Fable II DLC Coming In December

Microsoft has announced that the first pack of downloadable content for Fable II will be available on December 12th. It introduces a new island called "Knothole," which contains new quests and dungeons, as well was various items and character customization effects. An interesting article about Fable II's morality system is up at Valuable Games. The author says, "In many ways the game's moral dimension feels more like a feature, similar to the implementation of new shaders or an upgraded AI system. It is not that the morality system is tacked on; it is a central part of the gameplay. But, compared to the enormous amount of work that must have gone into designing the world (i.e. creating artwork, a coherent narrative and the world itself), there seems to be far less time spent on developing (minor) emergent moral choices and major moral dilemmas in the game's overall narrative." GameSetWatch has a related story about how the game approached storytelling.

Comments

Morality As A Game Feature

[Enderandrew]

I like morality as a feature, don't get me wrong. But Ultima IV did this 23 years ago, and they did a better job of it. Instead of one axis of good vs. evil, they monitored 8 separate virtues, and the game demonstrated during character creation that sometimes those virtues could be at odds with each other. Peter Molyneux also hyped up Fable and Fable II so much over the years, that as great as the games might be, they are a pale shadow of the games he promised they would be.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Fable 2 has two axes. That's a whole 100% better than 1 axis.

I'm actually unable to tell what if any gameplay effect this has though. Corruption/purity changes your appearance, and makes you appear better or worse to villagers. But play the Lute once and they'll forget about the flies circling you. Good/evil gives you horns or a halo, and a couple extra, uninteresting expressions. And that's the extent of it.

The actually choices that shift you along the continua do occasionally change the gameplay, or at the very least give you different, comical cutscenes. But the continua themselves are just a byproduct, or serve a statistical tracking purpose.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[DreamsAreOkToo]

What I really don't like is how the interpretation of 'Good' is that "Good equals Sacrifice." I like to play Good, especially my first time through a game, but Fable II made me miserable the entire game. It requires you to do tedious mini-games for cash, when you could just easily extort and kill people for their money. Wouldn't it have been a truer interpretation if good players received better rewards from quests, since people would like them more? Wouldn't more townsfolk beseech the player with quests, knowing that he'd help them out? Regardless of what real life is like, I don't want to grind away at a job to earn money the "Right Way."

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Osty]

It requires you to do tedious mini-games for cash, when you could just easily extort and kill people for their money. Wouldn't it have been a truer interpretation if good players received better rewards from quests, since people would like them more? Wouldn't more townsfolk beseech the player with quests, knowing that he'd help them out? Regardless of what real life is like, I don't want to grind away at a job to earn money the "Right Way."

Sounds like you did it wrong. Playing good, you grind away at minigame jobs to get enough money to buy one of the bigger properties, like Bowerstone pub (pouring drinks at the pub is a good way to get this money, and doesn't take very long to get large amounts of cash as long as you can get your multiplier high). Once you've bought that, you'll start raking in large amounts of gold every 5 minutes, which will add up and you can then buy other big properties (other pubs, the blacksmith, etc), thus adding even more to your income. Property is your main money maker, and as a good character your "bonus" is that people will sell much more cheaply to you if they like you. If you're evil, or you kill owners of shops/houses, prices go up.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[DreamsAreOkToo]

It took me 3 hours of tedious mini-games in order to do exactly what you describe (buy a large property) and the payoff ended up being so little! It was approximately 300 gold rent for a 60,000 gp propety. That means 200 ticks (1,000 minutes or 17 hours) has to pass to make up for your initial purchase!

Also, if you're evil, killing the owners actually substantially reduces the price. If you ruin the economy, you can cheaply afford the entire town, and then restore the economy or just extort people for a lot of cash. I played the game through twice, once playing as "good" and once as "evil." Yes, playing evil was a ton more fun and a lot more effective than playing good, compared to other games, like Mass Effect, Kotor, or even Fable I, where playing good or evil were both good choices.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I approached in the same manner as other big-ish worlds that have an economy - I looked for trade opportunities.

The best route I found was in the market square, I bought the jewellery shop, bought all the expensive items at a massive owners discount, and then wandered over the bridge to the general store and sold them at a far higher price. I did that a few times, then sold the jewellers, bought the general store, reversed the process.

After that I had around four hundred thousand gold, and I just bought everything. Then come next weekend I had another four hundreded thousand, and the weekend after that I had a couple of million.

I don't have the time to play very much, so not having to worry about where to get gold from really helped me out.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[ultranova]

I like to play Good, especially my first time through a game, but Fable II made me miserable the entire game. It requires you to do tedious mini-games for cash, when you could just easily extort and kill people for their money.

