Retronauts - 512: Oddworld, Part 1

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

It's impossible to talk about Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and its bigger, bulkier sequel Abe's Exoddus without talking about farting. Okay, that's not true, but we do talk about farting in this episode, because we want to, dammit! I, Stuart Gipp, am joined by the prestigious John Linneman of Digital Foundry, and the persuasive RJ Lake of D-Cell Games, in this first discussion of Lorne Lanning's moneyhatted magnum opus, Oddworld! It's too big a subject for just one episode, but here we get into the nitty-gritty of the first two games in the planned quadrilogy, these 2D stealth-action-atmosphere pieces that resonated with almost everybody who played them. Except for the prudes who found the act of passing gas to be either childish or abhorrent. Still! Join us as we try to rescue all the Mudokons from their terrible fate, but end up dropping them down trap doors for a laugh. Hello. Follow me. Straight into those meat saws. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week in Retronauts, I talk myself down from farting into the microphone to make a stupid joke. hosted by me, Stuart Jip, so you know it's going to be a blinder of an episode because here I am. And just to get right into it, I'm going to talk about who I'm joined by on this fine. I was going to say afternoon. I'm not sure what it is where you guys are, but it's the afternoon here, and it's been raining, and it's been awful. So going in alphabetical order, I'm here with John, once again, John Lunderman. Hello, how are you? Hello.

Follow me. Oh, there you go. doing a bit of game speak we're straight in that's a little reference to odwell there for those who aren't quite on the ball and i'm also here with um with first time on retronauts uh j lake is it okay to call you r j lake yeah it's my name hello oh it's your name thank god follow me ha ha ha ha ha i did it again um let's talk about briefly um how you guys are um what you guys do uh just so you know who you are i mean we know who you what John, I believe. You're a digital foundry man.

Yes, that's right. I'm officially known as digital foundry man. I make videos about them technologies in the video games. But I especially love doing retro content. That's what the DF retro series is all about. I got to get me in on that DF retro. And RJ, what can people find you doing? Most of the time I am sedating very late nights working on

and being called Unbeatable. That's one of the co-founders of DeSel games. And occasionally I like do other things. I'd make a lot of music coming for different things. Yeah, you've done the soundtracks for some indie games and such. Is that right? Correct. We actually just released one start of the month, a purgatory to engineer.

That's awesome. I love it. And we know each other from our, giving the toss about Sonic, like, 20 years ago. Rest assured, friends, I was there on Sonic forums being, like, inordinately mad about Sonic for like 10 years. I love it. I walked away, I'll let it go, it's over.

Now I get inaudly mad about Sonic on Twitter with strangers. But speaking of inordinately mad, the subject of today's episode of Rhetronauts, in my opinion, long overdue, is Oddworld. And as you may well know, Oddworld is a big, old, fascinating ball of games industry nonsense that happens to produce some, in my opinion, tremendous video games. Now, I'm not as knowledgeable about how Oddworld sort of got its start and where it began, so I'm going to turn it over to you guys because I assume that you actually are.

That's how I've planned this very well. Incredible. Yeah, like, I mean, where do you even start? with this because i think like lorne landing is uh is a really fascinating guy um he comes out of vfx uh like doing the fx industry stuff with um rhythm and hues which uh is the they're the vfx company that died because uh on lee um made them make changes to the life of pie tiger uh very late in production it's like a whole thing about that recently uh but storiedly and famously

the studio that did the Babe CGI for those two movies and he worked on I believe the first one before leaving to do Odd World that's weird because I would have thought because the second one is so weird and dark it makes me wonder if there was any influence there

but I don't know if you've seen Babe Pig in the City I exaggerate not it is a terrifying film it's wild no yeah that I mean it's George Miller oh really yeah that explains everything I mean, George Miller makes some weird family movies between the other stuff he does.

Like, he did the Happy Feet movies, which... Oh, yeah, I didn't know they were him. Yeah. Weird. And those are bonkers. Yeah, those are like, they turn out to be about, like, aliens or something. Am I wrong? And that one, I haven't seen any of them because they look shite.

They're more interesting than you think. Like little baby penguin dancing to outcasts, don't really care. Like... So they're not, like, about aliens. But what ends up happening? is like there's this whole wild thing. It's like all about conservationism.

It's like genuinely the thing. Anyway, we are talking about happy feet, not odd world. No, it's, this is what the listeners want. This is what they expect. I don't know if you've heard if you've heard one of my episodes before, this always happens and I welcome it. So it's all good. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? Because the whole

history of Odd World is founded off of the back of sort of that early 90s Hollywood. You know? Yeah. Right. So it is obviously you mentioned Lord Lany, but there's also a second person involved, which is Sherry McKenna, but I believe he met at Ritherman Hughes. Yes, yeah. And she was, like, very much the, like, mentor figure for him.

And still, like, a chairman or CEO, I guess, of odd world inhabitants even now. Yeah. All these years later. I think it's wild that they're still a thing. Like, the fact that they've managed to hold out for this long is absolutely wild to me, considering everything that happened. But that's getting well ahead. um so do you know how abes odyssey the first game odd world abes odyssey released in i want to say

1997 yeah yeah yeah yeah 97 now this this is a thing that sort of i'm going to ask sort of broadly how did you guys first encounter this game like what was your experience with this game when it first released uh i well go ahead you can go first all right i go um so i first played it actually not on playstation but the pc conversion uh and the reason the reason I got into it, and I think we'll discuss more of this, is because I was a big fan of games such as flashback in another world, which obviously served as an inspiration for this. I remember just reading like an issue of PC gamer and seeing this game featured in there and being absolutely floored by the visuals. Just the visual design. It was extremely atmospheric and beautiful, even in still shots. It holds up super well. It really, really does. Absolutely. And so I actually picked up the rather large boxed version of the game. And as I would later learn, I think the PC version was actually a port. So it was not the original release. The PlayStation was the lead platform. But that's where I played it. I loved the game and I felt that it absolutely lived up to that style of gameplay that

I expected from it. That and also Eric Shahee's follow up, which was a heart of darkness around similar times, I guess. And so I was happy to see it the flip screen puzzle action game was still alive but uh what about you rj uh so for me uh my history with this game specifically is a lot more recent than that okay um uh the odd world franchise as a whole like i've always been fascinated by as a kid but i was i had a Sega genesis uh growing up i never had a PlayStation like my first console that what had 3d graphic capabilities was a dream cast so like I am in the weird ballpark of, like, I skipped a lot of those things. I want to say that I'm still winning, because I went from a master system to PS2.

I'm still. That's pretty bonkers, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's like a, like, end of 2001 level jump. Yeah, I, so my first experience with the franchise actually playing it was Munch's Odyssey at a friend's house. Oh, boy. And that game is wild As her first introduction to what Odd World is.

I always remember being extremely fascinated by the aesthetic of these things. The advertising of these things, like the Munches Odyssey Box art, which is like a Mountain Dew ad is... Yeah, yeah, with him holding the... Yeah, the canon. Can I chip in on something you said, actually?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. What, that is really interesting. That is really interesting, because to me, And I'm never going to talk about it in hopefully a second episode or something when we get into Munches Odyssey and etc. But the idea that was the first Oddworld game you played is very interesting to me because for me, whenever I play that game, all I can think about is

this is a bad version of what's come before. This is like an ugly, like abortive version of that but in 3D. So to see that first without that sort of not prejudice, but that prior sort of experience, that feels like it would elevate the game quite a lot. I never really considered that it would ever be played as the first game in the series. Yeah, so for me, it's, I think the thing I'd say is, while I don't think Munches Odyssey is very good, like, I went back and I tried playing

it recently in advance of this episode, and I did not, I did not enjoy my time with that, suffice to say, but the, I think the aesthetic, like, all is there, all the stuff that is inside these games that makes them really interesting to think about for me is still in Munches Odyssey pretty much wholeheartedly and like I mean that's why

that's what draw me in with dream me in with that and it's it's definitely a game that regardless of like your feelings on it on how good it is in executing it's like the Sonic Adventure thing it's like this is a game

that it's failing on a lot of fronts to do like to do the things it's trying to accomplish but it's trying a lot of things to begin with and it's trying to translate something that frankly is a pretty much impossible

task to translate into a 3D platformer and it's doing a lot to try to do that so I actually think that's an interesting point because this ties into the origins of the original games because yeah that was their first attempt at doing a 3D game and it was

obviously very difficult for them and I'm sure being a launch title for a new console also added additional pressure right but I think in this case this kind of ties back into those original games because it was a both in terms of a decision made about the game itself and where the industry was at the time so obviously they decided to make the first two PlayStation slash PC games 2D side scrolling well not scrolling but 2D games and part of this is down to the fact that the 3D at the time just was not capable of displaying the sort of intricate visuals that Lauren had imagined

for this world and this coincides with sort of their background as we mentioned they were in the CGI the visual effects industry right working with rhythm and hues and it wasn't just

CG that was big in Hollywood that's where it really started to take off but by the early 90s it was starting to get a take up in the video game industry as well obviously very famously rare and Donkey Kong country made a huge splash with its SGI workstation rendered sprites essentially of Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and all those characters.

