In a robust essay, Jessica Hills digs into the messy and incoherent politics of the Oddworld franchise, exploring its pattern of appropriation, centrism, and dehumanization.
Over its decades of development and numerous games, Oddworld’s characters and politics have shifted on an almost game-by-game basis leading to a series that is both tonally discordant and consistent in its inconsistencies. Oddworld wants to be popular, first and foremost, and it is unafraid to throw its ideology in the meat grinder in pursuit of bombast and wider appeal.