Fable 2

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2


Peter Molyneux Talks ‘Fable 2,’ ‘BioShock’ Lessons — Leaves Interviewer Confused

At long last I’ve transcribed my GDC interview with Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead Studios and chief architect of the Xbox 360 fall exclusive “Fable 2.”

I teased a video excerpt earlier this week. Now you can read my conversation with him about:

• What people ask him about at GDC.
• What the most ambitious element of “Fable 2″ is.
• How you can steal his wife in his game.
• How to punish your “Fable 2″ family with an apple pie.
• Why you might want to live in a town called Bloodstone.
• What lessoned he learned not to repeat from “BioShock.“
• How he left me completely perplexed at the end of our interview.

And more! Read on. It’s Molyneux, so, you will be both informed and entertained…

...

New Lionhead video diary.

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[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

Moving The Industry Forward: Peter Molyneux Speaks

We all recognize that the industry is growing, and that there are more types of gamers and more types of games than there ever were in the past. But are we doing enough?

To help answer this question, we sat down with Lionhead co-founder and seminal Populous creator Peter Molyneux - currently working on his ambitious RPG sequel and hardcore gamer's game Fable 2.

In this in-depth chat, Molyneux talks about how he hopes to open Fable 2 up to a broader audience, what the industry might do moving forward to expand, and what game gave him some surprising inspiration for his epic.

Gamasutra puts up some of the best articles.

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

The Homes and Graves of Fable 2

Microsoft sent over this pic to us, just for the Kotaku community, of a home in Fable 2 and pointed out that another new screen on the upcoming game's official blog shows off the game's graveyard. I really like the atmospheric look of both screens, especially the second.

I'm told that the Lionhead Video Diary Six has been wrapped and submitted to the Xbox Live marketplace folks for processing and eventual upload onto the Xbox 360 service. The Msoft folks tell me it's the best one to date and that it will focus on "Art and The Hero". Wonder what that means?

[jmood88]

Re: Fable 2

When is this supposed to come out?

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

When is this supposed to come out?

No release date has been announced, but it's looking like it will be a September release.

[CMH]

Re: Fable 2

Well, that confirms it. There's no way I get rid of my 360.

[Cyros]

Re: Fable 2

Well, that confirms it. There's no way I get rid of my 360.

lol

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

Fable 2 development blog

A lot is happening, if you are anxious to find out something new about Fable 2, I suggest you make sure you've got access to the internet, next week! Yes we are planning something (quite) big-ish.

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

Some new info.

So the embargo is finally up. Last week a bunch of journalist saw the game at Lionhead in Guildford.

The build we saw was from the 7th of May. The game is content complete and about 5000 bugs from completion. We were shown the magic system, a major plot point when you are a kid, some adult parts and I got hands on with the co-op part (local only, so far. Online announcement could come soon).

New stuff:

• Mini map is dead. Peter hates it. So he made a "bread crump trail". Which is a golden line on the ground that will tell you which direction to go. It works kinda like a GPS system, so it will change if you go another direction, and will guide you in the right direction.
  
• Magic system: You can either do a focused on one person attack, or a ranged attack. You can build up your attack in five levels. These five levels can be combined, so you can have level 1 be a fire spell, and then it builds up and adds level 2, which can be a slow spell, and so on.
  
• There will be 8 different spells in the game.
  
• You can buy every single house in the game. Each house will unlock something new. Either a sidequest, item or a skill.
  
• The game is 20-30 times larger then Fable 1.
  
• What I saw was pretty damn open. At some point Peter said he didn't wanted to explore more. So he jumped from a bridge, and began swimming at some odd direction. Their concept is: if you can see it, you can go there.
  
• The weather is completely dynamic, and will change as time progress. There will be different seasons.

• Cutscenes are somewhat interactive. You can use the d-pad to do different gestures, and they can change the outcome of conversations. It's not on the scale of Mass Effect, but it can be done so you have some interactivity with the game world.
  
