So we tested the waters with New 'n' Tasty, and the response was great. We polled the audience: What do you want to see next? And they replied with, "Do Abe's Exoddus!" I groaned, but then I looked at that: Exoddus was a game that we only had nine months on, a game I was never expecting to make. But I've looked at that game, for the next one, for Soulstorm – I've looked at what the old story was, and rewritten the whole thing. The drink, Soulstorm Brew, is still at the center of things, but that's where the similarities end.
What we really want to do with Soulstorm is make it devious, highly volatile. And also, we're working with these ideas: In the first game, it's about Abe awaking from being a slave. He's the catalyst for more following his lead—they all realize they're not employees, they're slaves. No allegories to our world there, of course.
And in the next one, the original intent for part two was that the slaves wake up to the fact they're also slaves to their own habits, and addictions. So that's where this Brew, this drink, comes in—it's enslaving people around the world.
But Brew is sticky, and highly flammable. A long time ago, we designed mechanics for liquid fire, like napalm, but with the ability to splash surfaces and coat things, and then ignite it. We've got that going now. And what falls out of that is actually extreme comedy.
People were asking: is the next game going to be darker? And it is, because Abe's going through a heavier trip, and realizing it's not all fun and games, and realizing the scope of his task. He never signed up for this, to save the world; he just sort of stumbled into it. So we're getting more into what I wanted Abe's Exoddus to originally be. It's an all-new game; a reboot, I suppose, rather than a remake. But it definitely still has that Oddworld humor, it's honestly more hilarious than it ever was.
We have to get the game out in 2017. I suffer every time I provide a specific date, because people will take that as gospel, that it will be out then—when what we mean is we'd like to have it out by then. But, we feel it has to be in 2017, and so I'm on this night and day, until it delivers, and that's just how it is.