Look, it's a role-playing game. Simply cast Detect Evil (or equivalent) into everything you come across, and only kill and extort the things with the evil bit set. Simple as that.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[mikeasu]

Good point - Ultima IV is still one of my fondest gaming memories. I also like how they went on, at least with Ultima V, showing how the virtues, taken to the extremes, become vices. Simmilar corruption was repeated in U7 part II with the principles, as I recall. The whole concept of virtues in those games was an incredible focus of the story, I don't think I've seen anything close since then. I don't know, maybe Black vs White came close - that game never held my interest.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Enderandrew]

Ultima V was my favorite because of how they showed the exact same virtues can be twisted when taken to extremes. The other virtue systems (Gargoyles, Guardians, Fellowship) provided interesting contrast as well.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[elrous0]

Trying to be a good guy and having to grind away while the bad guys easily rise to the top? Shit, that's not a game, it's my life story.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[sigmabody]

IMHO, their morality feature was pretty underwhelming. For example, the game claimed that you lived with consequences of your actions, yet you could slaughter a whole town and when you came back they'd all be alive again. You can donate money to change your alignment arbitrarily. You can take someone from utterly loathing you to in love with you with two minutes of hand-waving expressions (along with everyone nearby). In short, the morality and consequences system was a joke; the game itself was ok, but the morality aspect was one of the weakest and least compelling parts.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[CFTM]

Because you're not exploring the real estate mechanics deep enough. My first play through of Fable II, I figured my best bet was to buy as much property as possible but then I never bothered to do much with it. Second time through, I realized how tough it was to get tons of money early on so I just hoarded my money, bought weapon augments and slowly began purchasing homes throughout Albion. At the same time as purchasing the homes, I made sure to visit the furniture store often getting every 4 star and 5 star item that I could. Then redecorate!

Don't forget to hang your trophies up....you can buy a house for about 10k and once you do these upgrades the rent will be 300-400 coins per tick. Rinse and repeat on as many houses as is possible and you'll be making a lot of money. I own almost none of the shops, but almost all of the houses and am making 10k per tick....

And pouring beer is a great way to make money....

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Tragedy4u]

Ultima 4 was near and dear to my heart, one of the first CRPG's that offered a plot based on morality instead of "kill the big foozle waiting for you at the end". However it didn't allow the player the freedom to win by being the badguy, nor did it allow for multiple choices to excel in each virtue however your choices had to drive you to become a paragon for good otherwise you couldn't win so moral choices had direct consequences on the end game (despite it's limitations). Over 20 years later, few games have matched that the moral decisions had almost no effect on how Fable played out it just influenced your appearence...aesthetics don't make for playing a role.

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[Enderandrew]

I thought Lord British was the big floozie and you had to find a creative means to kill him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[DarksideDaveOR]

Actually, you're all doing it wrong. (Although I did too, my first time through.) The real money is from buying from shops with sales, and then selling to shops with a high markup.

And the merchants in Fairfax gardens always have a high markup....

Re:Morality As A Game Feature

[CFTM]

That's outside of property and those opportunities aren't always there. When you have a 50% or 75% weapons sale, sure it's worth doing that but that situation doesn't happen all the time. I suppose you can make increments if you so please but I'm too lazy for that...rather run around chopping things to bits and blowing them away with a blunderbuss ;)

Of course...

[CaseM]

Honestly, did we expect anything more than

public void setAlignment(int delta) {
alignment += delta;
}

?

I want a cool "morality system" as much as the next guy, but we're so far removed from anything like it that I tune out whenever a game designer (especially one as infamous as Mr. Molyneux) talks about making "moral" choices in any meaningful capacity.

In the words of Yahtzee

[Killer Orca]

I can buy the DLC, which was clearly content that could have been in the game already but has turned a $60 game into a $70 one, but why would I want to?

Again with the acronyms

[caitsith01]

I can't wait to DL this DLC onto my SKU via XBLA FTW.

Seriously, is it really too hard to write "downloadable content" in the headline? A few of us don't spend our days reading Playstation Marketeer Magazine.

Re:Again with the acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not off-topic, it's right there in the fucking headline.

How the game approached storytelling

[Sentry21]

The same way a lunatic might approach a puppy: with a shilleleh and a glint in its eye.

Oh ffs

[n3tcat]

Downloadable content doesn't need it's own acronym! That's encouragement. It's like saying that it's a standard part of the industry. FUCK. THAT.

Re:Oh ffs

[nsaneinside]

Or maybe it's like saying that DLC (DownLoadable Content) is such a TTI (Totally Tubular Idea) that its a RCT (Really Cool Thing) that it needs its own TLA (Three Letter... oh, fuck it.

Knothole?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if I'll be facing any blue hedgehogs in the dungeons of Knothole.