With the arrival of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S generation, gaming is taking its next evolutionary step thanks to the newest advances in technology over the past decade. While this is ultimately set to give players more unique gameplay experiences, especially with innovations such as both consoles' solid-state drives reducing loading speeds and the PlayStation 5's DualSense controller changing how players engage with games, it also opens many new opportunities for game developers to broaden their ambition.
One franchise that has always been at the forefront of new technology despite its indie roots is Oddworld. Beginning on the PlayStation back in 1997, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is one of the foundations for the cinematic storytelling fans take for granted in many games today. It wowed audiences with its gorgeous FMV cutscenes and beautiful art direction that still gives the game and its sequel, Abe's Exoddus, a distinct look to this very day.
When discussing the series' technical ambitions with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning and Oddworld: Soulstorm executive producer Bennie Terry III, they revealed to Game Rant that the decision to release Soulstorm on the PlayStation 5 wasn't one entirely bred from ambition, but more so an attempt to compete in the increasingly competitive video game market. Lanning claimed,
"We basically put all our money into the production because we're not a big publisher, so what we rely on is that we have to make games show off hardware. So when it comes to PS5, we were thinking that a lot of attention is going to be on PS5, so how do we be part of that attention? As independent developers, we have to think about these things, how your game is going to be noticed in this constantly cluttered landscape."
Lanning and Terry revealed that Oddworld: Soulstorm started development long before Sony approached the team with any PlayStation 5 development material, so the team began work on the game using PC hardware that it assumed would match the planned specifications for the console. However, when Sony approached the team, the plans for the system actually far exceeded their expectations. The game was originally planned as a PlayStation 5 title, but the team decided to work back from there to create the PlayStation 4 version of the game. As Terry said,
"It was like, let's see how far we can go on the PS5, so we picked up some PCs that we thought were full spec even though we didn't have the specs. [We] focused on that as a common thread from a rendering and graphics standpoint on the entire game, and then to our surprise, the PS5 exceeded a lot of those expectations. Then, we had the Herculean task of getting that to look good all the way back to the PS4, which was definitely a difficult task, but we did it."
One thing that was very important for Oddworld: Soulstorm's development was the team's commitment to telling more with less, especially with regards to the game's story. Lanning claimed that he wanted to convey more emotion in the game's cutscenes through simple animations than previous games allowed for. This allowed the team to strip back the game's writing to its bare essence and really focus on the core of Oddworld's story: Abe's hero's journey from slave to leader.
The game's camera system is also something Oddworld Inhabitants has been working on for years, according to Lanning and Terry. The game uses a camera system called "Oddcine," which the team created to preserve the series' distinct visual style while allowing the developer to flesh out the sense of scale and create levels that wrap around each other in a realistic way. As Lanning stated,
"What we wanted is for the game to look more like [a] movie. We wanted it where that scale relationship is always changing so we can make them feel small when we want them to see the world but you’re still in control, and everything that you do in gameplay holds up even when you’re close or if you’re far. But it gives us narrative control over the narrative-game experience."
The "spectator's view" was also a major element that influenced the game's unique 2.5D camera system, with the idea that if a spectator can quickly grasp the situation taking place on screen, the game can appeal to the widest audience possible. Lanning used the example of children who grew up in the late '90s watching their parents play Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus, who would later go on to become fans of the series. "Part of that reason was that we always cared and paid attention to the spectator’s view as well, so that if more people were in the room as well, they’d get involved."
Despite all of this, Oddworld Inhabitants also revealed that much of the game's development was made incredibly difficult due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the team to work remotely on unfamiliar hardware for the last year of development. The team claimed that it was the hardest experience of their professional careers, and Lanning even claimed that if he had known the last year of development would have been so troubling, the team may not have even gone ahead with the project.
Oddworld: Soulstorm is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The game is planned for release on other platforms.