[Interview] Just Add Water talks Oddworld, recreating the atmosphere of a PS1 title, and why it took this long for them to work with Nintendo

NE: First things first: Playing any good games these days that you didn’t have a hand in creating? The Last of Us? Earthbound, perhaps?

SJG: I’ve just finished playing “The Last of Us” absolutely fantastic, brilliant game. Currently waiting for the usual slew of titles in Q3/Q4 of the year. Saying that right now I’m not getting much time to play games at the moment, what with trying to get all these wonderful Oddworld titles finished.

Can you give us a brief overview of Stranger’s Wrath and New ‘n’ Tasty? What would particularly interest Wii U owners?

a. Stranger’s Wrath HD is an exciting action adventure game with plenty of humour throughout. One of the things that always broke up the game play for me was the fact that on most platforms you had pause the game to a degree to change weapons. With the WiiU version we now have the ability to use the sub screen for weapon selection, thus not having to pause the game play.

b. With New ‘n’ Tasty, the player has to remember this is a classic platform game, with the main difference now being that it’s had a massive overhaul in its visual’ but that hasn’t taken away from the original game at all. The gameplay is still that classic 2d platform game action, with a bunch of added extra’s with the realtime 3D throughout.

The environments come to life, the camera moves smoothly around the world, there are creatures in the backgrounds. In the original title there was a lot of limitations due to the technology at the time. With this remake we don’t have those limitations so we’ve gone to town bringing this world to life.

Do you have plans on how to/if you will use any Wii U features such as Miiverse or GamePad specific functionality with either of these games? Will off-TV play be supported?

We will be using some gamepad specific stuff with the sub-screen on the pad, but right now that’s about it.

Why bring both games over to Wii U at this point in its life? Do you see something churning there that gives you hope for your sales potential down the line?

Why not? Nintendo invited us to work on the system, so we looked at our currently set of projects and decided that doing Stranger and New ‘n’ Tasty would be nice additions to the system.

Do you find it at all more difficult or frustrating to port over to Wii U when compared to other systems? How much different is it getting something to run on Wii U compared to other more developmentally homogenous systems like PC or PS4?

Not really, as with Stranger we use OpenGL for our rendering pipeline, this is something that is available to developers of the WiiU. Also with New ‘n’ Tasty we are using Unity to build the game, something else that is available for the WiiU, so right now there isn’t really anything to get in the way for us.

You’ve said that these HD remakes are a useful way to both reward longtime fans and to fund future, original projects. If enough folks pick up New ‘n’ Tasty and Stranger’s Wrath on Wii U, can we expect those future, original projects to end up on the system?

I can’t see why not, we’ve already spoken internally about this, and if we sell sufficient units on WiiU then we will support the system again.

How about something like Munch’s Oddysee HD on Wii U? Will this game ever be considered for the console?

I’m afraid not. Munch is built on extremely old tech, to bring it to PS3 and VITA was quite a struggle because of this, and it’s not one I’d want to repeat with WiiU, sorry.

How has it been working with Nintendo? Is it true that the company specifically asked for a Wii U version of Stranger’s Wrath HD?

Indeed, their developer relations man is a fan of the franchise so reached out to us to ask for that title specifically, that’s where the discussions started. In terms of what are they like to work with, they’re fantastic. I’ve NEVER had a problem with working with Nintendo in respect of their people and teams, it’s been a case of a problem in terms of the hardware and indeed the lack of a competent digital outlet, until now.

When recreating something like Abe’s Oddysee, how much effort do you put into the thin layer of social commentary that was present in the original title? Is that something you feel a need to expand upon or downplay?

Oh never downplay, that’s what Oddworld is all about, it’s about that little guy vs the big corporation, that is still very much there. Not really expanded upon, but definitely not played down. You know, Abe is this meat worker who just happens to have been chosen to help his fellow Mudokons to escape, but only because he finds out he and his kin are to be turned into lunch!

What has been the most difficult thing about the creation of New ‘n’ Tasty? Any particular parts of the PS1 classic that were tough to replicate or re-imagine?

I think it’s safe to say there have been a couple of hurdles to get right, the first and largest is the lighting in the game. Where the original title was all pre-rendered 3D then had some photoshopped parts afterwards, we can’t do that in realtime 3D, so to get the lighting right and effective has taken months of experimentation, but it’s something we’re extremely passionate about. We spend a lot of time with Lorne [Lanning] working with the environment artists testing things, changing and tweaking things to make sure it looks as it should. The other thing is audio, we had NO audio reference from the original title other than the game itself, so we’ve had to recreate everything from scratch in that area.

Anything else you care to share, either with Wii U owners/Nintendo fans or just for everyone?

I guess just thank you for all the support, we hope you love both games when they release in 2014.

Both games– Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD and Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty are set to hit the Wii U eShop sometime next year. Fans of platformers, be aware!