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Oddworld: Soulstorm

4 years ago3,070 words

I recently kind of finished this reimagining of a game I have fond memories of from my childhood. I've been looking forward to it for a while, and I felt it was particularly valuable to observe how I felt about it - especially the changes - because it might be similar to how old MARDEK fans might feel about Divine/Atonal Dreams...

I feel like this is a game that won't matter to most of the few people who'll see this, but I'll probably write a lot about it anyway since it's important to me! (Unlike my usually extremely succinct posts, of course.)



∞ Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee ∞ was among the handful of games I got on the Christmas I got a Playstation, over two decades ago. I got its sequel, ∞ Abe's Exoddus ∞, not long afterwards. Being From My Childhood, I have fond memories of playing them; they have a special place in my heart. When I found out - years ago - that the creator of the originals (Lorne Lanning) was working on an improved reimagining of Exoddus - using updated technology to 'tell the story that was meant to be told' but which time constraints (or something) prevented back then - I was very curious, and that curiosity only grew as I played around with ideas for how to reimagine my own work which had been a fond part of other people's childhoods.

I was surprised to see that this game actually came out, finally! I'd been occasionally checking up on it for so many years it felt like... I think the term is vapourware? And though I'd checked on it for so long, I never really knew much about it at all, even its basic gameplay mechanics. I remember boastful promises about how Abe would be able to 'control 300 mudokon followers all on the screen at once' or something, and imagined some 3D roaming game where you'd yell orders to a swarming crowd. Very different to the games it was reimagining, but I was curious to see it and open to changes and improvements.

Turns out though that more than I expected is almost exactly the same as the originals! Well, mostly...

Redirection and Familiarity

The basic gameplay is for the most part the same: it's a 2D (or rather 2.5D) side-scroller where you sneak around ancient tombs and industrialist factories saving your enslaved mudokon kin.

Right from the beginning, the story strays drastically from the structure of Abe's Exoddus. In that, Abe and 'some friends' randomly got drunk on Soulstorm brew and ended up enslaved in a mine... or something (it's been ages since I played it), which made little sense. Here, it tries to act as a direct sequel to the first game, Abe's Oddysee (which was remade more faithfully a few years ago). Molluck, the (barely-present) antagonist of Oddysee, appears in cutscenes throughout, while he didn't (explicitly) appear in the original Exoddus at all.

At first, I was appreciative of these changes; they seemed to make for a better story. And maybe I'd visit all the areas I remember as well, just with these additions! I had hope!

It didn't turn out that way, though.



The feature of the originals that most endeared them to me was the ability to chant to possess - and control - your enemies. I'd never seen anything like it before, at the time, and the idea of being able to directly manipulate these fascinatingly-designed creatures had a strong aesthetic (more than gameplay) appeal. In Oddysee, you could only possess one type of enemy - sligs - but Exoddus dramatically expanded on that by allowing the possession of flying and 'pantsless' sligs, scrabs, paramites, and even glukkons (∞ all these species are shown on the wiki! ∞).

Some of the game's highlights for me were being able to posses three glukkon bigwigs - the game's big bosses, essentially, each of which oversaw an area you'd just thoroughly explored - and since I saw that this game's 'box art' featured revised versions of these glukkons heavily, I was very much looking forward to seeing how they'd handled that here.



Instead, though, the game seemed to devote a whole lot of focus to a new mechanic where you could craft throwable items from collected ingredients. I generally found the collection of ingredients tedious (you had to search through many, many lockers and bins, or use money found in those lockers and bins to buy the items from vending machines) and was reluctant to use them since my supply was limited, plus I was bad at aiming so I tended to waste what I tried to throw anyway, so I ignored it wherever possible.

I got to possess some sligs and flying sligs, but that was it. It was also usually prevented by chant suppressors, meaning I had to use the item-throwing system instead.



The difficulty felt all over the place. There were long, relatively relaxed sections with puzzles I could solve at my leisure - which I liked - punctuated with rapid, twitchy gunning sections which I found extremely unappealing and had to try over and over and over. The perhaps-hyped bits in which you had to protect hundreds of mudokons all involved them climbing up ladders, while sligs appeared from all angles to gun them down. I quickly abandoned the idea of trying for a perfect saved-slaves percentage run when the rate of appearance of these sligs - especially during the earliest sections when I was still learning the controls - was completely, frustratingly overwhelming.

