Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bid On A Role in Fable 2 For Child's Play

Posted by Zonk on from the be-immortalized-for-a-good-cause dept.

Via Joystiq, a post on the Lionhead website offers up a once-in-a-lifetime offer ... for charity! At this year's Child's Play Fundraiser, an annual black tie event scheduled for December 11th, the studio will auction off roles in their in-development title Fable 2 to help raise money for kid gamers. Roles include 'a Fable 2 Shopkeeper, a Farmer, an important Villager, a Monk, or a Quest character.' Other loot they're offering includes "Signed underwear by Peter Molyneux! The only known surviving Fable T-SHIRT signed by the Development Team in 2004. Limited edition, official Fable 2 team T-SHIRT. Limited edition, official Fable 2 sweater / hoodie. Exclusive Fable 2 printed and framed artwork. Limited edition, framed Black & White 2 poster, signed by the Development Team and Peter Molyneux. Framed copy of Fable, presented in recognition of your contribution to the making of Fable."

26 comments

  1. I'd donate a bunch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If Molyneux stopped making terrible games.

    Just kidding, this sounds cool and it's for a good cause.

  2. Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Populus was great a long, long time ago but Molyneux has laid nothing but gaming turds for a long time.

    1. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Holmwood · · Score: 1

      Fable was clever; a good storyline with decent graphics. True, not everyone's cup of tea is an RPG, but it was well-crafted, with an interesting approach to morality and decision-making.

      Not sure why the hate.

      -Holmwood

    2. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Indeed, and while Fable didn't live up to everything it was saying it'd be, it lived up to a fair bit. The game is an excellent title, one worthy of a sequel. Perhaps this time there will be more than just two endings, that was the biggest flaw in the first Fable, it was a binary ending, rather than a spectral one. You need the shades of grey if you're going to have a game that deals in morals, Bioshock has the same flaw.

    3. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Kamineko · · Score: 1
      By 'interesting approach to morality', I'm assuming you're talking about the 'scripted choices giving you good points / bad points' that can be observed in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that came before it, and a zillion other games featuring 'alignment points'.

      It looked and played good though. It wasn't what he said it was. At least, he thinks so.

    4. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by FinchWorld · · Score: 1

      I don't know, seemed to me you could be near as evil as you wanted, but then choose not to kill your sister and get the good ending, if I recall you could do the same in KOTOR which came before, so being good or evil didn't change alot. Infact the only game I can think of were it mattered was abes odessy/exodus (I forget which one, though more likely exodus), were if you didn't save enough/killed too many murdokons (sp?) they would vapourize you in the final cutscene, so the only way to get the "good" ending was not to kill your fellow murdokons, no matter how funny it is.

      --
      "I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
    5. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Voltageaav · · Score: 2, Insightful

      First off, I loved Fable and can't wait for Fable 2. But the game was a bit unfinished when they released it. Also, many of the features they had said would be included were not, even in "The Lost Chapters". It is a great game, but was over hyped to the point that it came as a disappointment to many.

      --
      Someone save me from this sanity.
    6. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Targon · · Score: 1

      Just because you dislike any game that isn't an action game doesn't make many of the Molyneux games bad. Black and White was a good game, and a lot of fun. Black and White 2 was better as a technical demo though.

      Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and others are very memorable games, and unlike all the games that were straight clones of Warcraft, Populous: The Beginning was a RTS game that wasn't a clone, but had different mechanics for population growth.

      Now, it has been a while since he came out with a new game that was really revolutionary, but the first Fable game was fun, even if it felt a bit childish. This may also reflect that the game was designed for consoles, so aiming at a younger audience was a good thing.

      You really can't say that Black and White was a bad game either, and the creature AI was pretty good. If all you treated it as was a strict strategy game for multi-player it may have failed, but it was a DIFFERENT sort of game and was fun in that regard.

      There also have not been many titles since the Bullfrog days if you look at it. Black and White 1&2, plus "The Movies". That isn't a lot of titles, and I didn't even check out The Movies, so I can't say if it was good or bad.

    7. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's... a little harsh. Not necessarily untrue, per se, but it's not quite giving the full picture.

      My own impression of Molyneux's output over the last decade is that it's been very strong on the ideas, but dreadful on the implementation. While this means that many of his games leave the user frustrated and infuriated, it doesn't mean he's a bad thing for the industry.

      Take Black & White as a case in point. There are few games that have inspired such utter, blind rage in me as the original Black & White. I remember one of my friends hammering the eject button on his CD drive, yanking the disk out so hard he damaged the drive, then smashing the disk into tiny pieces with a hammer, sticking it in an envelope and mailing it to Lionhead with an obscenity-filled tirade. The concept was very strong; a god-game that you play not, primarily, through exercising a direct influence, but rather by training your own independently intelligent avatar. Unfortunately, the game was crippled by terrible mission design, one of the worst camera systems in the history of gaming and bizarre quirks in the AI that could cause your creature to snap and behave completely and irreversibly out of character for no discernable reason.

