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Oddworld: Strangers Wrath HD release date annouced.

wwm0nkey

Member
EU release date is December 21st
NA release date is December 27th

Press release:

Hey everyone, it’s that time AT LAST! I wanted to first thank you all for your patience, it’s been a long wait, but at the same time it’s been even longer for us. We’ve been working on Stranger’s Wrath, one way or another for around 15 months now. From the initial discussions, to actually starting work on the project true, to then getting it done!

As most of you may know we originally planned to release the game around Easter, to be able to do that we were to have started full development in September last year, but as it transpired, we didn’t actually start until April 2011, which gave us our hoped late Summer release; but we ended up spending another couple of months on it, so here we are DONE AND DUSTED for release.

As such I’m extremely pleased to announce that Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD will release on December 27th in North America for $14.99. And we will be releasing worldwide! (all stores, except for the Far East/Russia/Ukraine and Portugal at this time).

We had planned on shipping with support for stereoscopic 3D and PlayStation Move and a few other little things, due to time limits we are not able to bring those features in this initial version. However we WILL be bringing them in an update in a couple months’ time, along with some other little extras we’ve got planned.

One of things we’ve been asked a lot over the past few months is if Stranger’s Wrath HD has a Platinum trophy, of course it does. This is a big game and can easily take at least 12+hrs to complete.

So what’s been updated in the HD version …


Characters

All 84 character models have been updated with increased polygon counts and higher resolution textures.
Wolvark Sloghandlers now release Slogs instead of Slegs.
Professor Dimble now has glasses and an academic tome.
New female voices have been recorded for two characters.
Made Blisterz Booty unkillable.

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Environments

All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
A lot of environment now reflects in water where it didn’t before.
Many, many pipes and barrels were rounded.
New Easter Eggs added to the game.
Added Blisterz Booty’s broken crud gun to the floor by his bola’d body.
Sekto’s Office has been changed to more closely resemble than seen in the FMV.

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Audio

All game audio (voice, sound effects and music) have been upgraded to 16-bit 44KHz from 8-bit 11KHz or less!
Support for 5.1, Dolby Digitial and DTS.

Display

Everything now runs at 720p, 60 FPS, and in widescreen.
All menus have been updated with a new design based on original unused concepts.
New posters now occupy the inventory menu when no bounty is accepted.

Difficulty

All armour upgrades now actually increase Stranger’s health.
Added difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Medium and Hard.
In Easy mode:
Stranger has twice the health
Enemies have half the health and stamina
Enemies’ stamina recovers half as fast
In Normal Mode:
Stranger’s health and armour for later in the game have been re-balanced.
In Hard mode:
Stranger has a third less health.
Enemies stamina recovers a third quicker.

Unlockables

37 Trophies: 23 bronze, 8 silver, 5 gold, 1 platinum
37 pieces of unlockable concept art
Five unlockable movies

Once again, thanks for waiting as long as you have, we certainly hope you’ll enjoy the game, and if the review scores we’re starting to get in are anything to go by, you will!

Happy holidays everyone!
 

Carl

Member
They hinted at PS+ discount in EU blog comments

Filesize is just over 3GB i believe

As for why it isn't releasing on the same week in both coutries - Oddworld Inhabitants "SCEA advised us against releasing it on the 20th as apparently there's like 25 other games out that day."
 

Princess Skittles

Prince's's 'Skittle's
Mmm, finally a PS3 exclusive I can put my Tales of Graces box to work on.

I've been meaning to try this since it's hyped up a lot here.
 

Tizoc

Member
They hinted at PS+ discount in EU blog comments

Filesize is just over 3GB i believe

As for why it isn't releasing on the same week in both coutries - Oddworld Inhabitants "SCEA advised us against releasing it on the 20th as apparently there's like 25 other games out that day."

So 4 Gigs huh? Cool, will get it day 1 most likely =)
 

BeEatNU

WORLDSTAAAAAAR
I am excite, I love the Oddworld series, it's a shame the original style like Abes Odyssey and Exodus didn't live on.

