Interview | Lorne Lanning on Oddworld

Strangers in the night…

Interview: Lorne Lanning on Oddworld

The Oddworld series became a 1990s cult classic. Now, Daniel Lipscombe catches up with creator Lorne Lanning to discuss his aims for the series.

A HIGH-PITCHED and warbled voice speaks only one word: “Hello.” A bizarre and almost spooky looking creature peers through a hole in the menu screen and looks at you  affectionately with wide eyes. Despite his alien appearance, Abe is lovely to look at, not only for being a well-designed lead character but because he genuinely looks inviting. He’s a welcome change from many other successful gaming characters.

That voice was supplied by Lorne Lanning, the creator of Abe and, in fact, the world that surrounds him. The environment of Oddworld is a captivating one; this is a  place full of creatures much stranger than Abe – and, in fact, a lot scarier.

It’s no coincidence that Abe, Munch and even Stranger to an extent look kind and humble: they have to be a polar opposite to their enemy. The Oddworld games have a sense of the fairytale about them, with a downtrodden protagonist who wants nothing more than to be happy, and standing in his way a hideous creature whose nefarious plans would destroy everything sacred and pure. Oddworld heightens that edge by making the sinister characters look unappealing and shrewd.

I had the pleasure to ask creator Lorne Lanning about his characters and the world that surrounded them. As someone who is drawn to Oddworld, I wanted to know what he thought drew gamers in to his creation. “I’ve heard most often that it was their connection to Abe,” Lanning says. “I think the ultra-innocence of his character set against the diabolical backdrop of the corporately dominated world he lived in was something that gave the experience a light heart, but with relevant content that people could relate to. Something they weren’t, and maybe still aren’t, getting a lot of out there.

“Each of the species on Oddworld, at least the sentient ones, is reflecting a certain trait of humanity, a certain behaviour that we can relate to and know from our own world,” Lanning continues. “We wanted to take these human behaviours and break them into unique species. The idea was that the general moral behaviour of say, the banking class, should be represented as a unique species.”

Above and beyond

It’s obvious that those who played Lanning’s creations were experiencing much more than a puzzle platformer or an action game. There was heart and soul in every being and every moment in the franchise. “The character design was a good place to start looking at what we were going to create,” Lanning postulates. “It set some deep thinking into the core make-up of these rather silly characters- giving us a rich soil out of which a lot of creative exploration, both in design and character depth, could grow.”

And so the fairytale comparison moves onwards. We have archetypal characters with big dreams and a rich environment for them to thrive. But just like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, Lanning and his production team wove a wonderful plot into each game, full of morals and humanity. As Cinderella stepped from an oppressive shadow, so too did Abe. And who can forget the moment when Stranger revealed his secret and became the saviour of his people?

As a younger version of myself, I never really saw that moral standing clearly – perhaps the fart jokes got in the way. After revisiting the franchise as an adult, Abe’s story became a beautiful tale that inspired me, and after talking to Lanning it’s clear that the morality of the Oddworld tales was a large part of its creation. “I think these issues, morals and ethics, are a core human challenge, particularly in our modern times,” he says. “It was in the ‘80s that I began to learn just how dirty many things were when looked at from behind the scenes. That’s when Abe’s character development began. I wanted Abe to balance against the extremely morally corrupt that I also wanted to portray in his adversaries.”

Continues…

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