Even though it lived under the radar when it first came out, FPS/third-person hybrid Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath managed to win a loyal cult following in the years since its 2005 release. So, news of a remastered HD edition was met by joyous surprise by those who loved the Western-inflected shooter from Oddworld Inhabitants. Stranger's Wrath HD is being handled by Just Add Water and they're showing off the work done so far in a new post on the official PlayStation Blog, accompanied by news that the game's going to be available for download on 12/27 for $14.99
Along with the redone character work shown above, studio CEO Stewart Gilray details the following sorts of changes:
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.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
That's a lot of elbow grease to go into a game that's more than five years old. We'll get to see how it feels when Stranger's Wrath HD hits PSN in three weeks.
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD Comes to PSN December 27th [PlayStation Blog]