Hi-res Oddysee Renders

[FrustratedAssassin]

So you know how if you click on the Steam trading cards you get a 1920x1080 image you can use as a wallpaper? And how OWI added trading cards a while ago for Oddysee?

Well I got all 3 card drops and bought the other three with actual money just so I could have actual hi-res renders of Abe's Oddysee cutscenes.

Here's an imgur album with all five renders, plus the concept art you get as a Steam background when you craft a badge: http://imgur.com/a/PJgxN

Edit: I kinda fucked up and forgot to log in on imgur and I can't add these to the album but here are the other background images:

http://i.imgur.com/mwQ7j7C.png
http://i.imgur.com/SuyOBPF.png

And yes, that is the original Rupture Farms matte painting. In full HD. Super dark, but it's historical.

[Varrok]

Good to know.

Look much better than limited-poly Unity crap renders, especially Molluck and slig scene

[Xavier]

Thank you for sharing FrustratedAssassin

I uploaded them on TOGG some time ago, got them from the steamtradingcards.wikia.com.

[Alf Shall Rise]

Pretty neat! It's still pretty crazy seeing how good the cutscenes were for AO (and AE, by extension).

[FrustratedAssassin]

Oh yeah, I can't wait for the trading cards they'll inevitably add to Exoddus after TzF. Exoddus had way better pre-rendered assets so those will be amazing.

[Fischkopf]

The amount of detail was unheard of for 1997 video game CGI and these high resolution renders only make that even more evident. The Oddworld CGI was near Toy Story 1 quality. Not even Blizzard in 1998 could match this with StarCraft 1.

[Connell]

I'm so confused. Are these actual renders from the original game, or have they been remade / upscaled?

I've never seen the game look this good. How come the full FMV sequences haven't been released in 1920x1080 if it's possible to get these stills? I thought it was a known fact that the game was limited to it's original, on-disk render size, aside from those pre-production shots from Exoddus we see floating about from time to time.

[Holy Sock]

I think they've got an archive of hi-res cutscenes. Like the HD Guardian Angel cutscene they released a while back (with slightly different voice over)

[Fischkopf]

I'm so confused. Are these actual renders from the original game, or have they been remade / upscaled?

I've never seen the game look this good. How come the full FMV sequences haven't been released in 1920x1080 if it's possible to get these stills? I thought it was a known fact that the game was limited to it's original, on-disk render size, aside from those pre-production shots from Exoddus we see floating about from time to time.

My guess is these high-res stills were rendered back in the day when they were still working on the game.

[Varrok]

They have the original NURBS, so they can render it in any resolution they want. It doesn't really matter when they did it.

[Manco]

That’s if they have compatible software.

[FrustratedAssassin]

I think they've got an archive of hi-res cutscenes. Like the HD Guardian Angel cutscene they released a while back (with slightly different voice over)

Wait, they re-released that? Where can I find it?

Edit: Found it!

[STM]

I'm still interested as to what 'unflesh you' means.

[Alf Shall Rise]

I'm still interested as to what 'unflesh you' means.

I think it's saying 'it's time to confess', but it's pretty hard to tell. Though it doesn't really sound like 'unflesh you'.

[FrustratedAssassin]

I heard it as "it's time to unflesh" too but that doesn't really make any sense. Unless it's like an alternate timeline where Abe gets caught and tortured and they literally cut him into pieces or something.

[Paul]

Wow the NURBS stuff looks awesome even today, and for once you can actually see a few polys in the non-NURBS objects like the pipes

[Fischkopf]

They have the original NURBS, so they can render it in any resolution they want. It doesn't really matter when they did it.

Why didn't they simply re-render all the cutscenes for NNT then?

[Varrok]

Because it would've worked out better.

[Paul]

Because it would've worked out better.

Because these where created with antique software that ran on 100k SGI machines. And even in less than HD resolution you can see some textures are low res and polys appearing, so would need some fixes. Maybe as-is is still better than N&T FMV's though, haven't watched them enough to compare.

[Varrok]

The NnT were rendered via Unity, which, while still many years newer, is much less poly than those antique Nurbs. And it's not like they can't just render them since they did make those HD wallpapers, cards and stuff

And making fixes is definitely easier than making all from scratch.

The only reason it's like it is is because they were meant to be rendered in real time, which they fucked up to the point that they decided "Hey, let's just render them to bink and pretend it was supposed to be like this".

[FrustratedAssassin]

Yeah, they were supposed to be real-time but they scrapped that idea when they realized they couldn't do stuff like transitions to the exterior of Rupture Farms without super long loading screens.

I wanted to say that hopefully they learned from their mistakes for TzF, but then I remembered that they broke up with JAW.

[Fischkopf]

Yeah, they were supposed to be real-time but they scrapped that idea when they realized they couldn't do stuff like transitions to the exterior of Rupture Farms without super long loading screens.

Are you sure that's the reason though? I think the exterior of Rupture Farms in the original game was just a high resolution painting, with some simple geometry and smoke effects added.

[Varrok]

Like it wasn't the case in NnT

[MA]

Wait, they re-released that? Where can I find it?

Edit: Found it!

I'm still interested as to what 'unflesh you' means.

I think it's saying 'it's time to confess', but it's pretty hard to tell. Though it doesn't really sound like 'unflesh you'.

does anyone know for sure what's being said in that Guardian Angel video? is it 'time to confess' or 'time to unflesh'? the more i listen to it the more it sounds like confess.

cool find by the way, the guardian angel robot thing fascinated me as a kid. i think they have a name but i've forgotten it.

[FrustratedAssassin]

i think they have a name but i've forgotten it.

It's called The Shrink. I also just realized that the cutscene takes place in the same room as the grinder scene from the final game. Maybe Abe was kept in there and tortured before being tied above the pit after he was captured?

[MA]

yeah that's it. i think i read somewhere those Shrinks were supposed to help fight depression in the workforce or something. does anyone know if that's true?

also, if that's the case, why would it be torturing Abe? then again they might do torture as a secondary activity to psychiatry, if what i've said is correct.

I DON'T KNOW

[FrustratedAssassin]

The Shrinks were supposed to keep Sam company. In the original version of MO's story Sam got depressed in captivity and because of her depression she started laying fewer eggs. To fix that, the Vykkers designed the Shrinks.

[Alf Shall Rise]

EDIT: ^ I actually remember reading that too, though I completely forget from where at this point.

yeah that's it. i think i read somewhere those Shrinks were supposed to help fight depression in the workforce or something. does anyone know if that's true?

also, if that's the case, why would it be torturing Abe? then again they might do torture as a secondary activity to psychiatry, if what i've said is correct.

I DON'T KNOW

I'm looking at the art book right now and it states that the Shrink was designed by Vykkers to 'keep high-value captives productive'. So I guess in a way, they do deal with with workers who are depressed or are dealing with some sort of issue that prevents them from working. But I think it's safe to say that its methods of doing so are questionable.

[Manco]

It’s definitely ‘confess’, by the way. There’s a hard ‘c’ and an ‘s’.

[FrustratedAssassin]

Yup, listening to it again, it's definitely "confess".