And SGI is exactly sort of the foundation of a lot of this stuff. And that's what was used to make Abe's Odyssey, right? So they essentially built off the knowledge that they gained from this 3D industry and tried to leverage that into the world of video games, which is something that I think was actually pretty common back then, you know, like there was all these companies that like, yeah, we're hiring up all this Hollywood talent to help make them games. And that didn't always pay off, I would argue. The first example I remember of that was with Aladdin and as such where they made a big point

of getting the animators in for the movie to do the sprites. Yeah, this crossover with Hollywood, that was such an early 90s, mid-90s thing to do. Yeah, it's on Planet Hollywood-ass games. Big time, big time. Tune struck. Oh, God, yeah. Christopher Lloyd, right? Yeah, that's Christopher Lloyd.

Like, there's a lot of games. a game and Tim Curry in there as well oh man yeah yeah two struck episodes let's make it happen I love that game yeah so I guess my point here is that odd world kind of comes from two places

essentially it comes from the Hollywood industry with the 3D rendering stuff but it also is born out of Lauren's love and appreciation for video games and specifically as I mentioned earlier flashback another world Prince of Persia this is the foundation of what

odd world Abe's Odyssey became. Essentially, it's a game where you move from screen to screen, and they use this screen-by-screen nature in a very cinematic way, right? Every frame of the world is very carefully designed to communicate a specific atmosphere and idea, and, you know, they pulled it off magnificently. I mean, you guys have played these games, right? Oh, hell yeah, to death. Yes, very much. Like, absolutely dripping an atmosphere. I mean, I first, I first came to this game through a friend who had a PlayStation 1 and it sort of, it got me, it got in my head so much that

I still have a closet full of levels that I've drawn in Biro on a piece of paper. Just divided them into screens and being like, right, this is the, this is the slig, like bedroom annex house mansion, this is

Sligland or whatever, and just designed all these awful odd world levels. And I have like 50 sheets of this. One of these days I'm going to post them. on Twitter or something and just ruin my life. But that actually really worked well for this game, I think, and that's, they used

an alias wavefront to design this. And the alias software kind of goes back away. I think it was prior to that, before all the merger stuff, there was like alias power animator, which is what Donkey Kong country was made with. And they didn't necessarily use polygons. They did the

3D shapes using NERBS. Do you guys remember NERB? N-U-R-B-R-B-R-B. Yes. Oh, I thought you meant light. Is this how you get the term, oh, no, it's nerny, it's not nervous. No, no, no. It's basically like you get,

it's for achieving infinite smoothness on curves and rounded edges using like mathematical formulas. And it's often using rendering rather than like triangles, I guess. And they were able to get these super high detailed, high quality sort of characters and environments that they would then pre-render out. And they created every scene and every character this way.

The thing is, is everybody was doing CG work at the time in the games industry. It was super common, but I think Oddworld is one of the few that not only got it especially right, but it's also one of the only ones that actually still holds up. I mean, I remember them winning

awards with the opening cutscene from Exodus. And that was used in the German music video as well, which I wish I could remember the song. They also tried to, they tried to take the Exodus cutscenes and turn it into a short film that they actually submitted to the Oscars with, there's nothing that came of that

but they like cut it together. If you look up on-roll Abe's Exodus the movie. I don't know. Yeah, it's cut together by Lauren Lanning. All right, all right. Tell me though, is it better or worse than Shenmu the movie? Depends on your definition of

better. Well, video game movies have a new standard now, and it's called Sonic the Hedgehog, too, and everything has to be fit to look at its damn boots, okay? It sounds like a joke, but that's actually probably true. I think it's amazing that Abe caught on as well as you did, considering that he's a hideously ugly, withered, disgusting freak with sewed-up lips. So, I have a theory about this, and this ties into the game design itself. I think a lot of the success of Odd World stems from game speak.

which was essentially their communication system that they built into the game. It's so cool. And the idea here is that you control this character, right? You platform, jump, climb, all that stuff that you normally do in a video game, except for in Odd World, you can talk to other characters in the game.

And by using a combination of buttons in the controller, you essentially can communicate. So you can say hello, you can say follow me, you can fart, which I know. They're only the only things that I do. in my life. Yeah, and whistle at people, and then get arrested. But does that seem sort of like feasible to you guys?

Like, there's an appeal, right? This was the era of the Tomogachi, you know, Seaman became popular in TV cast. It still hasn't been imitated by anyone that I can think of. I mean, there's a few like squad commanding games, but that's not really the same thing. No, it's just, it's appealing the idea of communicating with, with computerized, you know, creatures in this weird world.

and I think that just grabbed people's attention. I think, yeah, the fact that it's got this completely unique world as well, and it does look incredible. I mean, this game reviewed well in an era when 2D games were just completely non-grata, like you do not want to be 2D. Like, stuff like Mega Man X4 and it was getting like slammed. It's just this is kiddie garbage from the last generation. We don't want this.

We want 3D. But Abe avoided that by being state of the art, I think, as well. obviously as well as it's a state of the art completely unique like visually outstanding a game laced with humor which appeals obviously

there's a game speak which is there you go that's the cherry on top completely unique communication system you're not going to see that in any other game it's great that plus I think it just it came out at the exact right time like um you know you look at the late 90s

97 PlayStation releases it's like Final Fantasy 7 I think starts that year like that's when the year kind of kicks off with that game and then there's like Crash Bandicoot 2 and Abe's Odyssey is like the end of that year it's like hell yeah what a two for

so like it kind of had a pretty open slate right like as far as like I think it was a pretty big release because it had a lot of money behind it, like, as it needed to to get made. And so they pushed it pretty hard. And I think that just like a combination of all those factors, it's the game speak stuff. It's the fact that the game is pretty difficult, but like in a way that I think,

especially at the time, like there's a lot of work on death animations to make this game kind of fun to die in. And I think that all those things kind of coupled together are making a game very charming. Speaking on the difficulty, if I can chime in with that, I think this game is difficult, as you say, but the checkpoint system, which a lot of people criticize, I think is mostly okay. Like, considering when it came out,

you can save whenever you see the little yellow iPad, you can save that. That's where you're going to come back if you die. The issue is if you want to rescue all the Middokans, if you want to find all the secrets, In the first two levels specifically, that's so difficult to do because you can't get the, what, four, five, six secrets in the first, like, eight screens in that game. You have to do all of them without a save. You can't lose a Mudakun and you can't save because if you do, then you lose all of it.

It's the most ludicrous challenge to do. And that's why it's not what you're supposed to do, really. you're supposed to rescue enough mudduckins you have to rescue all of them if you do you get a nice little message i believe that's about it but whenever i play this game now i really want to save everyone exactly yeah i got to like i got to go down that first pit behind the barrel i've got to rescue those mudduckins and that quite hard that first room that first secret room is impossible it's like it's not i mean it's not literally impossible but it's you go down there and it is there's these uh the giant uh what are you

what do you call it like the saw blade things yeah the meat sore thing just immediately from it's the first thing you see if you do that and it's ridiculous you got it like you got to i mean it's all stuff for when you've beaten the game already that because you need that skill you need skill that you've already learned but you've got to go down there you've got to go down the one and a couple of screens later you've got to go throw grenades from that secret into the mines to get to the final secret in there as well uh which are all nails difficult you've got to know that you can destroy those chant suppressor machines using grenades. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And you've got to do all of this in one run. And my incredibly uninteresting anecdote about this is I found that barrel secret immediately with no prompt because for some reason my brain just went, that's definitely a thing. There's no way there's nothing behind that barrel. I think I have some kind of sixth sense, but only for stupid hidden shit in games.

