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Molyneux Talks Reviving Classic Games
Gamespot has a few words with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, who looks back on some of the great games of the past in the days before the Leipzig Conference, where he is slated to give a keynote. Along with some commentary on modern gaming, Molyneux discusses a wish to reimagine titles like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Syndicate. Great ideas ... if he ever gets the chance to make them come true.
I loved Dungeon Keeper. I always cursed EA for buying up good franchises and then never using them. Especially the ones from Origin and Bullfrog.
but after the everything-you-do-will-affect-your-world-even-your -sneezes hype bullshit fiasco that was Fable, I have no more respect for Mr. Molyneux or anything he says. The man is a idea man and a dreamer, no doubt, but he simply cannot make a game without opening his mouth about how orgasmic the gameplay experience is going to be when the reality of it is far, far more mundane.
If he remakes that, I'll be the first one to buy it. That game was awesome!
I remember if you had the screen centered over the sexy torturer woman for too long without moving the mouse, the game's narrator/alert voice would say "You know, that'll make you go blind."
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Oh yeah. I would hope they keep it as small squads. It would be sweet to have multiple people playing on a squad. No more of your shotgunner getting nailed by a sniper while you're got your attention on another player.
Ok Molyneux's two biggest games are Black and White, and Fable. And what happened to each of them? You hear all the hype that goes on for years and years and then you get the game and it's half as cool as it says. "oh you can get scars and stuff and it'll carry through to life. It's not even scripted" Except in the final game it's scripted.
"Oh you're monster will learn from everything" except you have no idea what it learns, you have to wait til Black and White 2 for that. Hell in Black and White if you don't pay attention to the monster 24 hours a day you will never know what is going on or what it might be doing.
I do give Molyneux kudos because he does take big games and attempt amazing things, and doesn't fall flat on his face like Romero, but at the same time he does fall on his ass quite often. He does do the hype to the extent that Will Wright has done, but at the same time Wright delivers on most of his promises or at least admits when he can't do something before a game comes out, not after, or in the final hours.
On the other hand one thing that these games had going for it was lack of graphics and amazingly complex gameplay that made fans cheer, unfortunatly most of the industry seem to focus so much on the gameplay (because the fans crave it and crap on any game that's not perfect) that we see nothing that has the depth or complexity of even games like Deus Ex. I don't know if I want to see Lionhead look into classic games, it might just turn into an abomination.
There's a company called Twilight Games that has written a couple re-makes, as well as some that are similar to old classics. My favorite is Space Taxi 2. Many of the levels are very close to the original, with better graphics. Other levels are new, but in a similar spirit.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I remember if you had the screen centered over the sexy torturer woman for too long without moving the mouse, the game's narrator/alert voice would say "You know, that'll make you go blind."
Really? How'd you find that out? No, wait. I don't want to know.
While I enjoyed the games in question quite a lot, and would probabaly enjoy a re-vamping of these games, I see a disturbing similarity to the movie industry of late. It seems that there have been less and less really innovative, creative, and original movies being released. There seem to be more and more remakes of older films now that movie technology has gotten better. A few examples of what I am talking about such as 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith', 'War of the Worlds' or 'Cheaper by the Dozen' come to mind. I don't want to start a whole flame war on "how can you say you didn't like movie ..." but to me, most of these remade-for-a-new audience movies have left a lot to be desired. Mostly because they were just remakes of an older movie. The story was the same, the special effects were changed try to make a buck.
I can only hope that the remake of an old favorite game doesn't fall into the same trap. And they need get the same voice actor for the Dungeon Keeper! Thinking about slapping around those imps to get them to work faster still brings a smile to my face...
FWIW...
I've done the math, I know the odds, but I'm still disappointed when I don't win the lottery.
After realising how much I missed it, I bought Populous second hand a few months ago. What makes it so good is that it has everything a good real-time strategy game should, and nothing more. If only someone were to remake it on modern hardware, with photo-realistic castles and fluid water, but no changes whatsoever to the gameplay, I'd buy it in an instant.
I think the only 2 of his games that I've played were Populous on the SNES I think and Dungeon Keeper. Populous on the SNES could have used some work. I could see how it would have been much better on the computer though. I don't mind some minor changes other than updating graphics and the engine. I don't like series that tend to stick too closely to the status quo. My thought on that is the Civ series. Other than updated graphics and engine, there wasn't much new other than culture was added in Civ3. My biggest dislike of the Civ series was always Alpha Centuria was released before Civ 3 and its tech engine and unit builder made anything in Civ feel dated. The Civ series should have had a unit builder. You should have been able to choose which animals to domesitic and breed different riding animals other than just elephants and horses. (You should have been able to ride big cats or train war bears or maybe even ride cows/bulls into battle.) Other thing is mixing and matching weapons. If I want tigers pulling my chariots and shooting fire arrows, I should be able to train and build the units. Well enough of my Civ rants.
I'll need to dig up a copy of populous. It was a cross between an early age of empires and a regional sim earth with a computer god to play against. Now that I think about it, an updated Populous could make an awesome multiplayer game or maybe even an online game. You'd just start everyone off with a single hut and villager and go from there playing against others. You could have a polythesic religion where you let allies villagers into your turf or maybe spread religion around like Civ culture a bit. Or you could be monothesic where if they were of a different religion your followers would automatically kill or injure villagers of another religion.
I think some of his problem is the canvas got too big.
Dungeon Keeper was a great game. Especially the first one, all things considered. A small set of changes and it'd shine as an engine even today. The AI was spectacular in practice. It was actually fairly simple, each creature had certain rules and preferences, but with a good mix of creatures the dungeon really hummed along by itself without a lot of dumb intervention. Combat could use some work (they tried to fix it in the second one, but the ultimate problem is you probably need to be able to play without picking up the creatures at all, at least as an optional mode), and there were a couple of other bugaboos, but it was really solid. Really packed a lot in on those older computers.
Now he wants to really pack a lot in on these newer machines and consoles, and our tools just aren't up to it. Theoretically the games he envisions probably could exist, but they'd take longer to develop than the consoles will actually be economically viable for. People bitch about bloat, but the fact is that in general, even allowing "bloat" our programmer tools have not kept up with hardware, and truly pushing a complicated world to the limit in code (not just graphics) is basically beyond us right now. An XBox 360 may be, say, 100 times more powerful than a Super Nintendo, but we can't really make a game's code and engine 100 times more complex. (In fact, going from a Super Nintendo RPG to a modern RPG can sometimes leave you wondering what we've been doing with our time since then.)
I do not say this to excuse him; ultimately, despite various self-esteem-propoganda to the contrary, you do need to limit you dreams to the possible. But I think it's a good stab at an explanation.
Someone who would probably fall prey to this is Garriot, the guy behind Ultima. Ultima games were always just on this side of dissolving into a quivering mass of bugs because they were always so cutting edge. (Mind you, I'm not saying they were quivering masses of bugs; they are in general quite good, although 7 and on get a little glitchy. I'm saying that it took a lot of work to get them there and sheer willpower. Witness the fun involved with getting Ultima 7 running, with its incredible memory management scheme. (You're better off running Exult, now.)) And you know, while I've heard about some plans of his, I haven't heard about anything he's done and finished since before the first Black and White...