Oddworld: Soulstorm is quite a bizarre game as some don’t know if it is a remake or not. Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty was a remake of the first game from 1997, which naturally sets up this title, developer Oddworld Inhabitants next game, as a remake of the Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. Here’s where Oddworld: Soulstorm is a remake or not and the story behind it.
Is Oddworld: Soulstorm a remake of Abe’s Exoddus?
Oddworld: Soulstorm is not a full remake of Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. It is a new game completely built for modern hardware. However, it’s not quite that cut and dried as there are many parts of Soulstorm that have been inspired by Exoddus.
Lorne Lanning, co-founder and creative director of Oddworld Inhabitants and the director and writer of Soulstorm, originally envisioned Abe’s journey as a five-part story. GT Interactive, the game’s original publisher, liked how Oddworld made its holiday 1997 release date, unlike the publisher’s other titles like Prey, Duke Nuke 64, and Unreal that all were delayed. That reliability made GT push Lanning and his team to make another game by holiday 1998.
This was not enough time to get a full sequel out of the door so the team compromised and made Exoddus instead. Lanning himself said in an interview with Ars Technica that it wasn’t the part two he wanted to make, but it was more of a “bonus game.” He said Exoddus was “not the story he wanted to make with the brew.”
Soulstorm is that true follow-up to the original game. Lanning said that “Soulstorm is going to be what that second title’s story was supposed to be, except at least now we have 21st-century tech.” He later said on the PlayStation Blog that the studio had to “chop and cut down” their original vision and Exoddus “was a wildly different story and experience” than what he had envisioned for this “grand dream.”
Lanning also then stated that Soulstorm was his “grand dream come true” before then plainly saying it was a new game.
“Oddworld: Soulstorm is not a remake in the traditional sense,” he said. “Remakes are very popular right now and we have seen several wonderful games in that vein recently. Soulstorm differs in that it builds on what we originally wanted to do 22 years ago.”
