Terraforming Oddworld
The tale begins with Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, an ambitious puzzle platformer released in 1997 and intended to kick off a quintology of games that would unite to tell a cohesive story spanning multiple protagonists, viewpoints, genres and cultures. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a success both for Oddworld Inhabitants, the developers, and GT Interactive, the publishers. Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus was released a year later, due in no small part to pressure by a company that wanted to compound its financial gains. The original vision of Oddworld was of a satirical, modern-day myth mediated by absurd humor: in 2012, Lanning said, “I wanted to create this twisted brand that really represented the sort of unspoken truth of the world we’re living in and try to make it humorous and ironic,” and the first two games, at least, stuck to this ideal. (Ramsay)
Of that original vision, only two more games were released – Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (Oddworld Inhabitants, 2001) and the spin-off title Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (Oddworld Inhabitants, 2005). From there, Oddworld lay dormant until the release of Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty (Just Add Water, 2014), a reboot that sought to update graphics but keep the story intact, followed almost a decade on by Oddworld: Soulstorm (Just Add Water, 2021), which was a full remake, taking the game in a drastically different direction to either of its predecessors. To say that in between these titles – dissonant in themes, narrative, setting, and gameplay – that Oddworld was undergoing an identity crisis, would be an understatement. The series' ostensibly leftist politics contrasted with a liberal use of colonial tropes and allegories, resulting in a tension between the anti-capitalist mediations of Oddworld, and their expression. The tale of Oddworld is a tale of intention versus reality, and of what it takes to make the revolution marketable.
“Oddworld manages to be a subversive anti-capitalist fable while at the same time functioning as a piece of mass media.” (Warrick)
In Abe's Oddysee, capitalism is akin to consumption in a very literal sense. Rupture Farms is eating its way through Oddworld's native fauna in the guise of cakes, munchies, and pies: several species have already been consumed to the point of extinction, and still, the factories grind. Abe, a Mudokon, too, considers eating Scrab Cakes, patting his stomach in appreciative hunger before continuing down the corridor. He comes to a shaft of light spilling out an open door, stumbling upon a circle of executives out for blood. He yelps at the realization that the new product will, quite literally, be made of Mudokons. The Mudokon are both workforce and cattle, viewed by their corporate overlords as a resource to use up; they produce or become product. Either way, there's a profit to be made. Capitalism, never sated, is moving on to its next meal, metal teeth grinding all the while. Writing for Killscreen, critic Douglas F. Warrick writes, “the game takes Eisenstein’s metaphorical juxtaposition of livestock and the working class and remixes it into something literal,” and this allegory is never more explicit than in Abe's initial Oddysee. (Warrick)
The outside of the Rupture Farms factory in Abe’s Oddysee.
The relentless gloom, sharp metal edges, and crusted blood that make up Rupture Farms are the most hostile of workplace environments, where the factory floor and killing machine are often one and the same. Factories are slaughterhouses where collateral damage is not only expected, it is ever-present. Mudokon work in between meat grinders which can reduce them to gibs and on top of ledges that can be pulled out from under them without warning; a grim punchline by a game that treats their deaths as a cruel sort of splatstick, and Abe an accidental accomplice. Abe's voice rings hollow and numb as he realizes what he has done: "oops", he mutters. It is all he ever says. Mudokons are meat, and they know it. They are forbidden to, and punished for speaking or moving of their own volition, and are violently prevented from practicing any facet of their culture by both Slig and factory floor. Rupture Farms is a rise and grind in a very literal sense. Here, capitalism is a relentless churn: of resources and of people. By Exoddus the Mudokon are not safe even in death – their burial grounds plundered for bones with which to make Soulstorm Brew, later sold back to them at a tidy profit. It makes them sick, and still, with no alternative, they drink it. Capitalism is hollowing out the planet culturally and environmentally but also morally – what is the death of an entire people in face of plummeting profit?
By New ‘n’ Tasty, a spit-polished remake of Oddysee, the satirical elements have less bite: the steel is more stainless than stained, Rupture Farms' belching maw is softened by the amber glow of a sunrise on Oddworld. It is impressive, rather than oppressive. The story beats are the same, but the modern sheen with which the game presents itself feels altogether less grimy. The inherent menace of Rupture Farms, ironically brought to life larger and more vivid than ever with wide-angled shots and dynamic cameras, is lost to bright colors and Mudokons who sass the air as they scrub. Where once a poster smeared with blood, there now shines an autosave checkpoint. It is 1985's Brazil (Terry Gilliam), as told by Pixar.