There was a mention in dialogue near the beginning of items dropped by 'fleeches' - creatures that appeared in Exoddus - so I got hopeful about them appearing - maybe even sooner than the original! - but when I actually found the items, they were called 'sleech guano' rather than 'fleech guano', which really irritated me as someone who cares a lot about lore consistency (I also noticed a couple of typos elsewhere). Later on, you could encounter 'sleeches' - which seemed different to fleeches - but they were so small and quick that I couldn't even make out their form. They came in swarms and couldn't be possessed (fleeches couldn't be in Exoddus though).

Thoroughly disappointing, and it made me wonder what particular features of MARDEK people might most adore and would be horribly disappointed to see missing from a reimagining.



Recognition provided a few sparks of joy. "Ooh, Necrum! That's the place where you started in the original! It even looks roughly the same! Greeters! I recognise those! Feeco Depot!" But I was also constantly on the look out for things I remembered, and was disappointed when they never came. Also worth taking note of.

Both Oddysee and Exoddus had a 'gamespeak' system, where you could say I think eight different functional commands? This still has that - it was interesting seeing the same name for it retained after all these years despite massive shifts in gaming culture that makes 'gamespeak' feel like a relic - but it was barely used. Some voice locks in the originals required you to repeat back patterns with gamespeak, but they didn't appear at all here. A shame; I liked those, especially the slig ones, as it gave me a reason to control them other than violence. Interestingly though, most of the time all the gamespeak buttons made Abe randomly say a phrase related to the current state of the plot.

Story

The story was largely told through cutscenes between levels, with what I found to be very high quality emotive animation. I liked these a whole lot; they're probably the part of the game I appreciated the most. I remember reading that an Oddworld movie was considered once, and if it was of that quality, I'd watch it!



The actual story felt very... incomplete, though? I wondered if it literally was; whether there was plans for a greater story, but much of it had to be cut. For example, there are scenes that show these glukkons that are featured heavily on the branding images etc:



They're based on the glukkon bigwigs in Exoddus, who were shown in similar (though far less impressive) scenes in that, but in that, you went on to explore each of their domains (in an order of your choice, I think?), each of which culminated in a section where you shut down their factory by possessing the glukkon and using it to order around sligs and activate a self-destruct mechanism. A clever use and expansion of established mechanics and a big highlight of the games, I always felt.

In this, while I did visit their factories, I never met any of them at all - nor did I really shut down any of the factories - which felt odd to me, and disappointing.



There was also this scene in some kind of ancient mudokon tomb, which was extremely visually impressive to the point where I wondered whether they'd blown much of the budget on it! It also didn't really seem to lead to anything though. In Oddysee, Abe travelled through tombs devoted to Scrabs and Paramites, which he overcame, and in doing so he unlocked the ability to transform into Shrykull, a god with traits of both. You then used this power to go back into the slaughterhouse you'd escaped from and free the remaining slaves. This scene also unlocked that same power... which I think I got to use like twice on random groups of enemies, and it all felt very... empty, I suppose. Again, like there was a lot missing.

The Oddworld style is interesting because it merges these dark themes of exploitation (the glukkons are ruining the natural land out of corporate greed, and forcing the peaceful, spiritual mudokons to help them do it) with a kind of stupid humour. The sligs, the glukkons, and the mudokons you're supposed to be saving all come across as obnoxious idiots. In Exoddus, you could literally possess and control your own farts! At least some of that silliness has been retained here, though it's interesting how it's been affected by the cultural changes in the years since the originals.

During the scene I just mentioned, Abe meets this ancient mudokon:



...Who's voiced by a woman, which I found interesting, since the other Oddworld games are absolute sausage fests with not a woman in sight. There was no confirmation that she was a she here... though later, when Abe was telling a couple of allies about this encounter, he did refer to her as 'she', to which one immediately said "She??", then:



And he seemed deflated when Abe said (with sombre reverence) that she was 'the most ancient thing I've ever seen'. I found this funny, since I'd expect most things to gloss over the female inclusion for political reasons ('normalising' it etc); I appreciated that it was a more realistic reaction instead, or at least one drawing attention to the overwhelming maleness of the rest of Oddworld.



...Though it also annoyed me since I vaguely remember reading a while back that all the mudokons are apparently male because they all hatch from ∞ eggs laid by a singular queen ∞, and as such are sexless; they shouldn't have a concept like 'hotness' in that case, then! But it'd hardly be the first time these games have ignored their lore for the sake of a joke. That's something I want to be careful about with my own work.

Anyway, this game - like Oddysee and Exoddus - has at least two endings, and I've only unlocked a bad one so far. I'll need to go back and improve my 'quarma' (an interesting concept I remember being mentioned in the instruction manuals of the original games but which wasn't really mentioned in the games themselves) by rescuing more mudokons to unlock the good one, and maybe when I do many of my concerns will be addressed.

