Quote from: games.slashdot.orgFable 2
Sitting down in the same room with Peter Molyneux is an experience. The man has a very engaging speaking voice. The journalists in the room were all properly cynical (Molyneux has done more than his fair share of overpromising), but even still its very hard not to take him seriously when he talks.
He begins by talking a bit about Lionheads philosophy behind games. Sequels should be a reason to play again, get the blood boiling, do new things. They shouldnt just be retreads of the same old thing. After the first Fable they opened the doors to the community, theyve listened, and everything youd expect is going to be in the game. Bigger swords, bigger everything.
But, he says, "Lionhead as a studio means to give you something youve never seen before. I truly believe Fable 2 will be a landmark game." There are three features in Fable 2 that are wow moments, and he showed just one at the event. The other two are for another time. But, he thinks, this one feature will really have us interested. Or, as he put it "You wont get it." Other way, he promises it will give you pause.
The greatest gaming moments of all time, he says, are connected to emotions. FFVII, when Aerith is killed; Ico, when the princess saves the main character. One of the three features, then, is Emotion. Molyneux intends for us to feel something that weve never felt before for a videogame character: love. He wants players to feel love in the game. So, to start with, youll be able to play as either gender. Youll be able to get married, have protected or unprotected sex, and have babies. If youre a female character, you can get pregnant. As far as he knows, this is the first game where thats possible. There is same-sex marriage, as in the first title, but a same-sex couple cant conceive.
Your children grow up as you adventure along, and eventually they start to look like you do. In Molyneuxs view, game worlds just dont appreciate protagonists enough. You save the town from dragons, and everybody treats you the same as before. In Fable 2, villagers will be like "oh, its that guy that saved us, everybody come see!" Likewise, when your kids come running up to you saying "Daddy, daddy, I heard about the scorpions! Tell me all about it!", he figures youre going to feel something.
As an aside, he says "Oh man ... were training game testers to be mass murderers." This is in reference to the long hours they have to repeatedly play game content over and over again, and is hilarious with a British accent.
This love/emotion stuff is a core element of the game, and he feels very strongly about it. Just the same, he understands that not every player is going to want to go down the romance/love trail. So, to ensure that every player has to deal with it at least somewhat, every character is going to have a dog.
The dog, he says, loves you. It loves you unequivocally, and the entire thought process behind the dogs design was that it cant aggravate you. If hes in any way aggravating, then hes already lost you. On the other hand, the first time the dog makes you smile, the first time the dog makes you care ... then hes *got* you. And he can exploit you.
One of the folks in the room pipes up with "Can the dog die?" Molyneux demures; he has to save that topic for another day.
The inspiration for the dog was the lower case d in nethack. The dog is completely autonomous. There are no buttons to control the dog. You control the dog by playing the game. The dog understands what youre doing, and thats how you control him.
To give an example of how you teach the dog, he deals with the dogs bloody squeaky ball. The dog digs up the ball, which Molyneux has previous hidden. To tell the dog that he doesnt like the ball at all, he scolds him a few times, but then relents and tosses the ball anyway. Somewhere in the discussion of interaction with the dog, farting comes up. Youll have a command to fart on command. "For an english audience, breaking wind on cue will sell millions."
On an adventure, the dogs job is to watch your back. He keeps watch for new stuff, new enemies, new objects, new opportunities. As an aside, he says that he found it hilarious that they spent many millions of dollars making the original game and you could play the whole game on the minimap. The dog is the way theyve gotten rid of the minimap. He shows an example of the dog in a fight, and he points out the high level of the dogs intelligence. The weapon you use dictates the dogs behavior in a fight. If you have a gun out (there are guns in Fable 2), the dog will attack a melee fighter. If you have a sword in your hand, the dog will attack a ranged opponent.
In the course of the fight, the dog gets hurt and begins limping along. You have the choice, Molyneux says, to not have a dog. They give every character the opportunity, but you dont have to do anything you dont want to. If the dog gets hurt, and you just dont care ... you can just walk away. Then he says "Sometime youll be in a tavern, though, and youll hear a scratching at the door." The dog will try as hard as it can to get back to you. While Ive been with him most of the way so far, this feature strikes me as something that will be quick to go when the development cycle starts looking too long.
As you develop in the game, the dog follows the same lines. Hell develop skills, the same way your character does, and will change in appearance to match your characters personality. An evil character will have something like a doberman; a good character will have something much more fluffy. Voice recognition will be in the final game, allowing you to train the dog to perform things on voice command. Its not currently in the demo, so we cant see how its shaping up so far.
