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Fable 2 Follow Up a "Significant Scientific Achievement"?
In a bold statement, game developer Peter Molyneux is claiming that his new Fable 2 follow up is a "significant scientific achievement". His unbridled excitement stems from years of work on AI, simulation, and character interaction. "Fortunately for fans of Molyneux-style hyperbole, the man is back with wide-eyed, reins-off enthusiasm of his own future work. [...] In Molyneux's own words, 'I think it's such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired.'"
Why does anyone bother to report Molyneux's hype? I'm sure he's done some interesting work, but a "significant scientific achievement"? How absurd. It'll be yet another Molyneux game, ie some innovative concepts that ultimately fail as an engaging game.
I'll take Sid Meier or a dozen other designers that can actually deliver over pie-in-the-sky Molyneux any day.
If it was anything like the first fable, he's blowing his own horn. Fable was nothing special. It was one big long cliche, but it was well executed for what it was.
Fable reminded me of a platformer action game with RPG elements, the action gameplay was remeniscent fo Maximo.
The truth is much of what was in the original fable was half-baked and in the PC version, the lost chapters, not being able to reconfigure and remap your keys was frustrating.
While I liked Black & White, Mr. Molyneux has been a windbag since Bullfrog. Always hype, hype, hype, disappointment with him. Most of his recent games would be decent to fairly good if only he would shut the hell up before release.
Wish he'd make another Dungeon Keeper.
Peter Molyneux is infamous for promising gamers the moon. Fable 2 will likely be fun, but take everything P. Molyneux here says with a grain of salt. He said similarly boastful things with Fable... and pretty much every other game he's ever had a hand in.
1. Molyneux hypes the hell out of $game_X
2. Delivered product turns out to be nothing like the hype.
3. Expansion released to attempt to mollify angry fans.
4. Pick up $game_X plus expansion for 1/5th-1/10th of its original retail value a couple years later, and at that price it turns out to be not that bad at all.
The kotaku article links to a Wired article which states that the follow up to Fable 2--a game he "can't talk about right now"--is the achievement in question. For those interested enough, the interview also has a couple of interesting lines about the bug-testing in Fable 2 (trying to get the AI tuned) and also the morality system (shades of grey, not just black and white--no pun intended).
There were a lot of aspects of Fable which were quite, quite bad.
Like the "AND THEN, THE HERO WENT AND DID WHAT YOU JUST DID, ALL ACCORDING TO PROPHECY, WHICH YOU ARE HEARING NOW, AFTER YOU ALREADY DID WHAT YOU JUST DID!!!!" narration, and the uber-boring combo system which rewarded brainlessly knocking down tons of enemies with weak abilities just to milk the system.
But... the game was probably one of the prettiest games out. It's actually a lot like Dungeon Siege- a mind-numbingly boring, yet breath takingly beautiful, game.