Because I'm the same in Mario. I'm just like, that's a fake wall. There's an invisible block there. You're like the night in a QA person. Yeah, I'm the worst. we should first step back a little bit here and maybe explain exactly what kind of game this really is. Oh yeah, for sure.

The mechanics are interesting and it's not actually very common these days either, so... It is a lot, like, I would my personal, I'm sorry I'm for interrupting you, John, my personal comparison would be directly Prince of Perjure. That's what this game feels like to me to move around. It's all, you know,

and if you want to say a 3D one, like the original Tomb Raider, it all feels very regimented, like you can walk one square. You can walk one square, you can jump, you can hang. You can never go outside of the specific like grid that's designed for Abe to move around in. I like it. And it's great because it means you can be perfectly precise.

That chip's a platformer. Yeah. Exactly. So it is. It's a grid based 2D platform game. Right? You move from screen to screen. It doesn't scroll. It's flip screen. Which I believe Lauren actually noted they could have done scrolling, but they specifically opted not to. Well, yes, the flip screen is, I love

flick screen because it means you remember every screen. Yeah, exactly. Every screen is a distinctive piece of art. It's not like a tiled background that scrolls. You know what else it reminds me of? The retro-notts bingo card holders, uh, spectrum games. It's like an old

spectrum. Yeah, with this screen by screen, nails hard. You can only move certain regimented ways. That's it. That's a spectrum game. You're not that far off, actually. That's it is kind of like a UK-inspired feeling, or European-inspired. say so.

If I didn't know it was from the US, I would have assumed it was European. Well, I mean, a lot of the game was developed, I think, in the UK. It was definitely, yeah, the, because I don't know inhabitants, so it's all a US-based in terms of like the management, Lauren Lanning, obviously, like his New England. And then like, it's all LA people. But they like, GT Interactive, I think was a UK-based company, a UK-based publisher. And they, like, absorbed a ton of different development talent from around that area. Who, the way that Lauren Lanning tells it in, like, some interviews is basically just, like,

they kind of reluctantly had to work on the game and they didn't want to do it for him. No, I think GT Interactive at the time was not a European company. It was not, okay. It was an American publisher, but they were eventually sort of, picked up by Infogram. Oh, that's what it is. Okay. So I think that was like in the late 90s.

Infogram. I always was saying infograms. Anyway, so we're going. So I think at the time G.T. Interactive was still based in the U.S. Obviously, though, they were publishing a lot of great stuff at the time, I think. But including the retail version of Doom 2. Interestingly enough. But, yeah, so Odd World then.

2D platform game, like I said there screen by screen, but you have the game speak, which is what allows you to communicate with other Moodakins. And the Moodaukins are essentially this strange, I don't know, what would you call them? These creatures that are basically enslaved by this.

They're emaciated human fish, basically. That's how I describe them. They have big fish eyes, but they have I can't think of a tasteful way to describe it. That's great. Emaciated humanoid fish people. Right. It's kind of a vibe I get from them. Yeah, like there's a little bit of like, I mean, they're pulling, they're pulling in some

stereotypes from like some Native American iconography and like African tribes and stuff that there's a lot to be said about all of that, I think. But the, you know, I think that the central tenant of like what their design is is, yeah, it's very fish-like. They have the giant eyes, which I think is where the fish stuff comes from. And then they have, like, they all have this, I don't even know how you describe the skin texture. Like, it's, it's not like a human skin. It's like very, like the underside of a snake is what they look like.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Scaly, like scaly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or more just like describing them as like if normal maps were actually real skin. I mean, I don't know if it's distasteful, and if it is, I genuinely apologize. They're kind of like almost a slave kind of race. I mean, they're kind of born into slavery, kind of. That's the whole point.

That's why the corporation rupture, sorry, John, I don't want to get ahead of you, but the corporation rupture farms essentially exploiting them this whole race, like, not just for their work, but for the resources that they produce, which we'll get to, obviously, later. But it's a very compelling intro. But yeah, sorry, John, go on with you. No, that's exactly right. It all kind of ties together.

So, like I said, 2D platform game, you're rescuing your fellow Mudakins from this industrial meat processing plant where they've been enslaved. And that's pretty much what you're doing. Because it's narrative-driven, you know, you're sort of following the storyline and sort of getting into this sort of mysticism sort of side of things versus, I guess, rampant capitalism. So, you know, obviously you see the real world parallels there, and you can definitely see what Lauren and team

were trying to communicate with the story. They're just doing it with extremely bizarre, unique designs, and I think that's one of the reasons why it works. It's this really good mix of just cool puzzle action platforming mixed with this, like, crazy atmosphere and storytelling. The thing with the game speak is, it can also appeal to if you're a horrible monster you can also be a sadist because there is comedy

you can slapstick murder like on one like the fourth or fifth screen of the game there's a mudoccan cleaning while standing on a trapdoor oh yeah yeah there which is just literally pull me pull the lever pull me pull the lever it's so mean it's yeah if you pull it they'll fall to their death then later you can drop rocks on them you can electrocute you can get them by the slugs which are like these vicious little dog things

or you can just get them shot there's a lot of fun ways to murder but every single every single time you do it though it's like the it's like that has that just that really like you fucked up

and you can use it cue it's like that has to be one of the reasons why it was popular yeah absolutely I agree people love that stuff just experimenting and toying around with these little virtual figures

throwing grenades at them getting them minced all the systems design stuff which that stuff's really interesting and I think part of that is like, it's all escort missions stuff. If you're trying to play it in the right

way, it's all escort missions, but it feels like it's just just frustrating enough. When you get, I'm sorry, and I'm jumping ahead, but in Exodus, something it reminds me of when you get a large group of Midoccon's following you in sync,

I get Lemmings vibes, because you're bringing these people like home. It's almost like a lemmings way, except you're running around doing things. It's very lemmings. Like Sleepwalker on the Amiga a tiny bit, actually, now I think about it. Where you've got these people, they're walking, and you've got to stop them, you've got to protect them, you've got to get them out of Dodge, you know. Right, right.

Yeah, I think we'll get to Exodus, obviously. I think my whole thing with that game is I think it overcomplicates the stuff that I think is really good in Odyssey. Yeah, I got some opinions about Exodus. We'll get to that one. Yeah, I mean, the way that it does work with this, game speakers, you just say hello, the Madoccan will activate, they'll say hello back, you say follow me, they'll say okay, and they will follow you.

You've got to bring them to what's called, I think, bird portals, which is some old mystical modoccan thing that you can then hold the triggers on the L1 and R1 on your PlayStation controller to chant, which causes them to open up, and the Madoccan, if the path is clear, will run and jump into it, and that will be them rescued. There are no meaningful collectibles

in this game except for that. This is not a collecting platform where there are no rings or crystals or anything like that. It's rocks, pieces of meat and grenades that you can get limited numbers of and redocons that you can rescue there are essentially big walking jiggies if you want to call them that. And

what makes the escorting so interesting though is that it also involves dealing with enemies and traps along the way, right? Yes. And that also includes stealth functions. Like you'll go into an area, you'll see an enemy there like a slig sleeping. And there's actually a dedicated button for sneaking.

You hold that down and you, Abe, and all the other Murdochins, then sort of like creep along, complete with the cartoon. God, it's so funny, John. The way that they pose, the stupid floorboard creaking sounds, even though you're not on floorboards, it's perfect. The squeaky knees sound is terrible. I just, it's in every single odd world game, and it is one of the worst sound effects.

I love it. It's so great. You can't put that one back in the bottle, dude They tried to soften it up in Soulstorm Like, there's a little bit of EQ down But it's still great The sound of the sight of a group of Mudakins Sneaking along behind a slig

Who has no idea that there is really funny to me Like, it's just a ceaselessly amusing visual And I love it I love the sneaking I love everything about Abe's moveset In this game Might be worth mentioning He has next to no aggressive

moves. You can't kill enemies except with very, you can trick them, you can throw grenades. You can kill them in the most terrifying way possible. Like, Abe has the ability to psychically dominate any, any, which that is like, this is the main mechanic of the game, arguably. Yeah, but interestingly enough, the game kind of organically teaches you how to do it.

