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."

Comments

A system seller for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

FF7
GTA3
Fable

System sellers midway through the console life. Can't wait for this one.

Re:A system seller for me...

[urbaer]

Certainly whenever anyone asks me why I haven't bought an XBox, I generally point to the fact that the only game on it that I'm interested in is Fable. Given that I have no money, I hope it gets even further delayed, otherwise I need a new excuse.

Re:The Same Clown from Black and White?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

What about teaching it powers? I was thrilled when I tought my monkey how to cast fireball, and how to make it rain so he could put himself out after he lit his fir up.

It was an amazing game that forced you to actually think and teach your animal, instead of just sending off into battle with no training.

Multiple Saves

[xplenumx]

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.

Re:Multiple Saves

[wbm6k]

I have no idea what you are complaining about.

Everything on the gamecube or PS2 (prior to the PS2 hard drive) saves to a memory card, not any internal storage. So, if you want two saves (or ten), it is trivially easy to just switch out the memory card. Plus, most RPGs (from my own experience on the gamecube, Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia, the first Baldur's Gate) will allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the size of the memory card.

Moving on, the RPGs I've played on Xbox (Morrowind, Kotor) both allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the space available on the hard drive (which is huge compared to the size of any single save).

Are there particular games you are complaining about, or was that just an anti-Xbox/console troll?

Re:Publicity god

[Anonymous Coward]

Will all due respect, I think B&W has a really good, innovative concept but a deeply flawed, clunky, implementation. I think that the critics loved the idea behind the game and didn't play it long enough for its flaws to come to the forefront.

Peter Molyneux's reputation

[RogueyWon]

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.

Re:Peter Molyneux's reputation

[RogueyWon]

Yeah, I realised my Keeper/Master error the moment I clicked submit. However, I strongly disagree that these were his only two good games. Syndicate was absolutely revolutionary and also had perhaps the most satisfying weapons of any game ever. Theme Park has created an entire spin-off genre and was a surprisingly competent business management sim which managed to marry ideas that had existed before (with some modifications) to a concept that actually made mainstream gamers want to play it. Oh, and Powermonger was pretty fun as well, although I've got to admit that it's been a loooooong time since I played it, so I don't remember it all that well.

It sounds like you're just bitter because you didn't like Dungeon Keeper. I take your point that it felt at times like a standard RTS, but it did offer many features that were new to the genre. You couldn't control large numbers of units directly, but you could possess individual creatures and fight through their eyes. The experience system for the creatures can be seen as an early precursor of the heroes system we've seen in more recent titles such as Warcraft 3. In many ways, Dungeon Keeper was a long way ahead of its time.

Re:Publicity god

[RogueyWon]

You're certainly in the minority for having liked Black & White, although you're entitled to your opinion and it'd be a boring world if we all agreed.

I think the critics' reaction to Black & White highlighted a lot of what was wrong with the video gaming press at the time (and perhaps continues to be today). When a huge new title came out, there was an overwhelming urge to be the first to have the full review. For the monthly gaming mags, this wasn't necessarily a problem if they had a full month to play the game before their next issue. However, if it arrived a few days before the deadline, then they had to hurry. With online gaming sites, beating the competitors to print can mean reviewing a game in a matter of hours (just look at the recent Doom 3 reviews and the difference in review quality between those who tried to get out first and those, like IGN, who held off for a couple of days).

Black & White was good fun for the first few hours. I found it was only about 6 hours play that I started getting seriously annoyed with the game and that its flaws started to show up. Chances are, many of the first reviewers were stopping playing and starting writing before this point. I remember that several gaming magazines expressed regrets in later issues that they'd ranked the game so highly and said that if they'd waited longer, the reviews would have been more balanced.

Critics don't know shit

[SmallFurryCreature]

All the reviews where glowing and then a few months late one by one the mags and websites had to admit they had forgotten to review the game as a game. Sure the critter was nice but you had very little control over it. Often you were punishing it or rewarding it for the wrong action as the interface blew chunks.

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.

Re:Publicity god

[Wyrd01]

I think "Black and White" was a learning experience for the Lionhead crew. It was fun in an open ended sort of way, but they got some of the parts wrong, and some of those parts made the game more frustrating than fun.

Now I believe "Black and White 2" will be a different story. A good review can be found here: http://www.totalvideogames.com/pages/articles/inde x.php?article_id=5638

Some of the finer points from the preview:

"If you look after your people's basic needs, they will manage themselves. You are no longer an errand boy to your people - you are a powerful God. Now you easily have the time to affect your people's lives as a nation, not worry about where their next meal comes from. Though, if you want to mess around in the detail, helping farmers, you are still able to."

"Unlike B&W1, the whole world exists all the time, so if you have been to one land you can revisit it at any time and play God. Your people may have progressed since you last visited them though..."

"Some of the key features discussed in the game are about waging massive wars, sieges and battles, discovering and using new 'Epic Miracles'... There is research and players can create new forms of weaponry, from swords to bows to siege machines. Build and design unique defensive gates and walls. Control and marshal huge and varied armies. Create and control settlements that include housing, farming, and many other buildings, like fountains and lush gardens (if you're Good) or stocks and guillotines (if you're Evil). Multiple tools to help train and improve Creatures are on hand. As well as using sticks, whips, and feathers, players can create their own unique tools."

"The thing I am most proud of is that the game 'makes the player feel like a God'. In Black & White 1, you never felt significant enough - you felt like an errand boy. In Black & White 2 you are a powerful God."

Wyrd One

Re:About time

[bugbread]

Yessish and noish.

Originally, it didn't have multiplayer.

Then they decided to put it in, tried it out a bit, but it didn't work out, so they took it back out, and that's where things stand now.

Re:There will be No Gay Marriage in Fable

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

As a member of the (admittedly small) "gaymer" demographic, I feel like I should respond.

The real issue, I feel, is that the RPG genre is all about freedom to do what you want. It's one of Fable's biggest selling points ("Want to be evil, sure! Want to be good, no problem!"). But things like "sorry, no gay relationships" put up what are (IMHO) patently artifical restrictions. For me it can be incredibly frustrating to want to play a certain type of character and have the game prevent me from doing so. If you're going to make romance part of the gameplay, I should have the freedom to direct that romance in any direction I choose. Games like "The Sims" have shown that gender-neutral relationships can be done (and done well) in games.

And this may sound sick, but I wouldn't mind if you could kill children in the game, as long as consequences existed for your actions. A previous game by the same author ("Black and White") involved child sacrifice, and I don't remember people being up in arms over it.

If the game's tagline is "For Every Choice, A Consequence," then I should be able to make the choices I want, no?

Just an AC's $.02