rays or turning the characters transparent. That is also breaking the rules of physics.

[Xavier]

I agree the the high-pressure vacuum bounty can could be a kind of portal to the prison where stranger got his last mission

[magic9mushroom]

Um, hello? Bird Portals? Even if it is magic, they are still making wormholes (Rescue Portal FMV, MO) or transmuting the characters into birds (Good endings, AO and AE, AE bad ending).

And the invisibility powers are either bending light rays or turning the characters transparent. That is also breaking the rules of physics.

Not breaking, just using in ways we don't know about. Curving space will give distortions which can account for invisibility and wormholes are not forbidden by anything

[Slaveless]

That is also breaking the rules of physics.

Sorry dude, but not all things have to apply to the laws of physics. It's against the laws of physics for birds to have the cabability to transform into balls of energy, to form a portal. It's also impossible in the laws of physics for a black hole to exist, so buddy, not everything follows those rules.

In another theory, if Stranger's bounty can had a portal, there would have to be another bounty can. There must be a bounty can that releases the outlaws coming out, sort of like the theory of white holes. So Stranger would have to connect his can to that bounty release can, every time he comes into a new town, with a new jail. Or, the bounty can really makes outlaws become some different kind of matter, that which then finds it's way to find a bounty can that can reassemble the matter into it's orginal form. Yep, OW should really explain this to us.

[magic9mushroom]

Sorry dude, but not all things have to apply to the laws of physics. It's against the laws of physics for birds to have the cabability to transform into balls of energy, to form a portal. It's also impossible in the laws of physics for a black hole to exist, so buddy, not everything follows those rules.

In another theory, if Stranger's bounty can had a portal, there would have to be another bounty can. There must be a bounty can that releases the outlaws coming out, sort of like the theory of white holes. So Stranger would have to connect his can to that bounty release can, every time he comes into a new town, with a new jail. Or, the bounty can really makes outlaws become some different kind of matter, that which then finds it's way to find a bounty can that can reassemble the matter into it's orginal form. Yep, OW should really explain this to us.

A. Matter and energy are interconvertible
B. Black holes are not forbidden by anything and are thought to exist, although the details need working out.
C. The bounty can could just open into a room and also I said WORMHOLE, not black hole, which is two-way.

[Mudoko_Jedi]

lol phisics dont make sence lets get it straight is sucks them into the can and stay in the can until released.

[Wil]

Nothing can break the laws of physics, only our understanding of them. I don't see how it could be any different on Oddworld, but then its physics aren't the important bit. So long as what we see is believable, I don't see why we need to know how everything works.

Which isn't to say we can't have fun speculating. It's just that an official explanation from OWI could easily restrict the stories, which are what's most important.

[Abe 01]

maybe he has his on TARDIS on his belt , small on the outside big on the inside

[Xavier]

what's a TARDIS?

[Software Bug]

I Think stranger uses a very cool native thing,
While sucking the bouty up they kinda get compressed and frozen (like how you can let freeze yourself in hope of 2nd life or something) and at the bountystore the bounty get unfreezed and get his original size back

[Wil]

what's a TARDIS?

The Doctor's time travel machine (from Doctor Who), which is more spacious on the inside than it appears from the outside. In this conversation, it seems to have become a word to describe anything that bears the same characteristic.

p.s. It occurs to me there are three main theories: compression, teleportation and TARDISion. The first one strikes me as being the most likely, because the Stranger talks about (I forget which bounty) being put in a tiny tin can. Assuming he understands how the can works, he implies that the bounties go inside, and that the interior is tiny.

And also, a quick spot of Wikipediaing tells me that “the word “TARDIS” has been used to describe anything that seems bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

[magic9mushroom]

Quantum teleportation actually works by destroying something, then reassembling it. Stranger's bounty can could very well do this in fact-or it could be a wormhole opening into a room

[Bullet Magnet]

Uh oh. I seem to have opened a can of quantum physics jargon.
Worms: everywhere.

TARDIS: Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It currently looks like a 1950s police box because the chameleonic disguise capability has broken.

Anyway, I never said the rules of physics couldn't be broken. They are abstract explanaitions for what we see, and when something comes along that smashes it to bits we have to make new ones that explain everything we know. That is what a scientific theory is, and it has to be falsifiable, meaning that you must be able to imagine something that could disprove it. For example, the spontaneous transformation of a tribal being into a flock of birds