As Abe traverses the floors of Rupture Farms, an advert for a real-life game flashes across a billboard. For a moment, we are taken out of the hot orange haze Abe inhabits, and into a different world where a heroine slides across the screen, all slick neon. “Look,” New ‘n’ Tasty says, “this is something else you can buy!” New ‘n’ Tasty is a product first, fable second, and whilst Oddysee applied its fables thick and fast, they felt apt in a world as cruel as it was funny. Journalist Nic Rueben wrote in 2018 that the original Abe's Oddysee struggled with its portrayals of capitalism: “Looking back, it’s clear that poor old Abe has a serious case of late capitalist Stockholm Syndrome. […] A defensive cognitive dissonance that fetishizes the fruits of exploitation.” (Rueben) Where Oddysee fetishises, New N Tasty outright glorifies. This Oddworld is newer, shinier, modern; it is tasty and like Abe, we too pat our bellies. Of course, you can criticize capitalism and still need to bend to its whims, but New ‘n’ Tasty does not bend, it sags, its every design choice inspired by its need to move units.
Abe looking at a poster for Scrab Cakes in New ‘N’ Tasty.
When the original Exoddus came out it did so at great cost. It was a game born of one imperative: to follow through on the financial success of Oddysee. It shipped within a year of the first. Ironically, a game that criticized the relentless exploitation of workers had become a victim of crunch culture, at a point where it was not quite as ubiquitous (or, at least, widely reported) as it is now. Lorne Lanning, long-time developer of Oddworld, has described Exoddus as a “[...] sort of emergency game for us […] I had this big vision of what that game was going to be […] but the reality was we needed to provide our partner a game in nine months.” (EGX) The game took the politics and designs of the first and crafted a broader experience that compounded upon the satire but was, nonetheless, a product of the exact systems it was criticizing. Fast forward twenty years and Oddworld Inhabitants had a chance to right past wrongs and completely revisit Exoddus, now Soulstorm, free from the looming threat of a publisher deadline.
Soulstorm, by and large, recontextualised not only the orange of New ‘n’ Tasty but the dangers of capitalism on Oddworld. Capitalism, in Soulstorm, is an all-consuming fire. It burned its way through the Mudokon hideaway, it burned Molluck, leader of Rupture Farms, and now not even the Slig is safe from the firebombs Abe hurls. Nobody, Soulstorm says, is safe from capitalism. Abe has, in the words of Lorne Lanning, “stoked the fires of revolution,” but in doing so, he has lost control of the flames. (EGX) Capitalism and revolution, both, are fires, unstable, volatile, and hungry. To say that Abe is sacked with a grim burden would be putting it lightly. He is responsible for the lives of hundreds of Mudokon at any one time, now being actively stamped out and pursued in an attempt to cauterize a wound which is still, in the eyes of the Glukkon, festering.
In Oddysee and Exoddus, the Mudokon are portrayed as a monolith - their models and designs are an exercise in cut and paste. All 399 of the slaves in the first two installments exist to be rescued, following Abe's orders in lieu of the Slig and taking no active part in their emancipation. The game refers to them only as Mudokon, and Abe too speaks strictly of the collective: “so me and some others went to help them,” he says, with regards to his plan to stop the sale of Brew in Exoddus. They are cattle to both the Glukkon and the player – an entity to guide from point A to point B and nothing more, like lemmings to the slaughter.
Abe speaks for the entire people and represents all of the limited viewpoints we will experience. He is defined by his relation to work on Oddworld, and the Mudokon, too, exist only in those absolutes. The game needs them to break up the monotony of difficult puzzles and constant deaths the player will encounter through their exploration of Glukkon factories. Further, the player is encouraged to kill them, their deaths serve as splatstick punchlines to the grimmest of jokes. The instruction manual of the second game glibly states that, “there is no truth to the rumor that a secret bonus awaits those players who kill nearly all the Mudokon. No truth at all.” It is a strange tone to take with a series that would, ultimately, frame the rescuing of Mudokon as the primary goal. The either/or of death/salvation decided by a single character is a recurring fascination across games, as well as an easy way to frame morality and the path to the good ending: in Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007), do you save the Little Sisters or harvest them? In Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015), do you befriend the monsters or slaughter them? Oddysee, too, partakes of this dehumanizing system: the Mudokons are not people. Not to the Glukkon, to Abe, to the player, or even to the developer. They are a goal to aim for, an exercise in achieving a perfect score.