I don't know, though. In the others, whether you got a good or bad ending basically determined which cutscene you unlocked at the end, but here the bad ending I got seemed to cut the story short quite significantly. I'm hoping a different ending will unlock more gameplay, but if not, then it'll still feel quite empty and unfinished!

It'll take time to replay perfectly though, so I don't know when I'll get around to that. Probably not any time soon. At least it gives a reason to replay though.

Aesthetics

The main reason that I cared so much about the original Oddworld games was because of how deep and unique their worlds looked and felt. Such an interesting combination of sombre, spiritual, natural ruins and dirty, sleazy, showy, exploitative industrial factories. The creature designs like scrabs, paramites, and glukkons fascinated me as a child who was particularly interested in non-human alien creatures, and they still fascinate me as a(n ostensibly) no-longer-a-child who's now interested in art and design. Apart from the intriguing creatures, the old games had a certain look to them - their architecture, the fonts they used on the prevalent signposts - and that's been retained, refined, and expanded on here.



Graphically it's a huge step up from the old games, though I feel that they didn't really built on it all that much... No new creature designs or anything like that (other than I suppose sleeches, which were just vague, erratic blobs, not satisfying creature designs). I don't know any more about Oddworld lore than I did before. I kept wondering about the behind-the-scenes production, whether one talented designer was paid for the original creature designs which they've been milking for years since, or something. I don't know!

These games have never really had music really, and the same is true of this too. There's just ambience that evokes a feeling of dread and suspense, played throughout. So I won't be looking into the soundtrack or anything (if they even bothered to make one).

Other comments

The game was divided into discrete levels, each of which had a progress screen at the end; the originals didn't do this. It made the whole adventure feel less organic, but I did appreciate it, as it gave me clean points at which to end play sessions. Plus it seems I can go back and retry each level over and over to reach perfect completion, rather than tackling the game as a whole. So that seems useful.

I wondered a few times whether the order of the levels had been shuffled around. Bizarrely, a tutorial tip for chant suppressors only appeared on the penultimate level, despite them featuring heavily in essentially all the levels before that, while other bits felt far more difficult - or easy - than they should have for their place in the game.

I encountered a few frustrating bugs which required respawning - such as the menu refusing to open, a bird portal refusing to respawn once scared away, or getting stuck in a wall - but the game was only released a couple of weeks ago, so that's to be expected. No doubt my own games will be just as buggy on release! There was also a bug where the gamespeak phrases for one level were actually meant for the next level, meaning Abe started talking about things he hadn't seen yet, which was annoyingly spoilery!

Some commands involved pressing and holding a button: for example, tapping Y opened one menu, while holding it for a few milliseconds opened a different one. Maybe many modern games do this, but I've never seen it before. Interesting seeing one button given multiple functions like that, and I'll keep it in mind for my own games.

I think all the characters were voiced by Lorne Lanning (the creator) originally? I don't know when he stopped, but the voice actor for Abe was named here, and it wasn't him. Sounded exactly like the character though, so maybe it's the same voice actor who's had the role for years. Same with the sligs and other mudokons. All very familiar!

Epic Games

This game was exclusive to the Epic Games store, as far as I could tell (or maybe some console I don't have, too), so I had to sign up for and download that. Irritating, though I understand why devs do it, since I've heard they get paid a lump sum up front or something so their game automatically financially succeeds at least to some degree? I doubt any of my games would qualify for it though.

I actually prefer its client's UI over Steam's, plus they seem to offer regular free game offers to get people to stay, so I now own some games that I wouldn't have otherwise (don't know if I'll ever play them though).

I also noticed that all the Kingdom Hearts games are available on there, which is interesting since I was wondering a while back whether to get a PS4 largely to play KHIII and the various rereleases of the others. They're like £50 each though, and they'd take forever to play through, so that'll have to wait, annoyingly. I wish I could charge that for games!

In conclusion

Overall, while there was a lot here that I was very impressed by, Soulstorm has left me feeling empty and disappointed, after so many years waiting for it. Mostly it was because of features I hoped would be present (possessing many types of different creatures) being omitted in favour of a new system I found irritating.

Maybe I'll feel differently if I unlock the (a?) better ending, but that'll take a lot of time and effort, and I'm not hugely motivated to dive into it immediately.

It did make me wonder a lot about what MARDEK features people would like to see retained in Divine/Atonal Dreams though, so that'll be worth talking about at some point!