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Molyneux's Fabled Fable Finally Close To Release
Rainier Wolfecastle writes "A couple weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit Peter Molyneux and Simon and Dene Carter in Guildford, UK, for some hands-on time with Fable, their highly anticipated, finally ready for release Xbox action-RPG." Kikizo admits "Fable has been a long time coming, and for better or worse the media has elevated expectations considerably", but likes what it sees, calling the September 14th-due title "huge, gorgeous and a joy to play." Eurogamer also weighs in with impressions, expressing some reservations despite "feeling relatively upbeat" about the title, explaining: "As much as we enjoyed our time with it, it's the sort of game - typical of Peter Molyneux really - that we can't really assess piecemeal."
I remeber hearing somewhere that multiplayer was cut from the game. Did they ever get around to putting it in?
FF7
GTA3
Fable
System sellers midway through the console life. Can't wait for this one.
Peter Molyneux may have designed some pretty good games, but he's an expert at playing the media. I remember the exact same absurdist hype for the piece-of-shit "Black or White."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
This is the same clown and same pre-acclaim from Black and White? No thanks, I'll wait a LOONNNGGGGG time and see if it is a game or another exercise in video game masturbation.
"ooh, look at my creature. I taught it not to eat it's own feces."
Whatever happened to his game 'The Movies'?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Great job with the preview - it was well written and enjoyable to read. While the recent crop of RPGs are nothing short of phenomenal, when it comes to saving one's game, I feel they've actually taken a step back from the old school RPGs. Why is it, with the Xbox's hard drive, that both my wife and I are unable to each have our own character? Back in the day, my brother, sister and I were able to each save our own Zelda game - yet we can't do this with today's games. I want my wife and I to think of Fable as our game, not my game or her game. Please bring back the multiple save slots.
Peter Molyneux has a long history of promising the world with his games and then failing the deliver. Black and White was a joke. Remember when Dungeon Seige was supposed to have a Dungeon Master creating a dungeon for adventurers in a multiplayer enivronment? And then it turned out to be Sim Dungeon. They guy's all vision but never produces anything ... well, it will be a cold day in hell when I plonk down $50 to take a look at his incomplete "vision" if there isn't a solid game in there someplace too. What I find even more amazing is the way the gaming press lines up to kiss his ass. If Molyneux farts freaking Gamespy runs an article about it. He's almost as overrated as Richard Garriot, only (as far as I know) Molyneux isn't a nut case who dresses up and plays castle all the time.
So maybe if Fable gets rave reviews AND it cheap AND comes with a hooker I'll look into getting a copy. But I've been duped my PM's mastery of PR one too many times.
there are xbox rpgs besides KotOR? :P
Of course, Morrowind is already 2 years old, so we might expect some advancements. But on the whole, I get the feeling that Fable will be not as revolutionary as it is hyped up to be.
I read a lot of "Peter Molyneux sucks/doesn't deliver/is nothing but a shameless self-publicist comments in this thread. I have to say that I disagree entirely.
It is, I feel, beyond all doubt that Black & White was not a very good game. Indeed, it was a pretty damned awful game, with tedious mechanics, some serious flaws in the camera system and an underlying concept which turns out not to have been as much fun as it should have been. However, it *was* a serious attempt to be innovative and to do something different. How often do we get heartfelt pleas in the comments threads on slashdot for games designers to be more innovative? How often do we get rabid fanboys shouting "I only play Nintendo/Sony/Nintendo/X-Box/Nintendo/iD/Nintendo games because they're the only people who innovate"?
This is why so many designers are reluctant to innovate. Innovation is an easy thing to get wrong. The over-riding impression I got while playing Black & White was that it had come very, very close to being an excellent game, but had somehow gone awry just inches short of the goal and detoured into the land of awfulness. I don't blame Molyneux for this; as I say, innovation is hard to get right.
I hate it when people pre-judge a game before it appears and I'm a long way from being a Molyneux fanboy, but you have to admit that other than Black & White, the guy has one hell of track record. Look at Populous, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Master; all games which did things that nobody had done before and none of which were surefire commercial hits. Molyneux may have made mistakes, but nobody could reasonably accuse him of being a Derek Smart figure, built entirely on bullshit and never having delivered a decent product. You can't even accuse him of being a John Romero figure, with most of the notable successes being based on collaborations where many now feel the real talent was in the other partners. I say give the guy an break and go into fable with an open mind.
Peter Molyneux is the new John Romero
"Remember when Dungeon Seige was supposed to have a Dungeon Master creating a dungeon for adventurers in a multiplayer enivronment? And then it turned out to be Sim Dungeon."
I think you mean Dungeon Keeper. Dungeon Siege was a Chris Taylor game.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
About Black and White, I liked the creature fights, although they suck as a method to win the game. I also liked how the rocks heated from fireballs and started glowing in the night. It was nice what you could do with rocks.
On the strategy level, at least the way I played it, it sucked because it was very tedious to enlarge the scope of your village. Although I liked that you could make rain to grow trees, that gets tedious as well if its the only way to keep your village growing.
Maybe I lack a teachers skills, but I just didn't manage to teach my creature that using lightning on the enemy or stones(to impress) was GOOD and that using it on villagers or buildings(esp. own) was EVIL. The creature created wood sometimes though. However the creature's needs for food really interfere with long training sessions or with letting it act by itself.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The micro management of the villages was another gigantic screw up forcing you not to be a god but an accountant.
