Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Released: December 12, 1997
Game Length: 14 Hours
Grade: B-
Oddworld Inhabitants
Series: Lorne Lanning pitched the idea of establishing a video game series with Sherry McKenna a long, long time ago in 1992. The company itself would take another two years of being established when Sherry finally agreed to put Lorne's world to the test. Their first game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, tells the story of Abe - one of 100 mudokon creatures working for the industrial glukkon creatures in a meat-processing plant called RuptureFarms and was released on the PC and Playstation in 1997. Lanning then put together a sequel in only nine months called Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in 1998 where Abe is sent to destroy the factories producing "Soulstorm Brew" that was made from the bones of dead mudokon and rescuing 300 of his kind. Their third game goes into another direction with Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee releasing exclusively on the Xbox in 2001 where Abe assists a unique fish by the name of Munch in search of what happened to his kind. They then produced an unusual fourth game by the name of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath that uses first-person perspective and explores a part of the world without Abe from the previous three games.
Off-shoots and Remakes: If you look into the full list of games released from the company, you'll notice a bunch of other games that aren't included in the original four highlighted above. That's because they tried to capitalize the series by stripping it into its bare bones and place it on the Game Boy. Oddworld Adventures & Oddworld Adventures 2 both had to sacrifice certain areas in the original games in order to deal with the limited hardware space. Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee followed suit on the Game Boy Advance. After a five year hiatus and two failed movie projects, Lorne was able to gain the help of Just Add Water and establish a near 1:1 remake of the original game with the name of the product in-game called New 'N' Tasty for several different platforms between 2014 and 2016. Its sequel was re-imagined as SoulStorm on April 6, 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and the Epic Games Store.
Unreleased Projects: Although Lorne's original idea was to create a quintology (5 games in a series), he just wasn't able to make more than two core games. But it's clear from the Unreleased Titles that they had many other ideas on the back burner. Things like a real-time strategy game called Oddworld: Hand of Odd, the third game of the series called Oddworld: Squeek's Oddysee, and the canned multiplayer game Stranger Arena. With the success of recreating the original two games for the modern crowd, there is still yet hope to see his full story come to tuition.
Theme: Despite the games being repackaged in different forms over the years, the overall themes have remained consistent. Things like slavery, substance abuse, animal testing, spirituality, and corporate cartels destroying the world around them for profit are all dark elements that the original designer was not afraid to touch on. The setting of the world was shown both in their 10th Anniversary The Art of Oddworld: Inhabitants: The First Ten Years and 20th Anniversary Celebration Post.
Story: The overarching plot of the games is like this - You are a typical worker slaving away for a corporation when you overhear a conversation from the big wigs that you are going to be killed for the way of profit. From that moment on, you begin to learn that you are capable of much more than you think and it is your job to help free everyone else that's trapped. This ironic twist of learning what you can do through the ancient temple trials established outside the factory teaches you skills and abilities you could have used from the beginning of the game. Abe then uses various other tools and spiritual abilities in your arsenal to bypass various enemy types. There are added challenges for those daring to rescue every single mudokon. Surprisingly, the difficulty of the games are much more than your average timed indie puzzles. In fact, how the trial-and-error aspect is handled through each game's save system can determine whether or not you wish to continue playing.
Changes Made After Release: When the creator was attempting to sell the game in Japan, there were a couple of concessions he had to make that can be seen in later games. The image of "Mudokon Pops" was modified to a more cartoonish style since it originally resembled a case where a Japanese middle-school student murdered a peer, severed his head, and hung it on the fence of the school. This change was actually more practical since it matched the more desirable images a consumer would want to see of the other products. The second change was making the mudokons' paw only have three digits instead of four since the setting of the workers in a meat-packing plant having four fingers instead of five was very distasteful for the Japanese culture. Lanning complied but was insulted from their alternative proposal to keep the images in the game for a fee of one million dollars.
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Memory of the First Time: Back when my brother was playing games like Out of This World and Descent, I recall bits and pieces of when Abe's Oddysee came out. I definitely remember segments of the factory, but I did not know much of anything else. The game is actually much longer and contains much more than I anticipated with layer after layer of levels within the temple areas. You temporarily earn several chanting abilities, gain a mount, learn to take control of foes, and rotate back to the factory to rescue the rest of your kind. I remember it being a successful game, but I did not realize it sold 3.5 million units, made $180 million, and won nearly 30 media awards.
Elements: Considering the passion that was poured into the first game, there are a lot of things that were added in that were great in their time. The music was carefully developed to supplement the gameplay in very subtle ways. The manual practically shows off every enemy, every level, and every interactable object you will encounter in the game. They added the Gamespeak system where your character can communicate and solve puzzles from a list of commands. I really liked how they made the mudokons speak and write their speech in rhymes. The game uses a sort of Grid System where the movements of the creatures on the screen "lock" into different segments. Although this might feel rigid for modern players, the concept allowed the user to become familiar with positioning their character in a way that would give them the right outcome without "missing" their target. The game has a limited save system that relied heavily on you passing certain checkpoints. Setting the precedent for the series, the original game was filled with timed jumps, precise aiming, and choosing the right sequence of commands. Although technically there is a form of "two-player" in the game, it basically switches to the other player whenever Abe dies.
Characterization: What might have been considered counter-productive to mainstream is the way the protagonist and antagonist are portrayed. The protagonist isn't strong, doesn't carry a weapon, not intelligent, and shown as a bumbling buffoon trying to survive. Although you do see many of the employees antagonizing the workers in the plant, the bosses themselves are only shown through cutscenes and in the ending moments where it is revealed what the Glukkons really look like underneath their clothes. This was intentional for the goal of the game was for an average person in that kind of situation to stop the corporation, not the people running it.
Endings: If you miss out on collecting at least half of the 100 mudokons, then you will be presented with the bad ending where you aren't rescued from the pit. If you do manage to collect at least the ones that are visible and miss out on all the secret areas, you will be given the good ending where he is teleported out from the death trap. If at any chance you are super determined in saving all 99 (plus yourself), then you will have a brief chance to see a cutscene viewer and an oddly horrifying ad to the game that was never released.
Summary
Review: The original Abe's Oddysee game is very challenging. There is quite a bit of trial-and-error and the long gaps between checkpoints can make any death daunting. Half of the friends you need to rescue will be hidden inside super secret areas behind large graphics that will test your will more than anything else in the game. Despite its challenges and minor annoyances, the game is well-designed in music, sounds, voices, atmosphere, artwork, gameplay, theme, and characters. There is enough content and new discoveries that it would be a delight to play for those wanting to play a hard game. However, I personally chose to stop playing the game after receiving the special power-up simply because there were a lot less checkpoints in the ending segments. The remake just does a better job in giving you the option to save anytime. Love it or hate it, it is still a great game in its own respect.
11-6-2021