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Putting Fable II Through Its Paces
Kotaku recently had a chance to sit down and run Molyneux's new Fable game through its paces. Fable II is set as an action RPG, and while the combat options were somewhat limited, there is an implied depth that is definitely going to be worth a look. "Molyneux showed off some of the game's Expressions, the silly jigs and smooth moves that let you woo ladies and forge new friendships, prior to our hands-on. You'll pick them from a radial menu when you want to take a wife or receive a gift. They were fairly limited in our demo of the game, but look to provide some welcome options for adding variety to the game world. You'll see non-playable characters throughout town that you can interact with using Expressions, each with icons over their heads indicating their disposition. Wow them with your moves and you'll reap the rewards."
With Molyneux's track record for exaggerating his own games; I do not trust any product he develops until I have seen it for myself. Or usually, read a lot of reviews and tried a demo. Even then, I am sceptical.
The Long Now Foundation
It's because you were aged based on your upgrades, but to be a decent mage-type character, you'd need a lot more cheap upgrades than otherwise.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
If the combat seemed kind of shallow in the preview but Peter Molyneux implied that there's a great deal of depth to it, gamers everywhere can rest assured on the strength of Peter Molyneux's track-record that the combat is indeed very shallow.
In the future, mothers will tell children the cautionary tale of The Molyneux Who Cried 'Features'.
Or did the first Fable have "Expressions... that let you woo ladies and forge new friendships" that "[You picked] from a radial menu when you want to take a wife or receive a gift" and "non-playable characters throughout town that you can interact with using Expressions, each with icons over their heads indicating their disposition"?
I mean, I'm all for news about a game to let people know it's still out there... but this could be fable one with a "II" painted on the box for all this blurb tells me. The actual article reveals that there is additionally a dog now.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
The Witcher is along the same lines as Fable, albeit a little more MMORPG and less Arcade in terms of combat. But the decisions you make during the game -- which are based on what you've gone through in the game -- come back to bite you later on. For example, in the first chapter, I'm trying to either protect or give up a witch to an unruly mob of townspeople. She has her story, while I go through about 5 of the townspeople's stories. Depending on what clues you've uncovered in the town, you might have discovered who's lying and who's not -- or worse, like me, you're pretty sure at least ONE of the townspeople is lying, but not necessarily the others...
So how do you decide the fate of the witch?
The physical gameplay wasn't as fluid as Fable, and you can't go wooing every woman you meet (most conversations are through multiple choice), but it was a very deep, dark game, both with the decision-making and the character development. It did have some fairly "mature" content.
Fable was fun though. :-)
Well, you illustrate another point, namely: games who try too hard to judge my actions into good or evil, and guilt trip me about them.
Almost any choice you get in The Witcher will sooner or later come back to "haunt" you. Or rather, it will be twisted into pretending to reveal something about you (or your character, same deal) that you didn't actually mean. The witch situation does have at least a right(er) choice, but a lot of other choices just have two "wrong" options.
Warning: minor spoiler alert. It's from the tutorial, though, so nothing major.
You remember how you had to choose whether you want to go inside and prevent the theft, or stay outside and help fight that beast? It doesn't actually matter which you chose. In both cases your character will have an "OMG, it's all my fault. If I had gone the other way, this wouldn't have happened!" moment. Essentially, it'll try to blame you either way.
At other points I even got blamed for deaths that weren't my fault in any form or shape, and couldn't have possibly prevented, no matter what. And stuff like that.
I realize they were trying to make a game where there is no good-vs-evil in the D&D way, but at times methinks they tried _too_ hard. They don't need to twist everything I say or do into sounding like a wrong, immoral, selfish or heartless choice.
Just so it's not completely OT: B&W at times suffered from the same problem. There was more than one situation where being merely being incompetent (e.g., failing to save your villagers from an attack) got judged as being more evil than Satan.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The story was "OK" but was missing huge parts. It felt dumbed down to the point I gave up on it.
It had a lot going for it, but missed the mark in too many places to be an epic game. For one, and I realize it is a nitpick, the scars were a stupid addition, especially with how easily they were earned.
The guild you joined was the "Hero Guild?" Seriously? THAT is the best you can do?.......and it allows "evil" heroes too....O...k. That wasn't just dumped in after a whole 8 seconds of thought.
I liked the demon doors, I liked the combat system, to a degree, but the stupid orbs for experience were a waste of time. Why not just give me more experience based on combo kills?
I remember getting to the end of the game and having a halo.
Which was annoying, because I'd tried to play as "neutral" as possible. But apparently killing thieves was considered "good" so, even though I had gone out of my way to hunt them down and mercilessly kill as many as I could, I was apparently the paragon of goodness. Mindless vigilantism for Fable sainthood!
Apparently to be evil you had to go on killing sprees amongst villagers. (Or just dump a lot of money at evil temples.)
I still find it strange that sniping bandits who can't even see you is considered good. Seems to be a bit of a strange moral to Fable.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Clearly these types of games just aren't for you. That's fine. Your personal taste is for sandbox RPGs. But that doesn't make these games bad. These games are more or less like a choose-your-own-adventure book. You're not really changing the story significantly, but you do make some choices along the way that will change the ending somewhat. These types of games are for people (like myself) who like reading fiction to see what happens to the character. In these games, it's not your character. The character is not a representation of you in the game. Rather, you have limited control over the character and have the ability to make some choices for him. The fun part in that is seeing how you can change the character by the choices you make. If you're really feeling devious, it can be fun to see if you can force the character to act out-of-character by making certain choices. Some such games will allow that; others won't.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
This would explain a lot. For some reason those villagers just kept on running into my sword. I mean, there I was minding my own business just waving around a sharp object in some random direction and suddenly they can't wait to jump into it. Don't these people know how dangerous that is?
You're pro-actively preventing them from doing harm. That's "good", right?