Fable II Previews, Molyneux Opinions

Fable II is due out next month, so it's been making the rounds for previews. So has its creator, Peter Molyneux. He talks with Joystiq about the game's Co-op feature, which allows players to drop into the games of others, getting a look at how it would have played out had they made different choices. Molyneux also offered a frank interview to CVG about flaws in the game, such as poor lip-syncing and the occasional "low-spot." (This comes two weeks after he unabashedly rated it as a 9/10 game.) Joystiq also got several hours to preview the game, and Gamespy gave it a test drive recently as well.

Comments

Then what on Earth did you expect

[Moraelin]

As far as RPGs go it was horrid. [...] It was definitely entertaining [...] It was well worth playing regardless [...]

Well, stop right there. Do you even listen to yourself? If it was "definitely entertaining" and "well worth playing", then WTF _did_ you expect from a _game_, and how does it make it "horrid"?

Now I'm not going to tell you what to like and what not to like. Had you said that it just wasn't fun, ok, I'm not going to tell you what to find fun. But if it _did_ entertain you, how the heck does it count as "horrid"?

"Horrid" is when you get get bored out of your skull, or rubs you the awfully wrong way, or generally you'd rather be in a dentist's chair instead of playing it. "Horrid" is when you can't think of any good reason why you played it in the first place, or why would anyone (of similar tastes) even look twice at the box on the shelf. "Well worth playing" and "definitely entertaining" is the bloody polar opposite of "horrid".

Here's a thought: the _only_ thing a game must do, is entertain you. If it did that, mission f-ing accomplished. It doesn't matter _how_ it did it. Maybe it was different, maybe it was easier, maybe it was more linear than a straight line, or the elder gods know in what other way it differed from your preconceived notions. It doesn't matter. What matters is if you were entertained or not. That's it.

Putting any other preconceived notions about what a game should include, above that, is mistaking means and goal. The goal is to entertain you. Anything else is just means and props. If it used different means, but reached the goal, who the heck cares? Why _do_ you care?

And yes, maybe it wasn't perfect, and maybe there would have been opportunities to be even better. Same as any other game ever released. That just makes it, at best, less than perfect, not "horrid". There is no perfection. The only threshold it must clear is that "well worth playing" line. If you don't regret the money or the time you blew on it, then it seems to me like it is well within the bullseye. Maybe it didn't hit the exact centre of the target, but it didn't fail either.

Geeze, Ì swear that some people buy so much into the group-think of what they should and what they shouldn't like, that they don't even try to use their head.