Within the Bounty Stores across Oddworld locales are curious fortune teller machines. As a child I had seen my fair share of bonus reel trailers for upcoming games, I had, when I was six, binged and gorged myself on repeated playthroughs and viewings of the Official Xbox Magazine demo discs, replaying an ill-fated prologue level of a sixth gen remake of Spyhunter a number of times equals or greater to that game’s final sales figures. This is all to say I was familiar with the visual language of V I D E O G A M E T R A I L E R and using this knowledge I understood the fortune teller machines to be teases for a sequel.
How bizarre. A fully realised trailer for a sequel living inside the game that it is in of itself succeeding? Ludicrous. As much as I was mistaken about the nature of these audio-visual premonitions I wasn’t far off the truth. The sequel to Oddworlds Stranger’s Wrath exists within itself.
The Fortune Teller machines depict gameplay from Stranger’s point of view using (depending on how far into the game you are) familiar and yet blatantly improved weapons in landscapes that seem more varied and complex than the ones you are currently navigating. The first time I viewed these videos, I felt a desire to burn through the game and realise what had been foretold. On a hot summer day in 2009, with a portable screen attached to my Xbox, nine-year old me sat in his bedroom cranked through the required encounters to see the fortune teller’s predictions come true. Three quarters of the way through the story is a pivotal reveal, a tone shift and a promise kept that propelled me through the last chunk of gameplay.
Some decade and a half later I can tell you another truth. Spoilers are good actually. People will argue whether you can spoil gameplay and that discourse doesn’t matter to me because I like being spoiled! Knowing what happens doesn’t invalidate how it happens. A twist that is spoilerable was never a twist worth experiencing. Often, a spoiler can keep me going to the end of a story that I would have surely given up on and being told what toys I get access to gets me excited.
How bizarre. A fully realised trailer for a sequel living inside the game that it is in of itself succeeding? Ludicrous. As much as I was mistaken about the nature of these audio-visual premonitions I wasn’t far off the truth. The sequel to Oddworlds Stranger’s Wrath exists within itself.
The Fortune Teller machines depict gameplay from Stranger’s point of view using (depending on how far into the game you are) familiar and yet blatantly improved weapons in landscapes that seem more varied and complex than the ones you are currently navigating. The first time I viewed these videos, I felt a desire to burn through the game and realise what had been foretold. On a hot summer day in 2009, with a portable screen attached to my Xbox, nine-year old me sat in his bedroom cranked through the required encounters to see the fortune teller’s predictions come true. Three quarters of the way through the story is a pivotal reveal, a tone shift and a promise kept that propelled me through the last chunk of gameplay.
Some decade and a half later I can tell you another truth. Spoilers are good actually. People will argue whether you can spoil gameplay and that discourse doesn’t matter to me because I like being spoiled! Knowing what happens doesn’t invalidate how it happens. A twist that is spoilerable was never a twist worth experiencing. Often, a spoiler can keep me going to the end of a story that I would have surely given up on and being told what toys I get access to gets me excited.