In Soulstorm, we have named Mudokon in addition to the glut of new ones to save (over 1,300 this time around), and these new Mudokon are redesigned to stand apart from Abe. During the game’s opening, we are introduced to Alf and Toby, depicted now with a glut of emotions from fear to anguish, a far cry from their original nameless, stoic counterparts. Cut to a slave not running but fleeing. He is shot, clutching something to his chest. He dies a little later on, having handed over his package to Abe, and his role in the narrative is fulfilled, name unknown, his existence summed up by his second-class position. Abe is troubled by his death and casts him one final glance before setting off on his adventure but this scene acts more to build upon Abe's new character than to characterize the Mudokon. We knew, already, that they were enslaved and brutalized.
Whilst this scene is harrowing, and most certainly helps to introduce the darker tone of Soulstorm, his death means little within the game. It exists to be sad, to make Abe more three-dimensional, not to highlight the plight of the Mudokon or cement the stakes with which Oddworld now plays. Alf and Toby are shown escaping in tandem with Abe and coordinating their own factions of the resistance, and yet they will always defer to Abe. Above all else, Abe is still the center of the Mudokon world, his name never far from any of their lips, and he stands as the mascot for a new Oddworld. Without Abe and the player, the Mudokon are lost both within Oddworld, and external to the narrative.
Further, in this game where the death of a single slave was used to forefront Abe's new emotional depth, the countless slaves who die in the events of Soulstorm are given no such courtesy. Lanning, again, focuses upon this in his talks about the game, at once emphasizing their newer, more sympathetic portrayal and the fact that they will, ultimately, be victim to violence from both player and villain: "they're getting more endearing like Toby [...] if you're gonna have a really dark and intense world you need even sweeter guys to like, light on fire or something." (EGX) The Mudokon exist to save, not to speak. More tellingly, the Mudokon exist to die, killed by frustrated players after a gauntlet of levels. The levity made some sense with the black comedy of Oddysee and Exoddus, but in the newer, crueler world of Soulstorm, it is misplaced. We are shown the effect that the death of a single slave has upon Abe, and yet they still exist as a splatstick punchline, ready to die at a moment's provocation. The world is larger, the levels longer, the stakes never higher, and yet Oddworld has never felt more hollow.
A Mudokon lying dead after having delivered a message to Abe in Soulstorm.
This renewed focus on characterisation expands not only to the Mudokon but their Glukkon overlords and Slig police force. Soulstorm seeks to recontextualise their actions and their place within the capitalist system that, it is emphasized, hurts everyone. Molluck is in trouble with the “creepy Magog cartel investors” for the events at Rupture Farms, and he in turn abuses the Slig who still ally themselves with him. In this new Oddworld, capitalism hurts everyone, but this ignores that Molluck ran a factory-come-slaughterhouse. His exploitation is hardly equivalent to the Mudokens, but Soulstorm’s flattened politics are uninterested in examining these power dynamics.
The brunt of the renewed focus on character revolves around the Quarma system, the most blatant of new-age appropriations present in the game. Quarma, in Oddworld, is nothing new. Like Mudokon allegory, Abe's shrunken head, and the tribal masks of Oddysee, Quarma is the Oddworld version of new-age mysticism, taken and translated into its factories. It existed in soft forms in both original titles, and more obviously in Munch’s Oddysee as a way to accrue good or bad endings. But by Soulstorm, like everything else, it has been expanded upon, most obliquely in how the game approaches violence as the primary method of obtaining good and bad Quarma. On the surface, the Quarma allusion of “do good, receive good” creates a mechanical moral complexity to Oddworld that was hitherto untouched – Abe can spare Sligs for the biggest boost outside of rescuing slaves, for example – but practically, it amounts to a black-and-white doctrine of “do no harm against your oppressors, lest you be as bad as them.”
The question of whether or not the Sligs deserve kindness is not something Oddworld has sought to tackle before, although the intent was always to make the Slig less villainous. Lanning has emphasized as much:
“Marketing and the press usually refer to the Glukkons and Sligs as evil. We've never seen them this way. Our perspective is that they all have a valid point of view; because they've all had extremely different evolutionary paths.” (Oddworld Library)
Whilst in theory this side steps the common fantasy pitfall of the “evil” race which exists to give players something to fight against, there is no effort spent defining the Slig as anything but violent.
