Brave New World

In 1999, Lorne Lanning struck a match to the game industry by announcing that his company Oddworld Inhabitants�� eagerly anticipated leap into the third dimension, Munch��s Oddysee, was to become an Xbox-exclusive title. At the time, it represented a major coup for Microsoft��early screens of the game were as stunning as anything the world had seen, and Oddworld was one of the first major developers to commit to its then-unproven platform. Moreover, Lanning certainly did not mince words when snubbing the PlayStation 2 as inferior technology that was simply not up to the task of hosting his game.

Fate, it seems, is not without a droll sense of irony. Five years later, having watched Microsoft itself abruptly drop his company��s next project from its first-party lineup, Lanning is considerably more coy about the issue. Sitting around a large black conference table at Oddworld Inhabitants�� studio in San Luis Obispo, CA, Lanning furrows his brow when questioned about the deal Microsoft deserted several months prior. ��You should ask Sherry about that,�� he shrugs, directing us to his CEO and partner in crime, Sherry McKenna. This is the one and only time Lanning will bite his tongue over the course of several hours we spend together.

Later, McKenna responds in curt fashion. ��At the time, they just didn��t see the vision of the game.�� Only after a long, patient silence does she continue. ��The way I rationalize it to myself is that I think Microsoft decided that it wanted its target market to move from the mainstream, casual gamer to the hardcore gamer. And so it made sense for them to get out, and it made sense for us to get out as well.�� And that was that.

Whatever the case, Electronic Arts has happily tidied up the mess, securing the rights to publish the next title in one of the most consistently creative American videogame franchises in recent history. But make no mistake about it: This is a very different Oddworld than what you��re used to. ��We wanted a fresh start,�� explains Lanning. ��If we succeed��this should be something people would have never expected from Oddworld, but could only have come from Oddworld.�� Like, say, a combination first-person shooter/third-person melee combat game?

The good, the odd, and the ugly

Oddworld Stranger is an action game, first and foremost, set on a new frontier of the Oddworld universe: the Old West. Story remains a hugely significant part of the experience (��This is a story, and we��re telling it in the context of a videogame,�� declares McKenna), but the puzzle-solving elements of past Oddworld titles have effectively been replaced with lots of running, jumping, and shooting. Why the sudden transformation? While Lanning admits that market pressures certainly played a part in the decision, he also gives a somewhat more practical explanation for the shift in focus: ��Shooting is such a wonderfully scalable mechanic. It gives you a lot more longevity for your code, making it easier to effectively maintain fun. With the puzzlelike games we were doing, it was so much more difficult...every event had to be coded completely differently.��

Players step into the boots of the revealingly named Stranger, a leathery fellow who resembles the theoretical offspring of Sergio Leone��s The Man With No Name and Jim Henson��s Tickle Me Elmo. Stranger is a hired gun, a bounty hunter whose only allegiances are those that the player cares to form. McKenna succinctly illustrates the central protagonist shift: ��In prior games, Abe was always weak [physically] but had a big heart. This time around, Stranger��s as powerful as they come, but his heart��s all f*cked up.�� The main emotional arc of the story is depicted throughout the course of the game in reliably exquisite prerendered Oddworld fashion, while in-game cut-scenes should eloquently fill in the blanks.

Game structure and methodology bear down upon the industry��s current trend toward open-ended environments: Players will travel from town to active town, interacting with locals and gaining insight into future objectives. Of course, this being the Old West, most of these objectives involve rounding up the next outlaw and returning him to the townsfolk for a bounty. While the game does away with Munch��s Oddysee��s ��karma meter,�� players are given greater monetary rewards when these outlaws are returned alive, providing incentive to avoid the prevailing ��anything that moves�� approach to action gameplay.

Aside from the stealth-based Live Ammo types (see page 58), Stranger finds various environmental areas that allow him to hide and/or sneak up on enemies while remaining hidden. ��Some people choose to play more as a hunter, with baiting and stealth,�� Lanning says, ��while others prefer to take combat head-on with direct firepower. Others still prefer combat with third-person melee assaults. The more the gamer starts mixing up these play styles, the more exciting it gets. It was an important design goal��to retain open-ended play options. You might choose to approach the game completely in stealth mode. ��But if you want to run in there and shoot the sh*t out of everything,�� Lanning grins, ��we let you do that, too.��

Of course, unnecessary aggression toward pedestrians will also have its consequences. Lanning warns: ��If you start shooting up the townsfolk, your reputation will precede you; show up at the next town, and people will come out of their windows with shotguns and start saying stuff like, ��We heard about you, stranger.���� In a particularly amusing moment of our playtest, we sadistically tackled a local shopkeeper without cause or concern; the action was greeted with mass hysteria as the townsfolk ran frantically into their homes and locked the doors. Then, several minutes later, one of the locals peeked out of his window and declared: ��OK, we��re coming out ��cause it��s too nice a day out, and you don��t have to be such a punk-ass.�� It��s a line that��s entirely unexpected and, more important, funny��proving once again that the power of good voice acting should not be underappreciated.