• Peter wanted a sex minigame in there, but they had to drop it, due to the nature of the content. Now the screen just goes black, and your hear some moaning. And yes, you can have unprotected sex.
  
• The female character also came close to being cut. But the female designers on the game wanted her in, so they made it happen.
  
• There is three more Fable games planned. Lionhead is currently working on Fable 2 and a new project. The Black & White studio is no more.
  
• He talked about how he was flirting with a girl, and her husband came by. And the husband became so pissed, he began kicking your dog. And Peter actually felt bad for flirting with the girl. He wants gamers to feel like he did.

[jmood88]

Re: Fable 2

Man the graphics are looking really good. I can't wait to play it.

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

Video interview with Molyneux. He says he can't talk about everything to do with co-op until E3.

http://www.9lives.be/gamenieuws/110828/interview-met-peter-molyneux-over-fable-2-x360

...

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

More Screens and some art work

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

Shacknews has a short new trailer up.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52667

...

CVG Interviews Molyneux

...

CVG Preview

"The world in Fable 2 is twenty times larger than the first game's", boasts Molyneux, spiralling the camera down to the now massive Bowerstone market. It really is a significant jump between the Xbox original and 360 metropolis.

We hate to bring it up again, but the first thing that came to mind was GTA III Liberty City versus GTA IV Liberty City - it really is that much of a difference in scope and scale in Fable 2.

Although the original Fable was, for its time, a technical juggernaut, it never made us feel like a stunted midget in a sprawling medieval universe like we do in the sequel. Fable 2 is truly epic (a word we promise not to use again in this preview).

It's a beautiful, striking-looking game, but what first catches our eye is how clean everything looks. There's no HUD to speak of, no health indicators, no item counts, not even a mini-map.

Lionhead's solution is a sparkling trail on screen that Peter's calls the 'breadcrumb trail' - a subtle glittering line on the floor that guides you straight to your objective destination, easing out the need for a hulking mini-map.

Basically, the glittering guideline laid out for you dynamically adapts to guide you to whatever character or quest item is relevant at the time. But as Peter shows, you can still run off the path and explore whenever you want, and the trail will change on the fly so you don't get lost in Fable 2's gigantic world. "You can also turn it off in the pause menu," he says.

In a completely in-game sequence, Peter strolls up to the crowd to see what's going on, and then in a very Assassin's Creed-esque moment he simply holds down the left trigger to whisk the camera over to points of interest - in this case the salesman yelling cockney slang over the crowd of shoppers. At any time you can simply walk away from the action, and carry on exploring.

"We're not forcing you into any cut-scene in the game. There's no such thing as a cut-scene," says Molyneux.

This sort of seamless integration of narrative and gameplay is all over the place; when dealing with a salesman or quest-giver, the bread trail creates a circle around the character. Walk inside and you'll initiate the quest chatter, a dialogue box will pop up to confirm deals, or you can watch the whole thing in a more traditional, cinematic angle by holding the right trigger. It looks really great, and could take a lot of the pain and work out of the RPG questing.

We've tip-toed around the plot up to this point, but it's fair to say there's a heavy narrative behind what's going on.

"There's hell of a lot more story," notes Peter, interrupting a rather emotional story sequence on the big HD telly. "In Fable we didn't really spend enough time on the story," he admits.

To demonstrate our earlier point on context-sensitive moves though, Molyneux takes the fight into a very narrow corridor, where his sword swipes suddenly become far shorter and 'stabby'.

Then he starts springing off the walls to execute stab moves and picking up objects to throw. It all looks very advanced for a system that uses a single button, but hopefully it'll work when we come to playing Fable 2 for ourselves.

The impression we got from watching the game in action, and speaking to members of the development team in multiple positions, was that, first and foremost, fans of the first game are going to be very, very pleased.