The worst mistake was that I tried to be a nice player. Then a I planted a house wrong. It was on a slope with the door underground. So when I destroyed it it turned out I had just torched half the village as a hord of people that had been stuck inside streamed out.
The mouse gestures was a nice idea but while it works in opera it sucked in the game. Apparently nobody told the devs how your mouse works. Namely that it only records certain points and even less if the computer is busy. Meaning a circle drawn to fast becomes a square.
But peter has admitted the mistakes, he himself says that version 1 was not good. Now he wants us to shell out for number 2 again. Kinda like with the dungeon master game?
No peter has some nice ideas but he needs to get some people in his team who actually play the games and have the power to tell him that it sucks.
A good game has you battling the AI and the odds. Not the interface. If I wanted that kinda challenge I would just break my spine and control the game with my tongue and blinking. What next, a racing game where you can only steer left? Oh wait I forgot, nascar.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
ok ok.. I like Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. They were both simply (odd) games that had no plot nor story. It was just a great way to pass some time and relieve stress by slapping around your gnomes and torturing captives. and if I got really upset at things. I'd turn Horney loose.
How is this flamebait? I was expressing a genuine opinion, echoed by others in this very forum. Take a pill, mods. Sorry if I'm not a fanboy.
I don't buy very many titles as I don't have the extra cash. As far as Fable goes, I do like the design and the execution of what this title entails. Going from a youth to old age and having your actions dictate how those around you feel about you sounds like fun. As well there are all sorts of intricate systems in the game as well that, I feel, will give the game some replayability.
;)
I did buy Black and White too and I couldn't get past the 3rd world where you lose your creature. The game has some amazing parts to it but that 3rd level was hard. I will probably pick up B&W 2 though because I think they will have fixed and refined the game, only to make it better.
So in closing, I will buy Fable and I will play it to the end! After all, it is by the same guy who founded Bullfrog and made Syndicate.
Carry on!
If it's a typical Molyneux game (typical as in, like the one other game he's produced in the last 5 years), then everyone will love it, give it 9/10 or perfect scores, and then 2 months later think the game blows and laugh at it.
Which has sparked some debate in the small "gay gamer" demographic...the problem with these "true to life" games is they start dabbling in some cultural / social areas that create controversy. It's already been decided that Gay Marriage will not be allowed, and that you cannot kill children in the game.
cuz this game gives me a major woodie.
Trust Your Technolust
I remember reading about Ultima 5 having an obscure dungeon room that trapped you inside until you killed all the mobs inside, and in this particular room, all the monsters used the children graphic. Someone in the review process (quality assurance? early media kit? I don't remember, honestly) raised holy stink about this game's message of forced child massacre.
Keeping in mind that you could easily comb the game for ages and never come across this room.
But sure, it's a valid point. However, if you had the incredibly useful SLEEP spell...
I believe someone responded, pointing out the utility of the sleep spell, and informing said person that their services were no longer needed, what with their fascination with child massacre...
(even if it was a media kit, the story works better this way)
Now that I said all that, I can make a parallel between carmack and romero.
should have been
Now that I said all that, I can make a parallel between molyneux and romero.
which should give more sense to my meaning since carmack isnt attacked in any way.
Nice lapsus though, and one that gives some justice to romero and molyneux, who, after all, don't deserve such flak in a market where deer hunters games are at the top of the box-office.
populous is defined as a game in which you play a god, with the ability to sculpt terrain, buildings, or feelings of your minions and thus indirectly affecting the outcome of their actions in some way.
populous - its like sim city 3. youre a god. your actions have indirect results.
populous 23 etc - populous
theme park - populous, except the consequences of your actions become even more obscure. what will happen if i put a hamburger stand here? perhaps in the time it would take to write my masters thesis i could figure which actions create what effect on my park. granted, i can see how someone might possibly enjoy this type of game but then again its the type of people that love to play populous over and over.
syndicate - i'd be inclined to think that this had nothing to do with molyneux. because it was a rad game. specifically, what you want to happen usually happens unless you make a mistake.
magic carpet - i played this demo on a demo cd. even though it isn't memorable to me at all, simply seeing it in action puts me in the 95th percentile of gamers. one thing we can say about this guy in his favor is that he doesn't give up. kind of like an overhyped derek smart.
dungeon keeper - populous indoors. except this time your people have rpgish levels and the job is to kill people rather than just expand. also i remember you had to like pick up gold and creatures with a hand cursor. i vaguely recall liking this game.
black and white - a poorly executed version of populous. what the fuck is happening? why is it happening? the answer is i dont care.
fable - i find it interesting that in the ~5 minutes of my life that i devoted to looking at fable websites, not one told me what the game was about. its a story based rpg or a black and white clone or a totally open ended morality based rpg reality simulator or... fuck it its just another populous
Syndicate was such a cool game. Nobody I knew heard of it until they came over and saw me playing it. I really wish a new one would come out. I spent so many hours on that game, and at the time I only paid $20 for it. Not many other games have given me the play for what I paid.
In the news today the California Supreme Court has ruled that Molyneux is a god and can ban gay marriage should he choose to; however, he may not, under any circumstances go against flimsy initiatives.