Report: Maxis Co-Founder Reveals Oddworld Return

At a talk given to students of Waterloo, Ontario's Wilfrid Laurier University, industry vet and Maxis co-founder Jeff Braun has announced his involvement with a new game from Oddworld Inhabitant's long standing Oddworld franchise. According to Wilfrid Laurier student newspaper The Cord, Braun told the audience the game would feature a "revolutionary new 3-D animation system" that would feature "cinematic quality on a '1 to 1 scale' to that of computer-generated motion pictures," and would utilize the same assets as a CG film version. No further details were reported on the game or any potential film or television versions, apart from the fact that the Oddworld title could be delivered in episodic format. In 2005, Oddworld president Lorne Lanning announced that the company was ceasing operation on internal game development, instead working on creating and fostering cross-media intellectual properties between films and games. Lanning announced the first such game at the GameCity festival in late 2006 with the "politically edgy sci-fi action thriller" Citizen Siege, a game to be developed side by side with a film version produced by Shrek producer John Williams. At the time, Lanning revealed the same plans to utilize identical art assets for both media. Since the initial reveal, few further details have emerged about the status of the property.