Because on the first level, there are plenty of opportunities to possess sligs, but you don't know that you can do it at that point, necessarily. So you just, get past them naturally. It's a very interesting learning curve, I think. Yeah, that is actually, I almost forgot about that. That is one of the coolest mechanics in the game. By possessing

the enemies, you take full control of them, right? And then you can go, and that kind of ties it just this, there is this sort of like sadistic nature to this game, whether it's arming traps, taking over other sligs, and then attacking what were their friends, and then blowing themselves up, and you're just doing

all this stuff, you're not normally an aggressive character, but he has these abilities to trigger crazy stuff like that to happen. And it's usually very violent. When you possesses a slick, the only way to unpossess them is to explode them.

Exactly. And every time you do it, Abe laughs. So he does. He does a little... Exactly. That's... Oh, man. Yeah, so that's really what it is.

It's just about getting from point A to B to get as many muddakins as you can without getting them killed, even though that's sometimes fun. Yeah, they're not. 99 in total, I believe, in this game. Yeah. And then just dodging enemies in different ways, using the traps,

using stealth, possession. You have all these tools available to you. And that's it. That's how it works. There isn't a huge amount of use of it in this game, but they do have a sort of ecosystem going on in the background. You've got, the areas you go to after Rapture farms, you get through the stockyards where you find some scraps, which are these terrifying,

statue-esque spider-legged. I don't even what to call them. Yeah, scorpion rhino spiders that can run as fast as you, basically. It's the running that get, like they are really terrifying. The first time you see one is in the stockyards and it's completely in silhouette and the music is so perfect

and it's genuinely terrifying. You have to jump into the pit with it to get out and it's one of the scariest parts of the game, even after a million times meeting it. like I still get a little bit edgy when I play that because they're just horrible creatures there actually some of that stuff reminds me a little bit of the introduction

to another world you know where you get very much so shadowy beast oh definitely very inspired at that yeah what is the name of that thing at the start of that whole like an intro puzzle yeah where you like you got a swing on the rope forwards and then

backwards and then do the sprint that I mean like I think Lord Lanning has talked about how another world in specific is like a very big inspiration point I think the one big thing you get from that besides like the multi-screen and all those things in the atmosphere

is the mines which I think show up a lot in the stockyard starting it's like the starting instant death the mines yeah yeah yeah the stockyard is interesting because it has a screen that is in my opinion probably still the hardest screen

the whole game where you have to arm a bomb and then lower a slig into the screen with the bomb to blow up the slick and it's ridiculously luck-based is it is it this the one that's like it's like kind of an open area you i'm trying to remember you you hot there were two there was a screen with two slags there's a raised ledge on the left you need to get to and you can't get there unless there was only one slug on that screen it's brutal it's so difficult you know how i did it, on this play-through, I literally just cheezed it by running up there after multiple tries. Like, you just point up. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah. It's, it's, if you get the timing, like, exactly perfect, you can do it. But it's, uh, yeah, um, it's a brutal set of

screens. And again, if you're going for 100%, the screen that you are on, there is a secret there that leads to a very difficult secret area that you also have to do at the same time. So basically you've got to do this secret and then you've got to suffer this largely luck-based follow-up screen. I would say as much as I love Abe's Odyssey in that respect it isn't perfect yet like it has some bits that are a little bit dodgy I think where they did maybe

they didn't quite maybe they were too good at it you know I don't know because after that the game is quite reasonable I think yeah once you go to Paromania and Scrabania and such the difficulty curve levels out a lot after

the stockyards this is also why I think the best version of this game is the the PlayStation backwards compatible thing that they have on PS4, PS5 now. Oh, really? Because it lets you it lets you like perfectly like

the same as the Nintendo online service thing. Oh, so you can save states and search? Yeah, you can just constantly flip back, which makes Abe's Odyssey a lot better. Oh, I agree. I agree. If you had the quicksafe like you have in

accident, it would be a better game. It's a much better game with that. And it honestly, like, it It's the only thing really missing from Odyssey that X's has. I know it needs Olia. That's very critical. Olia is also, that's the one thing that New and Tasty does. A re-release of, oh yeah, I forgot the, I forgot New and Tasty exist. New and Tasty we also have to cover.

We'll get to New and Tasty. Yeah, we'll get to New and Tasty. In episode three of the Dregs. No, I didn't hate New and Tasty. Actually, I kind of did, but it's mostly because I was too familiar with the first game. I go up and down on, new and tasty. I think that it's an enormously

ugly looking game, I think, compared to how beautiful this one looks, but I think that it's admirable that it tries to do this aesthetic thing of, it looks exactly like the pre-rendered cutscenes of, you know, a late 90s era game with FMV

cutscenes, and it's just making it like look like that in real tournament. I just think that controlling Abe in a 2D game with the analog stick is just weird, and it doesn't, He doesn't move right. He's too quick. Yeah, they recalibrated it a lot.

Yeah. The main thing that I remember from that game, and this is maybe a little bit unfair, and if I'm misremembering it, let me know, because I'm sure, John, that you were aware of this when it happened. There was some talk that they were going to put real ads in the Ropter Farms. They did. LCD display.

They actually did that. They cut them out, at least. I mean, I played it very recently. Yeah. That's not in there. I don't think. That's, because I remember them talking about that and just being like, what are you doing?

Like, how can you miss the point? it's hard. Yeah, it's a pretty, it's a pretty rough. I know that, I know that having an anti-capitalist game made by a major corporation is probably not, you know. I mean, like, it's been, there have been times where you can, like, do that. The movie Josie and the Pussy Cats, I think is the best example of this where there's just, like, a movie. That movie's wild. The rules. It's really good. Side podcast talking about Josie and the Pussy Cats right out. Yeah, someday, someday. Oh my God. McDonald's bathroom

like yeah but other than that I think it's very hard to do that thing of like you're trying to satirize capitalism while just reveling in it and yeah I think I think that that is a that was a mistake

but going back to Abe's Odyssey the original game as you move through that game you're going through this kind of right of passage for Abe in his unusual slightly offensive big face his mentor

the guy with the big mask who's putting these marks on his hand and when he has them both or his poem or something he can become Shrychol which is some kind of weird demon god thing for a matter of seconds when he has a certain power

because it's the only way to progress through the level whose name completely escapes me there's like a hub stage where you go to both paramonia and Scrabania Yeah, yeah, it's the, oh, God, it has, like, a name. It's a name.

Yeah, it begins with an M, and it's completely escaped me. Yeah. I don't know. But I think another thing worth mentioning from Paramonia, and I think also Scrabania, is the game introduces Elam, which is, like, is mount that Abe can ride. Yeah. Little weird, E.T. looking creature. Oh, those things, yeah.

Yeah, and when you get on. it, you can run really fast, jump much further, but then you get puzzles where you have to get the elm to certain areas by guiding it around in the same way that you guide around him and duckin. And I think it really adds to the... I think it's just enormously expands and enhances to puzzle

solving. I think once you've got past that horrible, impossible stockyards level in the beginning, as you said, RJ, I think it was you said it. The difficulty curve does level out and it becomes a much more fair and fun video game. The thing that

at the time I loved is when you go to like the once you beat Paramonia for example you have to then do the Paramanian Temple which is like a almost like a hub of challenge rooms there's like six or seven doors and each one that you go through you complete

you have to find this song and then ring some bells in the same that is the best part of the game like absolutely bar none for me these two challenge like Eric Temples are by far the best section I think they're great fun

and the fact that they both end with chase sequences really well-composed, really well-directed chase sequences. But skipping forward just a moment, I think one of the reasons Exodus went wrong is they went overboard on those rooms. Like almost every level

is just a procession of rooms. It feels very gaming. They're over-complicated too. Yeah. Well, before we get to Exodus, I did want to mention the Japanese release of those games. Abe 99, yeah.

So for both games, so both of these actually did get a release in Japan. Yeah. But there was some interesting changes. First of all, the name, obviously. They renamed the first game from Abe, you know, Odd World Abe's Odyssey to Abe Ago. It's such a great. Which is fantastic. I thought that Odyssey was Abe 99, because that's the one with 99 Reduckins to save, and Agogo was Exeter.

