Molyneux on the Vanity of Gamers

Fable 2 is turning out to be a fantasy game unlike any other, with a new feature announced almost every time Molyneux opens his mouth. At a games industry event in Brighton, he sat down for a chat with Gamasutra to discuss using vanity as an incentive. "Fable 2 will take a similar dramatic approach to the concept. Drained of health points and laid out on the ground, players will have the choice of losing experience points - the game's key method of building up a selection of fearsome fighting moves - and immediately jumping up to regain the action, or letting the enemy close in and work them over with stabs, kicks and punches ... Worse than that, when you eventually get up again to fight another day, the marks of your beating will remain for all to see." These scars will be important, somehow, in Fable 2 online mode, a topic they still aren't discussing in detail.

Comments

Re:Vanity in one game

[furball]

That post was full of humility eh?

Molyneaux's Fables

[Puff of Logic]

Molyneux is a guy I have very mixed feelings about. He headed up Bullfrog when they made Dungeon Keeper, one of the first games I've ever played from the evil perspective, and a game that earns him huge cool points in my mind. The trouble is, the guy keeps talking about making games that I really want to play but then isn't able to deliver. Black and White is an excellent example: huge potential, but the delivery lacked...something. I can't decide whether I like the guy for being such a visionary, or dislike him for constantly taunting me with game experiences I can't have!

Re:Molyneaux's Fables

[LKM]

I think the reason why his first attempts usually suck is that his ideas are too big for the development time of a single game, and he doesn't have the financial resources to say "it's done when it's done."

Unlike any other?

[Aladrin]

Unlike any other? I dunno, sounding a LOT like Fable 1 so far. Free-roaming so vast that one of the devs got lost, for example... Yeah, sure it was.

You'd think PM would have learned his lesson on Fable 1 about opening his mouth, and I think I remember him SAYING he learned his lesson (Why did I believe him?) but here he goes again.

Know who this is going to bother?

[RandoX]

The guys that pick the "hot chick" character in every game.

Re:Know who this is going to bother?

[hansamurai]

If I'm going to stare at the rear end of a character for 40+ hours, it might as well be a woman.

Re:Know who this is going to bother?

[Drachemorder]

That's all well and good, but I prefer for my avatar in a game to be a representation of what I would like to project myself as rather than what I'd like to sleep with. It's just a personal preference about play styles, though. Some people like to create a character that's completely different from who they really are. Others like to project themselves into the game and act according to their real-life principles. Still others just want to look at a hot female butt. I have no problem with any of these. It's your game, play it however you want to.

Re:will it let you complete the game?

[Broken scope]

Because the scaring in the last game did affect gameplay.

You could be the glorious hero, full of light and wisdom, but you were so damned fugley by the end game that the towns people would run away from you.

Not to mention the fact that some people DO care what their character looks like, even more once you go online, a name isn't always enough to make you unique.

Go look at wow, how many lvl 70s look almost the same and are the same right down to the enchants, the talents, and the equipment? Its not pretty and it gets really annoying really fast.

People want unique characters, this is part of that to an extent.

Re:Vanity in one game

[Anonymous Coward]

SKU is a common retail term (meaning stock keeping unit). My high school job was in retail and I have no qualms in calling products, SKU, or anyone else for that matter. It's a totally appropriate term.

That's kind of his point. It's a retail term. Not a gamers term. Since when did gamers start talking like retail executives?

While there might be room for debate on the term 'Rogue-like' and obviously he meant shoot'em ups instead of shooters (I pray), aside from that I agree whole heartedly with what he says.

Re:Vanity in one game

[bigstrat2003]

This isn't even about moving on from Fallout, really. These people are attached to Fallout 1/2. Fine. They want Fallout 3 to be exactly the same. Fine, if unrealistic. However, they're treating anyone who likes Fallout 3 (thus far) as if they must be a shill (among other things, like unnecessary personal attacks, but this is the one that irked me the most). Is it incomprehensible to these people that someone might actually DISAGREE with them? "Oh, you claim to like the first two games, and the third too... you're on Bethesda's payroll, buddy." That's sad, that their reasoning is so limited. Ironically enough, it's the same thing some (not most) Slashdotters have to say when someone says something good about Microsoft... but at least here, those trolls are in the minority. Most people here are willing to accept that someone might have a differing opinion from them, even if they can't possibly understand why.

Anyways, the failure of those rabid fanboys isn't that they haven't moved on from Fallout, per se, it's that they're too caught up in their own obsession to see anything else. Most Starcraft fans, for example, want Starcraft 2 to be as close to Starcraft as possible. However, they aren't going to decry any little itsy bitsy change from Starcraft, nor are they going to treat anyone who actually does like Starcraft 2 with such abject hostility.