‘Oddworld’
The first time you die in Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, you might be shocked at how violent it is. For a game that presents itself as full of cartoonish aesthetics and adorable characters, its deaths are gory and unforgiving, and there will be many of them. The game is unforgiving in its difficulty, but it uses that shock to tell a surprisingly mature and trenchant tale of oppression and liberation.
For those unfamiliar, Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is a remake of the 1997 PlayStation classic, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Both games are brutal side-scrolling platformers following the adventures of a cute little guy named Abe. Abe is a Mudokon, a species of creatures inhabiting Oddworld used as slaves in the massive industrial machine of RuptureFarms, a meat-processing corporation run by the ruthless Glukkons, another species of Oddworld. Abe accidentally eavesdrops on an executive meeting where the head Glukkon tells his board members that profits are down. As always, when profits are down, the workers suffer.
The plan is to use the Mudokons as meat in order to drive profits back up. Abe flees the scene and journeys out of the industrial nightmare of RuptureFarms through the blasted ecological wasteland the Glukkons have created of his home, deep into the jungle where the native Mudokons still live, all the while freeing as many enslaved Mudokons as he can. Along the way, Abe discovers ancient powers tied to the traditions of his people. Not only are these powers helpful, but they reconnect Abe with the cultural heritage that was taken away from him by his exploitation in the factory.
Popular entertainment loves to play the revolutionary, paying lip service to empowering the weak and tearing down the powerful. But Oddworld succeeds at being truly subversive. It is an absolutely brutal takedown of capitalism in all its ugliest forms — exploitation of workers, destruction of the environment, maximum profits at the expense of whoever is caught in the crossfire. Even race plays a role in the clear divide between the enslaved Mudokons and the privileged Glukkons.
Oddworld’s powerful message works because there are no abstractions (apart from being set on an alien planet called Oddworld, of course). You’re not just told of the exploitation of the workers; you are exploited. The devastation of the planet isn’t implied; it’s lived by the player. Oddworld’s oppressive atmosphere is baked right into the world and the gameplay.
For all its cartoonish aesthetics, Oddworld is unafraid of telling a story that’s as important now as it was when the original was released. It’s a wacky platform that tackles oppression, capitalism, worker’s rights, genocide and climate change. For all the strangeness going on in Oddworld, some things feel uncomfortably familiar.
