Hey everyone, it’s that time AT LAST! I wanted to first thank you all for your patience, it’s been a long wait, but at the same time it’s been even longer for us. We’ve been working on Stranger’s Wrath, one way or another for around 15 months now. From the initial discussions, to actually starting work on the project true, to then getting it done!

As most of you may know we originally planned to release the game around Easter, to be able to do that we were to have started full development in September last year, but as it transpired, we didn’t actually start until April 2011, which gave us our hoped late Summer release; but we ended up spending another couple of months on it, so here we are DONE AND DUSTED for release.

As such I’m extremely pleased to announce that Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD will release on December 27th in North America for $14.99. And we will be releasing worldwide! (all stores, except for the Far East/Russia/Ukraine and Portugal at this time).

We had planned on shipping with support for stereoscopic 3D and PlayStation Move and a few other little things, due to time limits we are not able to bring those features in this initial version. However we WILL be bringing them in an update in a couple months’ time, along with some other little extras we’ve got planned.

One of things we’ve been asked a lot over the past few months is if Stranger’s Wrath HD has a Platinum trophy, of course it does. This is a big game and can easily take at least 12+hrs to complete.

So what’s been updated in the HD version …

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.

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

Environments

• All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
• Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
• A lot of environment now reflects in water where it didn’t before.
• Many, many pipes and barrels were rounded.
• New Easter Eggs added to the game.
• Added Blisterz Booty’s broken crud gun to the floor by his bola’d body.
• Sekto’s Office has been changed to more closely resemble than seen in the FMV.

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

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

• Stranger’s health and armour for later in the game have been re-balanced.

• 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

Once again, thanks for waiting as long as you have, we certainly hope you’ll enjoy the game, and if the review scores we’re starting to get in are anything to go by, you will!

Happy holidays everyone!