Grand Theft Oddo

And yet despite some obvious similarities, it��s not Grand Theft Auto III that Lanning points to as the game��s crucial influence. ��The original Driver, actually. I played that game to death. More than anything, I had such blast crashing into parked cars��I was playing it all the time.�� And then one day, after the release of Munch��s Oddysee, Lanning found himself watching two massive bucks grappling in his backyard, antlers locked as the beasts threw each other to and fro, and realized that he wanted to bring ��that kind of energy transfer�� into his next game. Such ��energy transfer�� requires use of the third-person perspective; hence, the idea to finally bridge the notorious first-person/third-person gap was born.

Lanning continues: ��What it felt like was happening in most shooters that I enjoyed playing was that I��d get into a situation, and I��m either beating it or it beats me, but I don��t really have much retreat-strategy capability. So we wanted to build in inherent advantages to the first- and third-person [perspectives]��but they don��t mix fully. So the advantages of being in third person are that I can retreat, go find higher ground, go find a waiting position, bait guys to another place��and then go into first-person mode and change the dynamics of what I had two minutes ago when I was in the playing field getting overwhelmed. I can run away, basically. And I can run faster than all my enemies.��

And not only can you run away, but you can also fight back using various melee moves and tackles to trounce enemies in your path. It��s a simple concept, really��this constant switching between first- and third-person perspectives��but one that defines Stranger��s gameplay quite singularly, in part because the controls in each perspective are so different. While the first-person setup is essentially Halo in terms of speed and feel, the third-person action recalls equal parts Tomb Raider and��MotoGP? Lanning explains: ��Playing in the third-person perspective, if I start running fast, the controls change to more of a motorcycle mechanic. You��ll notice [Stranger] starts running faster, and his arcs start becoming wider. The longer I run, the faster my character runs. And [here��s the Driver bit] I have the ability to ram things.�� Stranger resembles a gorilla��or a perhaps a Minotaur?��when traveling at top speed, his arched back and exaggerated gallop recalling Ghostbusters�� canine evil incarnate, Zuul. (And that��s not the only intertextual reference to Ivan Reitman��s 1984 classic: Stranger is also equipped with a vacuum-style suck-and-store device, used to secure the enemies he needs to bring back to town for his bounty.)

Being at odds

What makes Stranger so compelling isn��t anything as specific as superior A.I. (��It��s not true A.I.��it��s scripted behaviors that create a nice sense of life,�� lead A.I. programmer Charles Bloom notes), staggeringly original gameplay, or remarkable character control. Ultimately, what makes Stranger special is the immersive world it constructs. Consistently solid design and character development combined with satisfying gameplay mechanics and a narrative arc that provides genuine motivation to reach the next story point give the game its weight. And while it��s true that one can��t judge a game on the quality of its graphics, it��s also foolish to think that graphics don��t possess the ability to affect the player��s experience.

Never the type to disappoint visually, Oddworld has crafted a gorgeous piece of interactive artwork with Stranger. The dry, windswept environments are counterbalanced by a population of natives, scoundrels, and wildlife so detailed and textured that the game would not look out of place projected on to a 50-foot movie screen. It��s a world that��s bursting with life, and, as Bloom points out, one that required the developer to build a proprietary engine to achieve its goals. ��A lot of what we do is massive amounts of content��in terms of animations, bones, voice clips. Many of the characters have 60 bones��so we��re constantly streaming a lot of the stuff in and out because of the low memory constraints [on Xbox]. That��s not something we could have done with an off-the-shelf engine.��

Watching the game in motion, it��s obvious to see what Bloom means; every character movement feels fleshy and deliberate, without a hint of graphical inconsistency in sight. And while it��s unusual to find creature designs as exquisite as those blanketing the walls of Oddworld Inhabitants, it��s perhaps even less common to see concept art translated so thoroughly into living, breathing, three-dimensional characters. ��Our whole idea is to create more saturated characters,�� Lanning says. And this time around, he says with a smirk, ��tormenting them should be fun.��

