Fans of the Oddworld series will know that the franchise has always kept its presentation and atmosphere as its main priorities. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a groundbreaking cinematic platformer, building off the success of titles like Another World and Flashback to create a violent and oppressive atmosphere that put players right in the shoes of its protagonist, Abe, a slave working at the meat processing factory Rupture Farms.
Abe's quest sees him attempting to escape the factory while freeing as many of his race, the Mudokens, as possible. The game has gone down in history as an excellent blend of gameplay and narrative, with Abe's kindhearted and empathetic nature shining through through the game's central mechanics of freeing the Mudokens and conversing through the game's GameSpeak mechanic.
To discuss the approach to storytelling in its newest title, Oddworld: Soulstorm, a re-imagining of Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Game Rant caught up with series creator Lorne Lanning and executive producer Bennie Terry III to discuss the team's unique approach to cinematic storytelling in gaming that still feels fresh to this day.
While the game is a functional re-imagining of Abe's Exoddus, Soulstorm is also officially the second title in the 'Oddworld Quintology,' the original outline of five entries that Lorne Lanning envisioned before developing Abe's Oddysee. This comes as a compromise for fans requesting developer Oddworld Inhabitants to follow up Abe's Oddysee's 2014 remake 'New n' Tasty' with a remake of its sequel, and Lanning's own personal ambition to create what he views as "the real story." According to Lanning, titles such as Abe's Exoddus and Munch's Oddysee took the team off-track from his original outline for Abe's story, eventually culminating in Stranger's Wrath, a story which separated from the unlikely hero altogether. In Lanning own's words,
So we asked the audience what we should do next and they responded "Do the same thing to Abe's Exoddus!" And Abe's Exoddus is... I know a lot of people liked it but it got us kind of off track from the Oddworld Quintology story, which is the one we wanted to tell. So we thought, well, they want us to revisit that second part and if we're going to revisit it, shouldn't we tell the real story?
Another of the earliest ideas that the team decided on was that it wanted the game to release on the PlayStation 5, which it decided on before Sony had even approached it with the possibility of developing for the platform. While this decision was intended to give the game a larger reach and help it stand out among its competition, it also allowed the team to be more ambitious with its approach to design.
Executive producer Bennie Tyler III revealed that one of the biggest challenges for Soulstorm was leveraging the technology at the developer's disposal to convey more subtlety in the game's storytelling. Right from Soulstorm's opening cutscene, it's clear to see that the game is a huge visual leap over 2014's New n' Tasty, despite both games using the same engine. One of the biggest challenges was the smooth transition between cutscene and gameplay, and adding the sense of scale that is unprecedented in other Oddworld games.
Lanning revealed that the team is well aware that the stories it tells are niche and not approved by marketing departments. The director has struggled since the series' inception to keep its mature integrity in tact while leveraging interesting gameplay mechanics, but that he believes...
"the journey that Abe’s going through is kind of a journey for us all in a way, and I think the questions he’s asking himself are ones that we all maybe don’t even realize we should be asking ourselves right now."
Oddworld: Soulstorm carries the series' legacy of mature storytelling and dark themes juxtaposed with self-aware humor, while also managing to continue the original story that Lanning set out to tell at the series' inception. It's refreshing to see that even as an independent developer, Oddworld Inhabitants is still keen to raise the bar for video game storytelling and keep the cinematic platformer genre alive. It will be exciting to see what moves the team makes next after finally giving the original quintology its intended second part.
Oddworld: Soulstorm is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The game is planned to come to other platforms in the future.