Maxis Co-Founder Confirms Oddworld Return

Jeff Braun, the man who co-founded Maxis with Will Wright, has confirmed that he is working with Oddworld Inhabitants on a new Oddworld game.

Speaking at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, Braun said of the team, "They're such a talented group of people and I really trust their ability to create compelling content." He said that the upcoming game will have a cinematic quality on a "one to one scale" with CGI-based films.

Braun praised the quality of the tools now available to devs. "The rendering tools are getting so good now for 3D animation that you can literally create a linear animation and create a video game using the exact same objects.... The tools are finally getting to the level where we can come out with a show and we can come up with a game", said Braun.

Braun apparently hinted that the next Oddworld game could be episodic.

The news may come as a surprise to some, as Oddworld Inhabitants supposedly retired from the games industry in 2005 to work in film on a property called Citizen Seige. The studio's co-founder Lorne Lanning savaged the games industry, criticising an Electronic Arts business model that he said saw no marketing resources put behind Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath because it wasn't multi-platform.

No platform for the upcoming Oddworld game has been announced and Braun said that a slow production schedule could make it "years" before the game sees release.

^{Source: Cordweekly}