In odd we trust

McKenna instantly shoots down the suggestion that Stranger could be described as a shooter. ��Nothing upsets me more than people calling it that,�� she snaps. ��It��s so much more. Oddworld Inhabitants will never make a ��shooter,�� because I have no interest in making a ��shooter.���� Likewise, Lanning cites considerably more noble sources of inspiration for his game. ��My first love is fly-fishing, and as a fly fisherman, I��ve been close to observing how the construction of dams often causes turmoil to the communities of people and ecosystems that live downstream,�� he says. ��It was logical that displaced cultures provide a great backdrop in setting the stage for an action game. You have a culture with an ax to grind, and they��re mad at those that have been their oppressors. There��s also something noble about helping the little guy, especially when you can see how these underdogs have been mistreated by a bunch of fortunate ignoramuses...especially when your character is a lone badass. It��s a theme that people can easily relate to these days.�� Oddworld Inhabitants has consistently managed to imbue its titles with meaningful, relevant subtexts, and this one should be no exception.

It will be interesting to see how EA chooses to market Stranger. The game��s Pixar-like good looks and newfound action slant may provide all it needs for Oddworld to finally swim in the mainstream. In many ways, it��s a game for everyone; even with the newfound emphasis on pulling triggers, the game��s quirky sense of humor and idiosyncratic characters remove it from the ��18-to-35-year-old displaced male aggression�� niche. McKenna believes that the game��s strong female following will persist despite the preponderance of first-person shooting, due to the open-ended nature of the gameplay and the sense that this is still, in regard to its visual and thematic sensibilities, very much an Oddworld game. ��The male wants to reap destruction, the female wants to find the most clever approach to a problem. I think that says everything there is to say about the two genders. Fortunately, we let you do both,�� she says.

Time will tell��and perhaps more time than necessary, in fact, because EA has decided that the game will not hit store shelves until spring 2005. Our hunch is that the game is in reality quite far along, but two factors will prevent it from seeing release in 2004: 1) EA��s desire to release the game simultaneously on Xbox and PlayStation 2 (the PS2 port is just now beginning), and 2) The all-dancing, all-singing, all-selling, all-shooting, competition-swallowing winter 2004 release of a little ditty called Halo 2. But with the better part of a year now left to polish and refine Stranger, Oddworld may just be the perfect place to ��take the edge off�� after six straight months spent saving mankind from the Covenant invasion.

Left Coast

Oddworld Inhabitants has New Ageyness coming out of its pores. Resident CEO/crazy vitamin lady Sherry McKenna provides the office with fresh fruit baskets, organic Yerba Mat�� tea, and weekly supplies of vitamins. She also notes that she��s never found anything more healthful than drinking two ounces of wheatgrass every day.

Book It

Later this year, Oddworld will release an art book documenting its first 10 years of existence. It is promised that the book will be very high quality; expect lots of, like, art and stuff.

Oddcraze

Various posters around the office and references by Lanning allude to a beast of near-mythical proportions, which one can assume will be encountered in the game��s final confrontation. Expect to see plenty of obscure glimpses of this beast in the game��s forthcoming promotional material. The mythos starts here, then.

Oddspeak

Previous Oddworld installments have employed some of the most creative implementations of in-game conversation the medium has ever seen. Simple but effective execution was key: Each button controlled a different command (��Stay here,�� ��Follow me,�� etc.), and the dialogue of your character and the consequent reactions from the NPCs to whom you were speaking endowed the games with a feeling of life. To better serve the actioncentric approach of Stranger, however, ��gamespeak�� has been replaced with a more traditional, context-sensitive approach to character interaction. In other words, walk up to any character and press X, and he or she will respond accordingly. Lanning promises that the 5,000-odd context-sensitive voice clips in the game will provide ample variety for these rejoinders.

Oddboss

Lanning told Gamespot.com: ��I suspect that the lessons learned from the Xbox launch come down to trusting or not trusting focus testing. You��ve got to be extremely careful with how you use this data and how much of it you can trust. On Munch, we were too trusting of the focus-testing data and not trusting enough of our own critical analysis. Making sure you meet launch as a first priority is not always the best thing for the box or the game.��

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Xbox Nation.