Would be nice in this HD world.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Can't wait. I really enjoyed playing it back when it was released, but I've forgotten a lot about the experience so I'm eager to play it again.
 

Azar

Member
Stranger's Wrath is seriously one of the most perfectly designed games I've ever played. Can't wait to replay it when these updates make it over to the PC; grabbed the Oddbox day one last year.
 

Carl

Member
It could go on GoD like RE4 or Crysis, actually I think the real reason it's not going to XBLA is because MS don't recognise Oddworld Inhabitants as a publisher. Such a retarded policy.

Apparently it has to have sold in excess of a million copies before it's allowed on GoD, which Stranger didn't do.

Or something
 

Mrbob

Member
It could go on GoD like RE4 or Crysis, actually I think the real reason it's not going to XBLA is because MS don't recognise Oddworld Inhabitants as a publisher. Such a retarded policy.

People assume this, but could it really? You said it yourself regarding publishing. RE4 is published by Capcom and Crysis is published by EA. Big retail partners for MS. Strangers Wrath is a digital only game, and Just Add Water doesn't have the pull these other two big publishers have. I'm sure they would take the GoD option if it were available to them.
 

batbeg

Member
I look forward to playing this, but...

As most of you may know we originally planned to release the game around Easter, to be able to do that we were to have started full development in September last year, but as it transpired, we didn’t actually start until April 2011, which gave us our hoped late Summer release; but we ended up spending another couple of months on it, so here we are DONE AND DUSTED for release.

How does this sound like a positive thing to tell the people who were waiting? "Hey guys, we know we said this and that, but it was a lot of bullshit, lawls."

Either way, good shit, always wanted to play this.
 

CozMick

Banned
Definitely picking this up, been playing the PS1 classics recently.

Good to see the upgrade is coming along nicely :)
 
Apparently it has to have sold in excess of a million copies before it's allowed on GoD, which Stranger didn't do.

Or something

No slight against you, but that sounds like bullshit policy. Cave was able to get Deathsmiles 2 on XBL's GoD and I know that game didn't sell a million copies.
 

Withnail

Member
There are surely many games on GoD which haven't sold a million copies. It's more likely to be MS's known aversion to indie publishing. Presumably Oddworld Inhabitants should be letting someone else publish their game or stick to XBLIG. LOL
 

wwm0nkey

Member
It could go on GoD like RE4 or Crysis, actually I think the real reason it's not going to XBLA is because MS don't recognise Oddworld Inhabitants as a publisher. Such a retarded policy.

hey if this version sells over 2 million it can come to GoD :p
 
I don't suppose they'll be updating the already-released PC version with the new visuals, will they? The original version's textures look like poo poo with the game running in 1920x1200. Hard to believe that this was considered one of the best looking Xbox games.
 

Aselith

Member

wwm0nkey

Member
I don't suppose they'll be updating the PC version with the new visuals, will they? The original version's textures look like poo poo with the game running in 1920x1200. Hard to believe that this was considered one of the best looking Xbox games.

The HD update for the PC version hits in the months. It also fixes the ATI issues with rendering.
 
So they managed to get the Aus/NZ release this year? Nice, will buy (whereas if it were delayed I probably would've just waited for it to go on sale).

As for the release date, I imagine after Christmas wasn't even an option for SCEE because that'd require them to work after Christmas and we all know that's impossible (still bitter over buying Tales of Monkey Island last Christmas, finding out that they'd accidentally removed 4 of the 5 episodes and waiting 2-3 weeks for them to actually fix it).
 

Carl

Member
My mistake. Here's what the Oddworld website says on the matter

Unfortunately, Stranger’s Wrath HD exceeds the 2GB limit on XBLA titles, and we’re unable to publish via Games on Demand because we haven’t published two disc products (Stranger and Munch were originally published by other companies). We have not given up and are in ongoing communication with Microsoft.
 
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