A Storm Is Brewing - Abe's Exoddus Remake Planned

[VanQ]

So Oddworld Inhabitants have made it official. A remake of Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus is on the way. Oddworld Inhabitants had hinted towards this being a possibility if New'N'Tasty sold well enough and it was made official today during an interview with Lorne Lanning on a Twitch stream and later through their website and social media.

Lorne also shares his opinions on several topics including the state of the games industry and art during the stream.

http://www.oddworld.com/2015/04/a-storm-is-brewing-abes-exoddus-remake-planned/

The New'N'Tasty remake of Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey was a major success, received positively by both fans and critics. You can read The Escapist's review here. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/11955-Oddworld-New-n-Tasty-Review-Sweet-Meat]

Are you looking forward to an Abe's Exoddus remake? I personally can not wait, New'N'Tasty is very likely going to be my PC game of the year. It's going to be a hard act to follow, here's hoping Just Add Water and Oddworld Inhabitants can keep the pace they're going at and we might finally get to see one of the several vaporware titles [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworld#Unreleased_titles] in the Oddworld Series.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Considering the rather crummy job they did with New 'n Tasty, I'm not looking forward to this one bit. Unless they've been able to learn from their mistakes, which is doubtful.

Then agian, I'm not the biggest fan of Exoddus in general. For as much as I love Oddworld that franchise has only had one really good game.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I must admit im not sure why they are bothering with remakes the original are still as good as they always were and havent aged badly at all but I guess a new one does get it back in the public conciousness.

I wont be buying Exodus tho it was not one I enjoyed much Strangers Wrath is the only one I liked enough to finish (love that game).

 

[Mutant1988]

From what I've seen, they basically butchered the original game with New'N'Tasty.

Lots and lots of art gone, mechanics simplified (Laser gates specifically), controls made imprecise, excessive light and particle effects.

 

[Nazulu]

New N Tasty is an eye sore. They couldn't match the mechanics of the original, they removed lots of concepts that added to the scenes, all while brightening the living fuck out of it with neon lights bleeding out every orifice.

These developers completely missed the point in it's entirety, but that's what almost every bloody remake does these days. I haven't seen them all, but I bet it's all of them.

 

[Brain Tumor]

Considering the rather crummy job they did with New 'n Tasty, I'm not looking forward to this one bit. Unless they've been able to learn from their mistakes, which is doubtful.

Then agian, I'm not the biggest fan of Exoddus in general. For as much as I love Oddworld that franchise has only had one really good game.

I seriously want you to elaborate. I LOVE the Oddworld series, but I have not played New & Tasty yet. I just want to know what was so crummy about it. I am also going to assume that the "one really good game" was either Exoddus or Stranger...

 

[Casual Shinji]

Considering the rather crummy job they did with New 'n Tasty, I'm not looking forward to this one bit. Unless they've been able to learn from their mistakes, which is doubtful.

Then agian, I'm not the biggest fan of Exoddus in general. For as much as I love Oddworld that franchise has only had one really good game.

I seriously want you to elaborate. I LOVE the Oddworld series, but I have not played New & Tasty yet. I just want to know what was so crummy about it.

First of all, the change from screen transitions to screen scrolling screws up a lot of the puzzles, and makes enemy awareness really iffy.

The controls are wonkier since you no longer control Abe with the D-pad. They did eventually patch in a control option so that triangle functions as a forward hop like in the original instead of having to move the analog stick AND press triangle, which was pain in the neck and caused a lot of unfair deaths. They also made it so that running can be mapped to a dedicated button instead of having both walking and running mapped to the analog.

The real problem with the controls is that Abe no longer moves across a grid like in the original; One step forward moved Abe over one tile, a hop moved him over three tiles, and a running jump covered four tiles. And if you came across a four tile wide gap you knew you could do a running jump and make it with a ledge grab. Most of the game's obstacles were designed with this grid-based move set in mind. In New 'n Tasty these obstacles are still present, but because the grid-based controls are gone it makes for a lot of frustrating deaths. A good example is the final run to the Board Room where you have to traverse meat grinders and mines. In Oddysee this is a solid challenge, in New 'n Tasty it's a fucking mess.

The other problem is the visuals. While certainly more advanced and of a higher resolution, it destroys the atmosphere of the game with an over abundance of lighting, bloom, and artifacting. Rupture Farms no longer looks like a grimey slaughter house, but like some futuristic lab or something. The Stockyard Escape has also been ruined by this. There's flashing lights everywhere and it completely kills the mood.

The new animations make Abe and the other characters look way too cartoony. Abe's heavy swagger from the original is gone. There's no gravity to these characters anymore.

The environments have a lot less detail put into them since they're real-time. The benefit of pre rendered backgrounds is that you can paint in as many little details as you want. In New 'n Tasty the environments look a lot more flat and uninteresting, despite everything being rendered in 3D. Or maybe because if it.

The soundmix is utter garbage, with character voices being barely audible amidst the music. This wouldn't be as bad if the music didn't suck, which it does.

And as a final insult they choose this song to play over the end credits.


Yes, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee has this track running over the end credits.

Watch the MatthewMatosis review on youtube if you want a more indepth view as to why New 'n Tasty sucks.

I am also going to assume that the "one really good game" was either Exoddus or Stranger...

Nope, Oddysee all the way. Exoddus got a bit too cute with itself, and I never played Stranger's Wrath, because after Munch I was fucking done with this series.

 

[Brain Tumor]

Lots of words.

Well damn, thanks for the heads up. Ill probably pick this up when its very cheap then.

 

[Mutant1988]

Nope, Oddysee all the way. Exoddus got a bit too cute with itself, and I never played Stranger's Wrath, because after Munch I was fucking done with this series.

You should give it a try, because it's a really good game. It's completely separate from the classic Oddworld setting and cast, but it does definitely feel and look like a Oddworld game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Lots of words.

Well damn, thanks for the heads up. Ill probably pick this up when its very cheap then.

Well, you can check out some gameplay videos and if the quality of the visuals doesn't bother you at all the bulk of the issues I mentioned likely won't have any effect on you.

Nope, Oddysee all the way. Exoddus got a bit too cute with itself, and I never played Stranger's Wrath, because after Munch I was fucking done with this series.

You should give it a try, because it's a really good game. It's completely separate from the classic Oddworld setting and cast, but it does definitely feel and look like a Oddworld game.

I have heard positive things about it, and that it's atleast one of the better Oddworld games since Exoddus. But then, I also heard Just Add Water didn't do the best job with that HD remake either.

 

[Xerosch]

Nope, Oddysee all the way. Exoddus got a bit too cute with itself, and I never played Stranger's Wrath, because after Munch I was fucking done with this series.

For me, Stranger's Wrath is the best of the Oddworld games. It plays like a Jump & Run FPS with a nice story.

But that's not saying much. When 'Odyssey' came out in '97, I had the worst vomiting sickness of my life so far. It somehow conditioned me to get nauseous every time I see Abe. It still works, I bought the remake and can't play it for more than 3 minutes.