You dont have to feed him. They tried working with a feeding mechanic, but it was just too aggravating. Hell feed himself (hunting rabbits is the example), and you can feed him if you want. Its just not a crucial game mechanic. You can end up with a fat dog if you feed him too many treats.
With that portion of the demo completed, he loads up a movie that shows a quick flythrough of the games capital city. In the first game, the city was just 40 houses. In Fable 2, 500 years in the future, its a sprawling metropolis with three complete districts. Every house and shop and stall in the city is purchasable, apparently. He takes a great deal of pride in pointing that, while theyre still nailing down the emotion stuff, the in-game economy is done, solid, nailed. Its fully reactive too; if you buy a bunch of houses and then jack up the price, you become slum lord. That area of town changes, too, with more trash in the streets and the look of the buildings getting sketchy. As Molyneux says: "Buy a grocer, and decide not to sell oranges one day. See what happens."
Every shop and house that you purchase has the possibility of unlocking quests. You can become the city tailor, or grocer. Why not own a castle? Own a dungeon! Own a temple of Evil. All of these elements are completely optional, and represent possibly hundreds of hours of gameplay.
This immersion extends out into the countryside too. In the first game he was famously quoted about acorns and trees. "Weve gone beyond that." The whole countryside is changeable based on your decisions. If you help a gypsy camp early in your career, dozens of hours later you may come back to find a small village has cropped up. If you wipe them out, on the other hand, there will a pristine glade. My game of Fable wont be the same as your game of Fable.
Wrapping things up, he says that he cant talk about combat today. Theyre nailing things down, and it will get implemented this summer. He feels, very passionately, that this is Lionheads magnus opus. It has to be. "If I dont get this one right, I shouldnt be in this industry." He concludes by confirming the game wont be out this year :(, and the session ends.
(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070307.jpg)
With the Penny Arcade news..
QuoteTodays comic is based on a story we saw at Kotaku, but when I went over there to verify the link the story had been removed altogether. For those of you playing along at home, what that means is that Kotaku
does keep a story when it is an absolutely uncorroborated rumor, but will
remove a story when it is a direct transcription of a conversation they have just had with a public figure at a press event.
This is good information to have! Ive always wondered what the system was, exactly, and I really think Im zeroing in.
I see that the Gameworld Network has retained a rich, gravied haunch of the original article, however - and it is there that I shall direct you. Yes, as established in todays comic, Peter Molyneux is now suggesting that players will be able to father children or give birth, depending on... Well, you know what that depends on. I assume there is a minigame involved. I can name a couple titles off the top of my head where lineage plays a part, but I cant name one where the character that you play yourself is pregnant. Weve bee host to gestating organisms, yes, but these creatures are never something so exotic as a human being.
Either way, you know, procreation: we are still in the general neighborhood that we call Reason. Look, theres the Sanity Cafe. Its in Rationale Square, just down Explanation Street. Causality hasnt yet gone out of vogue, and things occur according to a discernible framework.
Then, after he tells us this first bit... I think he starts to feel a little self conscious. Is this going well? That lizard-looking gentleman in the rear appears to have dozed off. Maybe Peter starts to feel like he needs to spice this thing up. Weve all been there, I think: meeting someone for the first time, someone who doesnt have the time or the tools to research your claim, you might suggest that you once made a living mining nougat.
So then he (quite understandably, I think) starts to talk about how the game has a dog in it, and its, um... your dog, and this dog is the... user interface...? This is something he seriously lucking said, and if someone else had said it maybe I could manage a little joy. You simultaneously control this dog, and do not control it (?). Theres no screen element communicating information to the player. You are supposed to gaze upon their simulated dog and somehow figure out what the f**k is going on.
That sounds like some bullsh*t to me. People at GDC were able to see this dog for themselves, and apparently it impressed them, but Peters recent antics have depleted his Good Faith Account. From now on, its only full playthroughs of retail products - trying to find the point where he stopped caring, so that I may stop caring also.
(CW)TB out.
with an aching in my head
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/03/07
Videos of the Dog Demo (http://kotaku.com/gaming/fable-2/clips-fable-2-dog-demo-243235.php).
:lol: at the PA comic. :lol:
I think Molyneux said that after youre married for one year (in-game time) that your wife/partner will become a lot more needy and nagging. :P