So I got this wrong the whole time. It's the year. It's the year. Oh. It's the year, 1999. So, yeah, the sequel then, Abe Exodus, was called Abe 99, which fantastic, I think. It's just, it's completely bizarre. But the other thing, though, is that they also removed one of the fingers.

Yeah. So if you look, the Yakuza thing, right? Yeah, there was some sort of a negative connotation around the four fingers. Four means death. It's like, I thought it was a Yakuza thing. Like, they cut the pinky off or something. I don't. Something like that.

There was something to it, but they basically had to remove it as a result. And so all the, all the CGI work, all the sprites, everything had to be modified to remove that one finger. So if you compare the versions then, you actually see that they had to go through and do that. And that must have been a ton of work. You re-render every single frame. Yeah, exactly. It's a nightmare, yeah. Yeah, incidentally, what I did relatively recently is you can still buy those versions on a PS3.

if you have a Japanese account on PSN, which I did do, because I wanted to do the differences, and they're only about, I don't know, like $390 yen or something. By the way, if you have a PS3 and you have a Japanese account, for God's sake, buy everything before they take it away from you. Oh, God, you're real. I cannot stress this enough. There are so many absolutely outstanding Japan-only games

that you could buy today for next to nothing, and they're all incredible, and you must do it. Okay? I miss doing a lot of this stuff. I missed out on a lot of the Vita, like the PlayStation mobile stuff. Oh, yeah. There's a few games that I managed to have, but there's like a bunch of stuff that just doesn't exist anymore. I bought a couple of PlayStation mobile games,

and I now can't have them. I can't play them anymore. Their service is just gone. But it doesn't let you re-download the... No, no. Well, I mean, I've hacked my Vita so I can, but no, they're gone. You can't play them anymore.

Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So I couldn't play Super Create Box on my Vita. or it was just gone it's horrible gunhouse gunhouse got its first like big release on uh yeah yeah wow wow

playing abe playing abe's other thing on the veto wasn't great because they had to use the back touch to do game speaks so sometimes he were just jumping and get shot yeah i i think honestly there's one big big massive thing that that i think the uh new and tasty and soul storm do that i just i i miss dearly going back to these

original games The D-pad is Matt to game speak. And that is just a massive improvement. I mean, that's fine, but it does mean I have to control a 2D game with the thumbstick, which I'm not. Yeah, I get what you're saying.

The weird thing, the stupid thing for me is that, because I played these games on PC as well, for me, Gainspeak is like, hello is one, yeah, follow me is two. I remember what was the keypad keys. Like, zero is chunt, like three years away. That makes a lot of sense. That's how I remember it.

When you have me a pad, I'm like, what is it again? What is, L1 and square? It's a little bit arcane, don't you think? Like, L1 and square, L1 and triangle, they're like major things you have to do all the time. I do like, yeah. I like the way that the chanting is the double triggers on the... Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, that feels good. That's a good feel. It's like clasping your hands together to do the... Yeah, it's a nice little effect. I think it's fun when you chant on a room with a suppressor and get zapped and fall out of place. And he does this little petulet like that, like he... It's great.

Another great Abe animation is when you press square when there's nothing there and he shrugs at you. Yeah, I don't know. He's shrugs at you. It's a beautiful, really funny, really good video game, basically. And all those silly voices and stuff, I mean, all the voice stuff is done by Lauren himself. He does all of it, and it is wild. It is. Yeah.

It's a huge part of it. In this game, that's Abe, the sligs and the glacons, right? actually you know sound in general i think is something really important to this game before we get to the next one is like obviously loren's voiceovers for these characters it's super weird and interesting it doesn't sound like any other game out there that's awesome but then they also make excellent use of music and just atmospheric sound in a way to sort of really draw you into the world and i think that is something that's super critical to the overall presentation here beyond the visual

absolutely it just it just it these are static images but somehow it just feels i don't know like almost like you're in another world so it's very much so it's very absorbing that the way that the ecosystem works as well the way that the enemies work the way everything it is the same rules it's very absorbing like when you're approaching a slog and the the music is tense and the slog is standing there barking at you yeah exactly you get too close it suddenly kicks into this actually conclusive, like, music because the music is such an interesting thing in this game

because there's not a lot of it. In fact, you, I mean, you consciously think about odd world music like, in my brain, I'm like, oh, there's no music in on world. It's like the thing I think in my head, which is obviously very much not true. There's a ton

of different cues, and they're very iconic cues if you like, you can like immediately recall, oh yeah, I know what that sounds like. We even just talked about like the the do-da-don when a death happens but they're played very deliberately like there's a lot of silence in this game which is unusual especially at the time

yeah I think that's they really use that to great effect throughout yeah it was a very intentional decision I'm sure yeah absolutely Exodus leans more into having music like tunes in the background because I can now recall the Fico Depot music the Slig Barracks music

it's very much like memorable. It's like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, like that. Yeah. So, so, should we have to be able to be. about Exodus then? I think so. We've said a lot about Odyssey, and we'll probably jump back like happens anyway.

But, yeah, Exodus. I think the first thing to say, actually, is that when they envisioned Oddworld, they kind of had this, like, quintology. The quintology, the odd world. Whatever. How presumptuous? It's like, fuck.

He did it again. Yeah. So they basically wanted to have five games, and each game would be, like, a unique theme. And Munch's Odyssey was actually intended to be the second game for the odd world. old series. I think it was even mentioned in the manual for

Abe's Odyssey. It was like at the end of this is the first game and they told you the next one is Munch. The next one is squeak. You know, it's ridiculous. Squeak's icy. Munch is Exodus. The brutal ballad of fungus clot. Fingisclot. Sligstorm and the hand of odd. How many cancelled odd world games? Oh, there's so much

done. Hand of out is I think the one that actually was the closest to actually existing. I really hope that it, I hope that a beta or alpha drops sometime. I guess leaked or something. So, yeah, that's fascinating. But basically, I think Lauren and team thought the PlayStation was not well suited to making the 3D game they envisioned with Munch.

Yeah. And the publisher GT Interactive was very hot for a sequel. Yeah. And they pretty much commissioned this, I think, which is Odd World Apes Exodus as a bonus game. They were, uh, they were doomed by their own, um, like, reliability in that sense because, uh, here's the thing. games slip all the time and odd world didn't uh they got it got out on like it was just

released on time it had no big schedule problems they just delivered the thing and then because they managed to do that they were the only one that didn't slip on the publisher slate they had to put the sequel out too um which again as you said earlier it took them nine months is in like not delivering any game as a miracle yeah I I can I so we're about to get into this I I don't like Exodus very much

right I don't think I've ever actually finished the game I've seen the ending but I've never actually like managed to get through the whole thing yeah I've got very mixed feelings about this game they tend they basically are in the vein of I do like it but I think it's a huge mistake like they made a lot of errors with this one personally The biggest one is just the hyper complication of GameSpeak. There's way too many, like, weird pangorons to the system. And the addition of emotions to the Madocans amounts to essentially nothing.

It's just you can still get them to follow you, but you've got to individually say, like... You have to slap them now? Yeah, when they're... You slap them when they're not drunk with happiness. Yeah, it's the gas, that's right. All it amounts to is it's not dynamic. All it amounts to is just when you encounter the... this, you have to do this.

So you're walking around a group of nine meduccans individually holding L2 and circle on each one to say, sorry. Yeah, sorry. It's just tedious. It's almost like the game was made in nine months. Exactly. This is why I, while I don't like the game,

it's hard for me to be like, there's the part of me that's like, I can't, I can't fault how this came out. I can't like, it's still an achievement that they managed to put together this much new art, this much new level design I think some of the level design is good

I think there's some stuff that I like in there I like that you can possess the gluckins in Exodus a lot I think that that's a fun well they made it you can possess almost anything

you can possess the scrapes now and the paramedes you can even possess your own fart which is the most absurd brilliant look when I played this game for the first time I was what 11

right possessing your own fart which you then fly around and it makes fart noise as well it flies around and then it explodes with a big fart come on

that's the funniest thing in the world that's yeah that's something the mess up thing is that in Abe Zed and Exodus the fart as stupid as it is

it actually has utility beyond doing the whistling puzzles in the first game which is that if you fart on a duck and they will walk one square away

which sometimes is genuine I did not know this until you said that right now. And that, it's really fascinating. Yeah, you fart them, they're hilarious. It's still funny to me. They go like, woo, like that. And then they walk one score away from you.

