Abe's Oddysee HD [PS3/PC]

[JP]

Oddworld Inhabitants chief Lorne Lanning has told EGM that a HD remake of Abe?s Oddysee is in the works at Just Add Water.?Abe HD is going into production,? Lanning told the mag.

?It?s basically Abe?s Oddysee being redone in a 3D physics engine as a 2D side-scrolling platformer. So the way Just Add Water wants to approach it, we thought was very smart; they are not trying to reinvent any wheels. It?s like, ?Can we make that experience in a new engine, with new tech, in the old way??

?Oddworld Inhabitants and the Yorkshire-based JAW announced last year a collaboration to create titles in the Oddworld series ?across multiple platforms?.

The first out of six titles planned from the studio is a PSN HD version of Stranger?s Wrath in easter.

But Lanning says an XBLA version is ready to go, but it?s a bit more complicated than that.?We have Stranger all ready to go on XBLA, but the answer keeps being no. We?re still talking to Microsoft and we?re hoping to work it out."

I really like the sound of this but I'm a little concerned that it's going to lose the original games gameplay if it becomes physics based, it could of course end up being very different but still good.

I though Oddysee and Exoddus were fantastic games and my favourites of the serious so I'm trying to stay positive about this. I'm guessing it'll be PS3 and PC at the moment like Stranger's Wrath, that could of course change if Microsoft change their mind.

So far there's Abe's Oddysee & Stranger's Wrath on the way which leaves maybe Abe's Exodus & Munch's Oddysee as two of the other four games that are on the way. I know they've already announced that a new game is in development.

I can't imagine anybody missed the game but here's the PS1 original.

[Dogg Thang]

Seems a bit odd, given the quote about not reinventing any wheels, to apply any sort of new physics engine. There's nothing in the game that requires any fancy physics and the game is an absolute precision platformer. That's what is fantastic about it. The rules are clear, simple and yet it is far from easy. I wonder if he just got it wrong and meant a new graphics engine.

I played through Oddysee recently on PSP and it's as great as ever. And it looks amazing. It's easy to see where HD would be lovely, having loaded up the Steam versions in the last week, but also easy to see how it will have a hard time competing with the original if running in real time - the quality of the prerendered graphics is superb.

If I remember correctly, JAW did the Stranger's Wrath conversion, the first release of which was utter cack. It's better now with the patch but it seems a lot of people are still reporting problems. If that's just a port, have they got what it takes for a full-on remake?

Still, any Oddworld news is good news to me. I'm still an absolutely massive fan. Was leafing through the big leatherbound artbook earlier today actually.