      However, the core concept of a game in which you train up an avatar through "tactile" interaction, reinforcement of behaviours and more advanced training has lived on and now sits at the heart of the modern "virtual pets" genre, which has become such a cash-cow on the Nintendo DS.

      Slashdot posters often complain about a supposed lack of innovation in the games industry (although this isn't a line that I personally subscribe to). But if you want to encourage innovation, then tolerating and supporting the eccentrics who produce terrible games containing great ideas (that others with more of a knack for polish can develop further) can't be a bad thing.

    8. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Itchyeyes · · Score: 1

      Few things in gaming frustrate me as much as the shear, unabashed, hatred that people seem to have for this game. There are some really bad games out there, Fable is not one of them. In fact, it's a rather good, and original (something you don't see too much of these days) title. Fable was over hyped, over promised, and under delivered, but it wasn't bad. And gamers have as much themselves to blame for their inflated expectations for that game as they do Molyneux.

    9. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Molyneux's problem is that he is *100%* OUT OF TOUCH with the team developing the game. He plays it once, maybe twice during development and then MAKES SHIT UP to tell the press. He speaks of features that NEVER EXISTED OR WERE PLANNED FOR and doesn't know enough about the game he's supposedly making to realize when other features have been changed or removed.

      He also complicates things significantly when simple solutions exist that serve just as well, initially directing people down months and months of arduous work only to have the system removed at the end because it simply wasn't feasible (and was told such early on).

      Molyneux used to be a good designer with good ideas. But now he is too full of himself and living in the bubble that is his gigantic ego inflated head.

      Fable was NOT AN RPG. It was action adventure and would have faired far better if they had accepted that and polished it as such.

    10. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The biggest flaw with Fable is that the "evil" in the game was stupid. The only evil things you can do are insult people, look "mean", and kill people. There's no depth to it. And boy, to remain even a little bit evil, you've got to massacre a WHOLE TON OF VILLAGERS. It was poorly thought out and not implemented very well (thanks to shit ass direction from Peter).

      And thank the Captcha for Quagmire as that is what Fable's 4 incarnations were. The one the public saw was only a couple years from start to finish.

      Fun action/adventure. Not an RPG.

    11. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by kat_skan · · Score: 1

      BioShock spoilers ahead.

      You need the shades of grey if you're going to have a game that deals in morals, Bioshock has the same flaw.

      Isn't that kind of an odd criticism for BioShock, considering the whole point of the story was that not once did you actually make your own decisions, but were instead just obeying somebody else's orders? Even when you were freed of the mind control you just plowed right on, this time doing whatever Dr. Tenenbaum told you. How many shades of grey are there in being a single-minded automaton?

    12. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Tuidjy · · Score: 1

      Having had very high expectations for Fable is not a prerequisite for hating it :-)

      I did get excited at all about Fable. I did not bother buying it on the X-box, and I picked it up when it came out on the PC, in a time where there wasn't anything much to play. I had to push myself to finish the introduction, and lost interest after playing for ten minutes in the castle(?) that came afterwards.

      The graphics/models were pathetic, the environment simplistic, the story failed to interest me, and the combat I do not even remember. The dialog options were retarded in the worst "good or stupid" tradition.

      I have not been impressed by Peter Molyneux's games for a long, long time. I do not know what was so groundbreaking about a good/evil scale, given that bloody Baldur's Gate it did it earlier, and somewhat better. As far as I am concerned, when you are trying to play a Evil, but rational character, you should not feel either stupid, or a monster. And your decisions should have a definite effect on the game world, not just lead to a couple of different endings.

      Fallout, Planescape Torment, Temple of Elemental Evil, The Witcher, etc... there are many games that let you see the consequences of your various, and by no mean simplistic or obvious, decisions. By the way, let me use this chance to plug 'The Witcher'. It's been a while since I have enjoyed an RPG so much. There's a lot of good about it, but I just want to point out how they handle the 'consequences' part.

      You make a choice - you support a character against another, provide backup for one squad instead of another, let a criminal go in exchange of some information, provide testimony that leads to a lynching. Later, you meet the actors in the event, or come upon their latest handiwork. Then and there, without waiting for the end, your see what you have wrought, and you have a chance to say how you feel about your decision, and sometimes have a chance to do something about it.

      Maybe I am ignorant of a game that has done that before, but it came a damn nice surprise to me. I hope more games do it.

      Ah, and at the risk of being labeled off-topic... The Witcher is pretty good in other respects as well. The graphics are great, and while there are way too few models, the ones available are damn good. The combat feel simplistic (click enemy) at first, but after a while you realize how much you can actually do, and once you start interrupting your attacks and changing style and position on the fly, it starts looking awesome. The alchemy system is the best I've ever seen, the story keeps me playing way past midnight, and most of the characters are well worth remembering.