And sometimes that's incredibly useful. Yeah, I can imagine so. There's a ton of different places. Can you guys think of any other game in history that has a fart mechanic that actually impact their game design? Oh, yeah, it has to be right. Comic Zone. Oh, Comic Zone has a fart mechanic.

It feels like we need There needs to be a list of these games If you, if you squat Maybe it's more of a joke than a mechanic But if you squat like a ton of times in a row Sketch Sketch just farts Like, rips one right there

Incredible I feel like there has to be another game though Well, Bugoman is too easy, right? Booker Man is too easy Yeah Lost Vikings Two One of the fat one, whose name I forget

Olaf He farts, that's one of his moves. Of course he does. That's what this is now the retro Fart episode. Yeah, probably the Shrek games use Farts as mechanics. Actually, surprisingly enough, because I've played all of the Shrek games,

because I'm a big loser. Those games are good, as far as I remember. Some of them are pretty good, yeah. Yeah, a Shrek episode in the future, folks, is happening. We're getting to it. And they're foundational in 3D graphics. Oh, God, yeah, the first Shrek game on the Xbox is absolutely

out of its mind, but we'll do that someday. We'll do that someday. One of the first games ever using a deferred render. The first game to every use a referred. Yeah, the very first. It's right. But in many other ways that Aebus like Shrek, it is a flawed sequel.

I think I do like the game. My major issue with it is the fact that it sacrifices that feeling of very, you know, the very similitude, the atmosphere that you're in there. It sacrifices that for much more gamey stuff. Like everywhere you go on almost every screen

and every screen it feels like There's a massive sign that just tells you what to do. An arrow is saying, go here. This is a thing. Get this. Do this. The whole game feels like a measured tutorial because of the fact that, okay, let's write this up. Okay, the Slig Barracks, okay, boneworks, and finally the return to the brewery, right?

All of those, there are three floors of the brewery, and all those stages, all they are, is a series of bespoke challenge rooms where you're in a hub. You go in the door, you do a little puzzle or whatever, you come out, you do the next door. That's like the whole back half of this game. That's all you do. There's no going, you don't travel. It's like, I'm going somewhere. You go on a train and you just go there and it's cool.

But it's not the same. There's no feeling that you're making huge progress at any point because all you're doing is solving silly little puzzles and silly little video game rooms. It's all very, it feels, it doesn't, it takes you out of it, I think. And I love it. It's a fun game. I feel like the fact they put the quicksave in may have been a crue. crutch in a sense. So, yeah, I could tend to feel

that things like the quicksave and the sign posting that is so common. To me, this feels like a symptom of a game that had to be turned around very quickly after the original, based on feedback they had from that original game. So I'm sure they did, you know, plenty of testing and all that. And they were like,

well, okay, people didn't like X, X, and X or these things. And we've got to fix that. And so I'm sure they built this new game then with that in mind that we're going to make this better, we're going to make it more accessible and try to remove the frustrating bits, but they ended up going too far. I got to stress, once again, I do still like this game.

I do enjoy playing it. I think there's a lot of stuff about it that is cool. I like the fact that they have a visual cue for which screens have hidden secrets now, with the saltstone brew bottles lying around. If you see those bottles, you know there's a secret in that room, and that's a very clever thing to do, I think. I feel like the fact that you can

possess things like scraps and paramedes it's not, it's just half bait it's usually just to do something incredibly obvious with them there's no real crafted puzzles it's just like oh this is a bit where you have to get past some paramount so you need this scrap that's all there is to it

or there are fleets here you need a scrap it's not very thoughtful it's all very just like perfunctory the gluckum bits the gluckum bits are much better I think because you are ordering a slig. They have like actual design to them. There's like the ridiculous bit where you have to like send multiple slings into mines over and over again to clear about.

Like that stuff's great. When you brainwash in boneworks, I forget the name director flag or something, there's a whole sequence where you're ordering around a slig to operate ladders for you and then to shoot through a whole kennel full of slugs while you stand. there screaming like because you don't have kill them and it's one of the most metal things it's great it's great okay the fucking the gluckins and the humor in this game is ridiculous and yeah they made it they made it i think a lot more sitcomy in this uh there is

so in the the bad ending of this game um oh my god there's so much so much stuff to touch on here there is a bit where i don't know i forgot which gluckin it is but like in the bad ending of this game there's they're like torturing abe right he's in like an electric uh chair or like a gurney or whatever it is and uh they're like i think it's the slig says like boss you're pushing it too far and he says in the most insane line read of all time it's like what the hey let's go for the record pump it off exactly like it's like ridiculous i remember that yeah it's complete lunacy.

The bad ending, a bad ending of Abe's Odyssey that used to kind of freak me out. It was kind of upsetting. When Abe is hanging there and the other McGuacons is just like, he didn't do anything. And then he just does like the throat slit gesture

and just goes, let them. And it's horrible. It's really upsetting. These games all universally feel like they have like really distressing bad endings. Yeah. There's later on.

Soulstorm has probably the darkest one of all, which, God. Don't spoil it, don't spoil it. I'm not going to spoil it, I'm not going to spoil it. It's wild. I'm looking forward to experiencing it. Yeah, like, I think in general, we haven't even, like, talked about the cutscene presentation of any of these games yet, which... We have a little bit. We have a little bit, I think, because the cutscenes were, like, revolutionary at the time. They very much were... Especially in this one.

Yeah, yeah. They decided to do everything in rhyme, which is, was a choice. I'll say that that's how I feel about that. They made the whole game speak in verse. That possibly made it worse? Does that work? Yeah, exactly. We should do a whole retronauts in rhyme.

I would love that. No. No. No. Yeah, I think that there's less rhyming in Exodus. I can't remember if it's like all just completely verseless compared to Odyssey, which is just a Dr. Seuss thing. But the, like, there's a lot more cutsceneing in Exodus,

which I think weirdly feels, I think contributes to this disjointed fact, or disjointed feel where there's so much more polished put into the bits that made the first game feel seamless and atmospheric. But I think that it's kind of papering over this thing you're talking about where it it doesn't feel wholly conceived it feels like it's you're putting a bunch of different level design elements into it's just it feels like a bit like and i hate saying this it's a very cliche thing to say but it feels like they're just throwing a lot of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks because like in the first game towards the end you gain the power to shoot this

concentric red ring that can blow up minds it's very empowering you only get it from a certain place you only get it i think once or twice and in the abecatus before long, you've got a yellow one that turns you, that cures sick people. You've got a green one that turns you invisible temporarily. Oh, my God, it's too much. And it's like, okay, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of sequences where all you do is turn invisible and have to run past some fleets and pull levers before you become uninvisible.

And it's all very perfunctory and very easy, I think. So that's, although I do like the fleets, they're kind of scary. It does feel like it's more just like a chance to extend. end the gameplay experience where they could, which I can understand the appeal of that, but the original feels more like a directed experience, you know? Everything feels very carefully

considered. He's like, well, we did this mechanic. Let's just do a few more screens. It feels like it was thought about for like a long time. The original is a vision. It's a presented a vision and then you've just got a game. Like, that's what Abe's Exodus is to me. It's just a game. They turn it into a game. It's a good game.

It's a good game, but it's just a game. It does not. The things they added feel like they were added I don't know it's like when you play an FPS expansion like for Quake and the new enemy is just oh it's a night but it's red and it's a bit faster that's not new content like a flying slig is not that

interesting a slig with no pants while funny is not that interesting it's not till like Munch when you got like the mega sligs the terrifying massive Hensh ones that's a cool addition I think I don't know it's a very flawed but then Munch was the thing that they wanted to do

and Exodus was just like a hang around which kind of goes against you know the themes of the first game anyway with capitalists it's like we gotta we gotta make this in a year I mean it's only because it's only because of Law and Lalling

that we have the term money hat right that came from a penny arcade with him that was regarding Munch when it was yeah when Microsoft air quotes money hatted it exactly yeah which is weird thing to think about well that game

you know yeah well hand of odd and munches odys were slated the ps2 presumably yeah that's right and then i think it was quite a big thing almost like a not like the level of microsoft buying rare but it was not far off yeah he could not he could not get munches odyssey funded uh as far as like i i know like in terms of if you try okay for anyone who hasn't pitched a video game before it is one of the most insane things to try to do and I can understand if you're going even from having like the

like Abe's Odyssey sold millions and millions of copies it's like I think it's hot 25 like best selling PlayStation yeah it's flat of them as well wasn't it over three million copies it sold more than Resident Evil 3

like it's a wildly successful game and he still because of how weird munch is he could not get that thing like a publishing deal and Microsoft coming along and being like we'll just do this and it'll be exclusive I think was more, it's a combination

I think, yeah, the thing you're talking about the money-hatted, I think is the phrase. Yeah, that's the Penny Arcade phrase. A NeoGath back in the day. I used to say that a lot. But it's also just like, I mean, it's kind of a Hail Mary pass. He's getting that and he's able

to actually make the game he wants to make on the Xbox. But yeah, like I think that's kind of informed by his experience with Exodus where just this nightmare production and I do not think I don't think he's satisfied with Exodus

I don't think he looks at this game fondly No Well I had to say it and Soulstorm is kind of a do-over of it Soulstorm is a full Like it's not it's not a remake of Apes Exodus No no, it's not new and tasty It's not But I mean Solstorm wasn't that actually the original name

Of the first odd world? It was It was called soul-space storm, I think. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So Odd World Soul Storm is like almost a mission statement to be like, this is what I'm getting back to like trying to do the

thing I wanted to do in the first place. Exactly. You know, even though when I tried it, I didn't like Soulstorm and as I understand it's now being patched up and is much, much better. But I want Lorne Lenning to be able to do what he wants. You know what I mean? I want Odd World to exist in the world. I want Soulstorm

to sell well enough to get the next game in the series. Imagine a world. Imagine a world where the quintology is actually done. Imagine a world. I would lose it if we get all five games. It would be crazy. Even if they're all terrible, like, I just really want it to happen. Honestly, I think both possible paths where it's successful are good.

It could be that there's a full quintology, or you could get him getting distracted and making Strangers Rath too. And that's still a good world to live in, I think. It's weird because these games are clearly influential. I was talking about this to someone the other day these games are very influential games for a lot of people I think but they're also really siloed off

you don't talk about odd world unless you're talking about odd world like it's a weird thing they're their own thing aren't they you can't compare them to much other than older games like Prince of Persia there's nothing else like them now it's a shame even even indies don't touch

on it that much I played a game called the Eternal Castle or something remastered which is not actually a remaster. Eternal Castle is fantastic. Yeah. And that reminded me

a little bit of Aves Odyssey because that was very other world. I would say that the closest thing we have to it in modern

terms is stuff like limbo or inside. Inside, I think specifically. Like, yeah. Replaying Aves Odyssey

like for this, the big thing that it made me realize is like, oh, inside isn't like as much an Eric Chahy game

as it is an odd world game. Like, It really is a streamlined version of this, down to the fact that you're, like, controlling, like, little other guys for a lot of the puzzles. There's, like, a lot of different things where you're kind of, like, trying to escort people around or do... There's a lot of different stuff like that in Inside. Insight's great, and I think it... I never finished it. I should finish it.

It's good. It's good. Yeah. So I guess the big thing here, though, is we've talked about these PlayStation games, so what about Odd World Adventures for the GameLoy? Oh, God, I forgot that existed. I got that as well. And two, they made a sequel.

Yeah, sequel was all right. Isn't it supposedly, like, trying to be a port? I do not know much about that game at all. It's kind of like, I would describe it as a demake, perhaps, where it's like, you know. It has elements of odd world, but it doesn't, you know, you can tell it's not the same game, but it's neat. Yeah, it's still screen by screen. It's not horrible. This is the Donkey Kong land of, yes, it is, yeah.

Yep, yep. I think that the first one, the second one was one of those hybrid cable and game, color games i think yeah the second one was color for sure the first one was just straight up a game boy i am looking at this is so weird it's really weird it's really weird looking at uh at a game like this with just full pixel graphics is extremely strange uh i i gotta say yeah um oh wow what's funny about the the game boy one though is that with fewer buttons they couldn't do as much with game speak so the only actions you have is like you can do the chanting you can whistle i think and and then there's the there's the fart you know i think you've got to press select

to do it as well. So they kept the fart. Yeah, of course they did. The fart is the main thing people want from the game. They kept the fart. They keep the, like, at least a facsimile of the, the, like, marquee, like, screen tutorial thing. They try to do that.

That is probably one of my favorite elements of... When I first played Odyssey, that was the thing that felt the most distinctive to me, was that choice of, like, everything is tutorialized to use through the, like giant marquies that are everywhere in the factory. And it feels like such a good hybrid of, it is a good introduction to like what it's like being in this factory

or there's messages thrown at you just incessantly over and over again. And it kind of is a little snarky. It like tells you there's certain elements of a little bit of the bossiness that the tutorial has. towards the player. It feels like a little bit of a fourth wall break. I mean, the loading screen says sit down and shut up. Oh my God, yes, you're right.

Yeah, that's right. There's a little bit of fourth walliness. Like, the second game has Abe, Abe kills one of the Madocans, basically. And then he literally turns to the camera and says, I guess, help me rescue the rest of them. like it's I'm a terrible person so whenever the blind

muckins walk into a wall I laugh there's the first time you meet one of them the first time you meet one it's right in front of a bird portal and you chan and it's scripted he runs past the bird portal into the wall then he gets up runs back and doubles back and jumps into it

and it's genuinely funny and I feel bad laughing at it's a three stooges joke it's a three stooges yeah yeah there's a lot of I mean there are bits in an exodus where you can slap sligs and use that to just make a quick escape because they'll be down for like a half second

and it's genuinely got some, it's genuinely quite useful in times. That's just something about the series. It's just so unique is that weird fusion of slapstick humor like that with this really unsettling atmosphere. And I'm not, I don't

it's, it's hard to imagine how they pulled it off so well. I think with Exodus and another problem I have with Exodus in a way is as we've discussed, it's sort of a maximalist thing and it's too big for abe in the first game abe escaping rupture farms going on a spiritual journey away from rupture farms then coming back finding out sneaking around or finding out about the boiler going in and destroying it i believe he could do that i don't believe he could systematically go to the barracks the boneworks and all these places and take all

of them down and get past everything it's too big do i mean i think in terms of how the game is presented Yeah, I don't think it is... Because he's a destructive force that makes you feel more powerful than the enemies, and you're not supposed to be more powerful than the enemies. Right, it doesn't really do the work of making Abe feel reluctant anymore. It doesn't really do the work of trying to at least make you feel like Abe is coming at this from a low status thing. He just becomes this larger-than-life figure without any sort of actual... It's more of...

He becomes Bugs Bunny in the second. game yeah um kind of and and uh i don't it doesn't it doesn't work as well uh i all the gluckins talk like powered by the cheat characters like all these things just feel a little a little bit off exactly yeah all of them it just feels a little bit like uh the ingredient mixes off you know Can I praise one thing in Exodus that I really like? Because there's a bit where you interact with a monitor and a slig tells you like, Welcome to Boneworks. If we have any questions, please pull the lever to your right.

And you pull it and a big rock falls on you. That's very funny. That's funny. That's a great joke. But otherwise, it's a bit too Bart Simpson. You know, it's just kind of like banter and laughs and it's weird. It's not ape. Simpson?

Oh, I think that clicks from me. me a lot of a lot of this it feels very much like the first game feels like it's trying to be star wars and i think that that's very consciously trying to be like a star wars thing um the second game feels like the simpsons you're right and it it's like they want to make an animated series of abe or something or anima maniacs weird buddies yeah well let's not let's not say things we can't take back uh uh you're i know your feelings on animaicx I have a whole podcast dedicated to hating Animaniacs. I mean, if Abe started talking about Gregory Peck, maybe we'd have a...

That's the thing, though. The reason I say animaics, I think that while it doesn't get into, like, the pop culture thing, it, like, leans on that a little bit. It's very caricaturistic in Exodus. It gets very... Like, the games are always social commentary, but it feels like the quote-unquote capital S, capital C social commentary like TV shows of the time

where it's like a sitcom that's just like hey you heard about this well you've even got the news the McGar on the March thing where you just watch news reports that are like parody comedy news reports exactly yeah it's weird into this

but again I don't hate it I think they're two very fun games and I think we've possible we might be coming to the end of the road on this one maybe unless there's more to say about that? I mean, there's not that much more to say to it because it really is just sort of expanding

on that original game, but in not so great ways. But I will say one compliment I do want to lend it is the graphics. Oh, yeah. I actually think the actual CG rendering that they did here is better. It's stunning in place.

It is. They have improved that, yeah. It's really, really good. Like, some of the CG sequences, like the thing about CGI, especially like those full movie sequences, is you go back to actually this era of PlayStation games and most games outside of maybe the most expensive

square or Namco productions, the CGI is really bad. This looks way better than the FMVs and FF7. It does. It's so good. It's so good. Like it's really, really, really just beautiful and it's artfully made and well animated. It holds up.

The diversity of the locations is great as well. They're all very different looking, I think. even you'd think that like boneworks in the barracks and the brewery would look fairly similar but they genuinely don't they did a great job with it um the final area even across its three or four different challenge roomups it does change up the color scheme to change it the way it looks uh you know what it i've just realized what it kind reminds me of is oh no more lemmings it's exactly the same mechanics with superior graphics and levels that are

off the chain hard. There are secrets in this game in Exodus that require perfect completion. And to me that's like, well that's why the quicksaber's there because they knew this was BS. If this is Oh no more Lemmings, does that make Munch's Odyssey

Lemmings 3D? I'm afraid it does. I mean by definition. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. You could have been the tribes. It could have been good, but no, it's Lemmese 3D. There's, I think, the thing that always impress me the most about this game like is the

the blending between these cutscenes and cutting the gameplay is the most seamless of any PlayStation one game that tries that trick going from the train to being out and like now you're on the platform

it is perfect there's no other game that manages to get that the whole the thing where you go in like a door or a well and the game like does this ridiculous 3D pan over to the next area is very impressive. That's so good, yeah. They do it a little bit in Odyssey, but it's so much better in Exodus and the trick is perfect.

They do it a lot more here, and it really gives the environment this sort of like three-dimensionality that it kind of technically doesn't have. But also, like, we didn't mention this, but a lot of the backgrounds have stuff happening on different layers, which also contributes a lot to the level design and sort of the

feeling of being in a larger place. Yeah. Like you'll have like scaffolding and stuff way in the distance, and there's actually active enemies back there, patrolling, and you know yeah just that sort of they didn't mention it but they can shoot you in the foreground so you've got to hide behind you yeah yeah I guess isn't there a part with like

there's like in like the army barracks like area where there's like cutouts of muddakins that are riddled with bullet holes so good you can hide behind those and they're shooting at you from the background oh my god there's a bit in the barracks where you have to roll through and jump through just like

cover to cover like gears or something yes exactly and it's literally again it's quick save material because it is insanely difficult. Like, you will die if you don't time it perfectly. Like, there's bits where you've got to jump and hang, because the cover is on the bit where you're hanging. It's ludicrous, but it's so well designed. There's a lot of that in these games, though, where you have to very quickly do an action, run, roll, jump, do something while something else tries to kill you, and there's, like, very little leeway. There's nothing

difficult as that one screen in Odyssey and Exodus. That's true. I think that in general, the like odyssey's level design is better when it's doing yeah yeah i agree i agree yeah like you all the the scrabania and paramoya uh stuff is like all of those feel very well designed and intentional and the stuff in exodus does feel a little bit thrown together uh comparatively like even even the stuff that's like fun to do it just feels like oh here's like some game elements on the screen uh whereas there's these very clear okay i have to go here and I have to think about the space in Paramoia levels, like those areas.

You have to go, yeah. Because of the fact that the Strabs and the Paramites have such different behavior, like paramites aren't necessarily aggressive. They're only aggressive if they're either cornered or there's more than one of them. And you've got to use that to your effect because it means that when you're in Paramonia, you have that sense of like, this could turn at any second this could turn. They could come down on their little webs and come at you. Or you could just be okay with it.

You could be okay. You could be an area where you're just whistling and just solving a puzzle. You're moving Elam around. It's a little bit chill. But then when you go to Scrabania, every screen, you're just like, God, I hope there's no scraps. They're so terrifying. And you know they're out there and it just makes it all of them all.

You're in their home, man. You're in their term, baby. They're huge. And then they like, yeah, they do the buck like rhinos. They do that insane thing where they, when they fight each other, they like do. Yeah, they go into a death to a movie. bay blade each other. Yeah. Oh, man.

And then they make that perfunctory and Exodus by making it into a power-up thing you can use, where you roar and then you do a big spin, and it's like Crash Bandicoot or something. Ludicrous. At least with the paramount you get to actually communicate with other paramounties using

clicks and your horrible mandibles. Oh, man. I do like Abe's Exodus. I just got a lot of bad things to say about it. That's all. I think I think this is the thing. Like if you're coming out of like talking about both games, especially with like these like almost you're going on 30 years of hindsight, it's like full to 25 years now, 25 years for Aves Odyssey now. So yeah, like you're the all of that hindsight behind like it's hard not to see Exodus

as a much lesser thing, I think, in that context. But especially with the context of the time, when it was just fresh, you look at this game in 1998, like a year after the first game comes out, it probably doesn't feel nearly as down a thing. It's just disappointing because there's only two of these. Yeah. Yeah. So there shouldn't have been either. That's the thing. brings us to something of a close.

Would you agree? Yeah, I think so. With Abes Odyssey and Aves Exodus, the two major PlayStation games, as we all know, this is not the end of the Odd World story. We've talked a little bit about what's coming. I think we can do it in one more

episode, but there's a lot to cover, you know, so we'll see how it goes. But, you know, keep an eye on us, and there's a chance there will almost certainly be a part two in the future. about Oddworld, covering the buy-out, the Xbox games, and maybe the state that it's in now. Yeah. Exactly.

But before we head off, let's cover this in a bit more detail. John, where can our fine and wonderful and generous listeners find you on the internet? You can find me at Dark OneX on Twitter or find my work over on Eurogamer.com slash digital foundry and YouTube.com slash digital foundry. And, RJ, where can we find you online? I'm on Twitter, I'm at Spellbang And you can check out All my stuff on Bancamp Spell my name of the bang.banktamp.com

And check out unbeatable Unbeatablegame.com White label is free to download on Steam So yeah, go check out what I'm working on. Extremely cool action rhythm game that was kickstarted I want to say a year and a half ago, two years maybe Just about, yeah. July.

at 21 so yeah very cool game got a lot of style and I recommend it and I backed it so there's my seal of quality you can put that on the box thank you I will I'm gonna just like I'll be here put it in very small font

with a yeah so you look up for that and as for me you know me you can find me at stupacabra and if you want to support retronauts on our Patreon you can do that and for a mere five dollars which again very small amount of money we'll agree it's especially with the current exchange rate it's not very much money at all and for that you can get uh exclusive retronauts episodes

every uh monday uh you can't hear anywhere else and to up you can get early access to the other episodes as well not only that you can also get diamond fights very very good columns which he does uh this week in retro you get them in both written form and in audio form i must say they are excellent. They are. I petitioned Jeremy Parish, let me do Stuart Gyps this week in Stuart Gyps head, but he has

refused. That's not true. He has refused nothing. I made that whole thing up for a joke. But there's a lot of stuff on that Patreon, and you know, again, $5, just, you know, don't buy a large Coke and a sandwich one day, go hungry, and then you can

have a month of excellent retro content. There are also higher tiers, the way you can force us to talk about something awful if you want to by supporting that for a few months and then going, Stu, I want to see an episode about, I don't know,

jungle book games or something and I'll be like, oh God, but I'll have to do it because it's the law. I've played the jungle. I've played those jungle book games, man. They're not horrible. They're not horrible. I like the Mega Drive one at the time. Yeah, it's pretty good. You can buy it right now in the Disney

and Deladden and Blankin collection. It's a it in there as DLC, the absolute legends. I love the digital clips, man. Maybe one day they'll touch Oddworld, who knows. But that was the episode, that was Oddworld. Thanks very much for listening. Hope this all comes together.

And a huge apology to the editor who's going to have to make a sort this mess out. Thanks very much. Oh, yeah. And take care, and we'll see you later. I'm going to be able to be.