14 DAY TRIAL // Lorne Lanning, the creator of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, has revealed that he never expected his first game to have such a huge impact on gamers or on the industry and that he was not ready to see people talking about it fifteen years after it was launched.
Speaking to VG247, the game developer stated, “Due to the amount of money we had to borrow to make Abe, he had to succeed. He had to sell millions of units, he just had to man. I had to convince people that it would before I could get the money. Then I actually had to deliver, and that being said, what I never expected – but that I hoped for and designed for, but I didn’t actually expect it – was that 15 years later it would still have this passion around it.”
Lanning also believes that the game resonates more than ever at the moment because of the overall economic conditions and the way the “down-trodden” respond to the game.
He added, “We still get emails from people who tells us that it really just…changed their lives at really critical times, like they decided not to jump off that cliff. That impact was a little more than I kind of hoped for, the longevity of it, and that players have Oddworld tattoos, is pretty phenomenal.”
Lorne Lanning is at the moment working with studio Just Add Water to create a reboot for Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee that has the subtitle New N’Tasty.
The new game will offer High Definition graphics and 3D space and will come complete with other new features, using the original game as a blueprint for an entirely new experience.
The game should be launched on the PlayStation Network from Sony, the Xbox Live from Microsoft and the PC via Steam at some point during 2015.