From Oddyssey up to its remake and beyond, the Slig have stalked the factory floors, wielding machine guns and delighting in beating Mudokon slaves. This also extends to players: when they take over a Slig they can, among other things, beat a Mudokon to death. To fight back against this in their own language of violence, Soulstorm posits, makes you as Quarmically bad as them, as if the violence of enslavement and liberation are in any way equivalent. To suggest that the Slig got to where they are because of some evolutionary development is the same logic that propels real world slavery as “natural.” Mudokon culture has been subjugated, violently stamped out by corporations that view their lives as expendable in light of profits. Lanning has said, “the story of Abe's Oddysee is just a vehicle to imply that we should take a good look at what it is that we do and what it is that we think we live in.” (Oddworld Library) This was insufficient in 1997, and feels even more hollow almost three decades later. The politics of Oddworld have eroded, to a point where the proletariat fable takes a step back and in its place, a glut of centrism that refuses to point fingers.
In 2023, even loosely leftist politics in games is an ongoing culture war, one which has developers actively denying the politics of their games in order to appeal to a certain type of reactionary gamer. The new shape Oddworld has taken reflects that in its cowardly equivalences. It is a peek into the new politics of Oddworld: that to revolt, one must not be revolting, that violence is not OK even in service of revolution. Gone is the counterculture, and in its place, frustrated political neutrality. In the end, all are expendable, even the morals the game says it is teaching us.
Abe as seen in Soulstorm.
Abe himself is not free of the rewrites of Oddworld, nor is he free of the pressures of being the face of a commercial product. Initially envisioned as a comic protagonist, an absurd foil to the bleak realities of Oddworld, Abe existed in such a manner because to do anything else would have negatively affected Oddworld's bottom line. Lanning, speaking in 1997, highlighted the conscious decision towards comedy that Oddysee and Exoddus took, mostly as a consequence of the graphical and engine limitations of the time: “[...] To do serious characters in a medium that is still very difficult to communicate ANY sort of character authenticity or personality, would probably be commercial suicide.” (Oddworld Library)
In the original games, Abe was an accidental hero. By Munch's Oddysee, Abe’s identity has fully eroded, now comic protagonist first, revolutionary second. He refers to himself as a “fellow chump,” and claims his rebellion was unintentional; that he was simply trying to get out of a bad job. “Usually when I leave a mean place like that, it blows up," he quips. He pushed the detonation button but Munch's Oddysee would have us believe his actions were entirely accidental. His efforts and labor are devalued by a narrative that seeks to reduce him to the comic sum of his parts, rather than an active participant in the emancipation of his people.
Flashforward to Soulstorm and the new Abe is a polar opposite of that slapdash hero. He is brooding and insecure, with full lines of dialogue rather than words. He has once again been recontextualised for a game that needs him to be something new, something better, something marketable. Abe exists in a flux of identities: he is the original hero who trips into a revolution, a vessel for fart jokes and blackly comic deaths, and he is also Abe in Soulstorm, whose identity is at the fore and to whom a dying slave says “soon the whole Oddworld will know you.” Gone is the everyman Abe and in his place, Abe is savior of his people and the Oddworld brand, the mascot for a franchise and a revolution both in-game and out.
A vista overlooking Oddworld from Stranger’s Wrath.
Abe, in destroying corporations, is saving not only himself or his people, but the natural environment of Oddworld. He, and by extension the Mudokon, have a deep connection to the natural world. This, however, plays into several increasingly colonial tropes and in doing so, Oddworld joins the likes of Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) in both its environmental message and its appropriations of indigenous cultures. Like Avatar, the criticisms of colonialism fall short when the game engages in strictly colonial ideals of what indigenous people are: guardians of the planet, custodians of the natural way of things, existing to protect and nourish through their deep, spiritual connection to the land.
In his active destruction of an unnatural factory, Abe is the guardian of the natural order. In visions, he is told of the Scrab and Paramites natural place, and of the divine reverence with which Mudokon once viewed them, before they were meat. Native Mudokon live in the Monsaic Lines, chanting and praying and meditating to the tune of a drum. Bigface, a shaman, wears a tribal mask, and ghosts speak to Abe, entreating him to save their bones. The Mudokon is an inherently spiritual creature in touch with the land and its denizens, a representation that plays into an overwhelmingly colonial framework of real-world “noble savage” attitudes towards indigenous peoples. A later game, Stranger’s Wrath, goes so far as to end on a quote from a real life Native American man, lest we forget where the franchise poached its aesthetics.
