The levels at the end of Rupture Farms might have been short in comparison to the Mines or the Brewery in Abe's Exoddus, but remember, this is Abe's Oddysee we're talking about here. In Abe's Oddysee, you spent more time in Rupture Farms, than twice the amount of time you spent in any area. If Rupture Farms would have been any longer, the game wouldn't fit on one disk. It would be nice to have a longer Rupture Farms, but then the other levels in the game would also have to be longer, so there wouldn't be a huge difference between the lengths of time you spend in each environment. It is very nice to watch how the game changes from native to industrial environments, and I wouldn't want some little native environments at the beginning, and the remaining 3/4 of the game to be in a factory. If Abe's Oddysee is ever rereleased on a next-gen console, then maybe there will be a longer Rupture Farms. But cutting the native environments to fit 7 zulags on one disk would completely destroy the game. Now, there could have a way to lengthen Rupture Farms AND the native environments and that would have been to put the game on 2 disks. But one of the good things about the first 2 Oddworld games is that you feel that Abe's Exoddus is a much longer and greater adventure than Abe's Oddysee. If both games would be on 2 disks, well, then they would both be the same length, and the second adventure would not be so much greater than the first. True, Abe destroyed more factories in Abe's Exoddus, but if the size of Abe's Oddysee is doubled, then the factories in Abe's Exoddus would seem like small meep ranches and windmills compared to Rupture Farms. What would be the solution then? Putting Abe's Exoddus on four disks? Releasing the story of Abe's Exoddus in 2 parts, like the Quintology in 5 parts? By that time, Abe's games would become so popular that no one would want a story that focused more on Munch, and Oddworld Inhabitants would be on the risk of losing lots of Abe fans in they created Munch's Oddysee. So no, it would have been a bad idea to lengthen Rupture Farms during the fifth generation of consoles.
On the topic of the transition from zulag 1 to the stockyards: I'm sure that the reason they put the barrel ride there was to make a transition. We don't know how exactly Abe falls when the barrel turns upside down. Has anyone here played the PlayStation demo of Abe's Oddysee. I got it from a friend, and played it. There, there is no barrel ride video there. Of course, they might not have wanted to put too much in a demo, but they might have added the video to make a transition. Then there is the first screen of the stockyards. This screen is a mix of the factory and the stockyard environments. As you progress through the stockyards, you begin to see less and less of the factory until you come to the last screen, where the environment is a mix between the stockyards and the free-fire zone. When you get to the next screen, the factory is nowhere in sight. This, in my opinion, is the perfect transition from the factory to the outdoors.
About the question of the amount of mudokon slaves, I don't think Abe rescued ALL the mudokons in Rupture Farms, and explored every part of the factory. When he shut down Rupture Farms, the remaining mudokons probably found their way out themselves. Of course the mudokon status indicators say that there are 99 employees in Rupture Farms, but they can be referring to the amount of employees in a specific part of the factory. Just like the status indicators in the secret areas of the brewery say there are 14 employees when they are referring to the employees that work in the secret area. And Rupture Farms isn't the wealthiest factory on Oddworld. Molluck is just a regular CEO among many others that run different factories, so he wouldn't have the machines doing all the work in the factory. He would need mudokons.
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