The core elements that made Fable loved by fans; personality, choice and painless RPG systems, have all received significant attention - and of course the scope and scale of everything in the game world has shot up to current-gen proportions.

Whether he gets those extra players or not, from a core gamer's perspective Fable 2 looks fantastic, and we don't think Peter will need to be apologising to Fable fans come Christmas.

[Flawless]

Re: Fable 2

IGN Preview

Fable 2 is coming in 2008. Believe it. Peter Molyneux sat down with IGN to tease us on the new demo being shown at Microsoft's Spring Showcase. Molyneux told us that by week's end, Fable 2 would be content complete. All the remains is intensive bug-testing and plenty of tweaking to make the game as good as possible. But any rumors of a delay into '09 are unfounded.

Not only is co-op available from start to finish, but throughout your adventures in Fable 2 you'll travel with "companions." Sometimes these companions are woven into the story, but other times they are only minor acquaintances who come along for a short while. You can also take anyone in Albion with you so long as you can convince them to make the trip.

These companions will talk with you on your journey, providing exposition without making you sit through cutscenes. It also sounds like you will get a lot of additional dialogue from your companions similar to the dialogue you get when driving towards missions in GTA IV. So expect some interesting filler as you head towards a quest.

The one-button combat is a bit more complex than originally revealed. X still handles melee, Y is for ranged attacks and B is still for magic. But there's a great deal of customization available to each button.

Experience comes in four colors -- blue, yellow, red and green. These correspond with the face buttons on the controller and for the type of attack, with green being "general" experience. Molyneux promises a considerable number of upgrades and imagines most gamers will only unlock about three-quarters of power-ups by the end of Fable 2.

At the start, you can only mash the buttons. Tapping X gives you some fairly standard sword swipes. But you can add flourishes once you've earned some experience. These have multiple tiers, which are executed by holding the X button down longer. You can also unlock rhythm attacks so you're no longer just mashing a button, but pulling off killer combos with style. You can put blocking on the X button or add context-sensitive attacks that allow you to fight like a swashbuckler. You'll have similar levels of upgrades for ranged and magic attacks. You can unlock a "stream of features" for each button, according to Molyneux.

As for earning experience, you can get exponentially larger bonuses by fighting with style. Slice into an enemy with a counter move, then knock a guy into the air using the Force Push spell, switch to your gun and shoot him in the air to get experience multipliers. Or use a level 5 Slow Time spell (takes about 10 seconds to charge) to make time almost stop. Then walk through a crowded battlefield and slash through enemies, again earning x2 experience. And if you have a co-op henchman along for the ride, you each earn an extra x2 experience for teaming up on the same enemy.

Speaking of money, it will cost about $100 million to buy everything in Albion. You can get a leg up on this by playing the Fable Pub XBLA game. The money earned in this game will carry over into Fable 2. In fact, once you are of age in the game, a mysterious stranger comes up to you and hands you a load of cash. So yes, you can start Fable 2 with a ridiculous amount of funds.

With that cash, you can buy a great sword and augment the hell out of it. Or you can buy a shop, do some quests to find unique items to sell in the shop to make even more money. Or purchase the Temple of Good, the Temple of Evil, or both -- each has its own set of sidequests. So that means you can just waltz through the game with all these fancy duds, right? Wrong. Circle gets the square.

"A great sword in the hands of a novice is not a great sword at all," Molyneux explained. You can have awesome weapons, but without experience all you can do is mash buttons and perform wimpy attacks. And you'll look ridiculous, since you'll be a skinny little punk wielding a massive sword.

To get money, you need to earn it. Either through jobs, profiteering or playing pub games. You can beat Fable 2 as a pauper if you like. And, in fact, if you play to be "truly good," then you shouldn't be so obsessed with material things.

[jfsolo]

Re: Fable 2

The whole dog sidekick thing has been bugging me to no end about this game, but I guess I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with it so that I can enjoy all the great stuff that the game does have.