“On the other hand, the metaphors and tropes that build Abe's narrative are clumsy appropriations of misinterpretations of Native American religion, African tribal masks, and all around New Age-y aesthetics. The narrative of "we are all oppressed by these awful conditions" rings true, but the way that the game visualizes that argument is, frankly, bad.” (Kunzelman)
The Oddworld we have traversed thus far, exists always in two halves, that of the natural landscape and that of the industrial, the latter always infringing upon the former. There is beauty on Oddworld, yes, all the more beautiful because of the razor wire. Author Sam Zucchi, writing in Heterotopias, says “[...] because the landscape is a colonized one, it presumes a metropole; it is never a place in its own right, but always periphery, a satellite that orbits Rome, London, Paris or Washington.” (Zucchi) To put it simply, Oddworld exists as a colonized landscape and as a landscape of the colonized, and neither could be expressed without the other. The naturalistic, often tribal lands are only relevant within the confines of the factories that dominate the narrative. On Oddworld, the metropole is the factory, where the majority of each game is set, and the natural landscape exists for no real reason other than to highlight the brutality of industry. Like the dying slave of Soulstorm, the natural land of Oddworld is not inhabited or mediated upon, it is purely metaphorical.
The stories Oddworld tells and references would not make sense without their real-world contexts. It does not contextualize them within Oddworld but simply holds up a funhouse mirror to the experiences of real people. Of course, this wouldn't inherently be bad – many fictional stories have done so, and not every analogy Oddworld uses is appropriated – but enough of them are that a pattern is identified. Robbed of their real-world context, these stories become simple allegories for the politics Oddworld is trying to sell, a politics that is blind to its own liberal use of colonialism. Oddworld seeks to highlight injustice and cause us to reflect on real-life atrocities, but can only do so by co-opting indigenous cultures. Oddworld, without its warped framework of colonial history, loses its reference points and meaning entirely.
Over its decades of development and numerous games, Oddworld has taken many forms and identities as its own, from the tribal African masks of Bigface to the Native American allegories embedded throughout the franchise. The characters and politics too, have shifted on an almost game-by-game basis leading to a series that is both tonally discordant and consistent in its inconsistencies. Oddworld wants to be popular, first and foremost, and it is unafraid to throw its ideology in the meat grinder in pursuit of bombast and wider appeal.
Citations
“A Critical Examination of Oddworld: Soulstorm.” YouTube, uploaded by Writing on Games, 5 May 2021, youtu.be/KDnk0AvLcD4.
“An interview with Lorne Lanning” Oddworld Library, oddworldlibrary.net/wiki/Archive:An_interview_with_Lorne_Lanning. Accessed 12 Sept. 2023.
“Brewing Oddworld: Soulstorm with Lorne Lanning from EGX 2017.” YouTube, uploaded by EGX, 22 September 2017, youtu.be/L3zdCg4tbOc.
“Lorne Lanning of Oddworld Inhabitants: Extended Interview.” YouTube, uploaded by Ars Technica, 30 January 2020, youtu.be/BNgPNeCVo30.
“New 'N' Tasty / Abe's Oddysee Comparison.” YouTube, uploaded by Matthewmatosis, 25 August 2014, youtu.be/QkhDrngAQZ0.
Brightman, James. “Capitalism killing games and the world - Lanning” GamesIndustry.biz, 26 Mar. 2015, www.gamesindustry.biz/capitalism-killing-games-and-the-world-lanning.
Chaplin, Heather, and Aaron Ruby. Smartbomb : the Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution. Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005. pp. 20.
Kunzelman, Cameron. “Abe's Selective Solidarity in Oddworld's Revolution” 22 Sept. 2017, www.vice.com/en/article/8x88xx/abes-selective-solidarity-in-oddworlds-revolution.
Ramsay, Morgan. Gamers at Work : Stories Behind the Games People Play. New York: Apress, 2012. pp. 209-250.
Rueben, Nic. “Games That Changed Our Lives: ‘Oddworld Abe’s Exoddus’” Goomba Stomp, 8 Feb. 2016, goombastomp.com/games-that-changed-our-lives-oddworld-abes-exoddus/.
Sinclair, Brendan. “The irony of Oddworld” GamesIndustry.biz, 25 July 2019, www.gamesindustry.biz/the-irony-of-oddworld.
Warrick, Douglas F. “Oddworld remains the cutest parable of proletariat uprising ever made” Killscreen, 21 Apr. 2015, killscreen.com/previously/articles/oddworld-remains-cutest-parable-proletariat-uprising-ever-made/.
Zucchi, Sam. “The Wretched of Oddworld”. Heterotopias, vol 4, 2018. pp. 17-28.
Jessica Hill (she/they) is a disabled, queer, nonbinary pixel artist and (occasional) writer. Read more of their writing on Substack, and find their art (along with ways to support them) on Kofi and Patreon. Follow them on Twitter @gothycrip for streams of consciousness, mostly revolving around old games, monsters, horror, and cats.
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