      And the guy can get laid more than any character in any video game I've ever played... I still cannot decide whether I like that part of the game or not. I do know that I wish the cards you get for your conquests were higher resolution ;-)

      --
      No good deed goes unpunished...
    13. Re:Bid On A Role In A Sucky Game? No Thanks... by Itchyeyes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Do you really feel qualified to just a 15-20 hour game after playing it for only 10 minutes? I'm not surprised that you didn't find the graphics good. It was an Xbox 1 game at the end of the systems life cycle ported to the PC 12 months later. Not to mention that the art style skews more cartoonish than realistic. For the time and platform it was released on, Fable has pretty decent graphics, and there are some pretty impressive lighting and texture effects later on in the game.

      The story was indeed shallow, as was the combat and the dialogue. However, none of those were what made Fable a good game. What made Fable good was the amount of choice you had to play the game. While there were the usual scripted, "pick the good or evil quest" sequences ala KOTOR, you also had freedom to play the game on your own just in the general game world. You could just roam around doing good or evil deeds on your own, with no need for the game to spell out for you when you got to choose.

      Fable's level of customization went beyond just good and evil too. Your character reflected how you played the game. Choosing ranged, melee, or magic had a satisfying effect on how your character looked and played later in the game.

      This is the thing that always surprises me about the backlash against Fable. Molyneux did not deliver on all of his promises of a massive customizable game. However, he delivered on a lot of them and he delivered a lot more customization than 99.9% of games out there.

      Oh, and FWIW, you can have a massive amount of sex in Fable too, even homosexual sex if that's your kind of thing.

  3. we'll see by deathtopaulw · · Score: 1

    how can we be sure this isn't yet ANOTHER promise they can't keep?

  4. Populous by ThirdPrize · · Score: 1

    I remember that. That was fun. Why can't then do that for XBLA instead of all those lame arcade rewrites.

    --
    I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
  5. Good game, let's hope sequel is better though by Healyhatman · · Score: 1

    Fable was in fact pretty good... A little too cutesy and simple, but good mind-numbing gameplay. Point is it WORKED.

    As to this... Great idea for a good cause

  6. signed guitar hero controller by arbitraryaardvark · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/11/autographed-gui.html
    Guitar hero controller signed by clever nick name, gabe, tycho, a buncha people,
    proceeds to child's play.

  7. I'd be more likely to bid... by JK_the_Slacker · · Score: 1

    ... on making them hurry up and finish the darned thing.

    --
    I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
  8. product placement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hi, my name is Pepsi McDonalds and I'd like to bid on a role....

  9. Just what I always wanted... by beef623 · · Score: 1

    • Have a Fable 2 Shopkeeper named after you! (1)
    • Have a Fable 2 Farmer named after you! (1)
    • Have an important Fable 2 Villager named after you! (1)
    • Have a Fable 2 Monk named after you! (1)
    • Have a Fable 2 Quest character named after you! (1)
    • Signed underwear by Peter Molyneux! (1)
    • The only known surviving Fable T-SHIRT signed by the Development Team in 2004 (1)
    • Limited edition, official Fable 2 team T-SHIRT (1)
    • Limited edition, official Fable 2 sweater / hoodie (1)
    • Exclusive Fable 2 printed and framed artwork (1)
    • Limited edition, framed Black & White 2 poster, signed by the Development Team and Peter Molyneux (1)
    • Framed copy of Fable, presented in recognition of your contribution to the making of Fable (1)
    I don't know what to say about this...
  10. Populous, PowerMonger, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, by Rog7 · · Score: 1

    ... Magic Carpet, Black & White, Fable. All of his games are AAA titles as far as I can see.

    While I'd agree his earlier games were his best (the 4 in my subject title would all easily make my list of top 50 games, probably top 20), Peter Molyneux gets attention because he makes groundbreaking games. His biggest issue is having eyes bigger than his stomach, he overhypes and overdesigns and all of what he bites off he doesn't chew and much of it never actually makes it into the games... but still, there are few designers that can match him regardless.

    Definitely A-list. But then, I think the Slashdot detractors don't actually ~play~ games, unless you count forum trolling a game. =P

  11. How much is the bid for the Wii version by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    I'm shaking my nunchuk in anticipation of the Wii port of Fable II!

    Do you think they'll sign that?

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:How much is the bid for the Wii version by twistedsymphony · · Score: 1

      MS bought LionHead last year... no Wii port for you (or for anyone at that)

      --
      Collector's Edition
    2. Re:How much is the bid for the Wii version by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      Ah, but as Mac becomes 20 percent of the market and the Wii dominates, most games release for Wii within 6 months ...

      Microsoft is even having to try to trick laptop refurbishers not to wipe WinVista and install Ubuntu Linux in their latest program, because so many people see no utility in having WinVista or even WinXP anymore.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --