Fable 2 hype machine claims another victim

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/ma ... ble120.xml

"One mission at the beginning [of the game] has the character meeting a town guard who is in search of arrest warrants," Molyneux smiles. "If you don't help the guard find the warrants, criminals end up running that area of the city. When you come back to it at later stages of the game, you'll see that it's become a crime-ridden slum and assassins are being trained there - and your character can also become an assassin. This is one whole storyline contained within the game that you'll never experience if you give the warrants to the guard. If you do that then the area become a nice middle class area with a strong economy and all the inhabitants are happy."

Molyneux says that all of this is geared towards producing a game with multiple endings and massive re-play value.

I'm afraid to believe the crazy man, but I really, really want to. I failed my save vs. hype and it started sucking me in. Oh well, here is a great quote for the lulz:

In the early 90s we were standing on the brink of what everyone was certain was going to be an entertainment revolution - we were set to entertain the world in a way that they'd never been entertained before," he says. "But instead of thinking of that as our central vision, we went down another route where we made games for just the hardcore gamers, completely forgetting about the huge untapped potential of casual gamers. And then surprise surprise, Nintendo releases the Wii and targets all the millions of people that thought that games were dumb, or that they were too dumb to play them.

Making games for people who are too dumb to play games.... It's so crazy, it just might work!

 

[MetalCraze]

at least Molyneux doesn't hide that he is making this game for dumb retards.

 

[Saxon1974]

Funny Post VD, I laughed at both of the quotes for different reasons.

 

[thesheeep]

Of course Molyneux knows what he is doing. Unfortunately, he doesn't know where that could lead to...

 

[RK47]

he can't lie to save his grandma. He's some sort of bizarro Todd Howard. Somewhat a well meaning yet flawed game designer.

 

[Section8]

"One mission at the beginning [of the game] has the character meeting a town guard who is in search of arrest warrants," Molyneux smiles. "If you don't help the guard find the warrants, criminals end up running that area of the city. When you come back to it at later stages of the game, you'll see that it's become a crime-ridden slum and assassins are being trained there - and your character can also become an assassin. This is one whole storyline contained within the game that you'll never experience if you give the warrants to the guard. If you do that then the area become a nice middle class area with a strong economy and all the inhabitants are happy."

Molyneux says that all of this is geared towards producing a game with multiple endings and massive re-play value.

Yep, that does sound really cool. I shudder to think of what it will become when reality sinks in.

 

[Unradscorpion]

I don't think anyone cares about that, the selling point of the first game was kicking chickens, will there be any of that?

 

[Disconnected]

he can't lie to save his grandma. He's some sort of bizarro Todd Howard. Somewhat a well meaning yet flawed game designer.

More like totally brilliant idea-guy, whose ideas never get implemented.

 

[Kingston]

I shall copy + paste my post in the other thread about the same subject:

Every choice has a consequence in Fable 2.

Cool beans. I doubt that's true, but if its what they are aiming for, cool beans.

Fable2 is sounding alright to me. I mean, if you disregard the one-button combat and other retardation.

I really hope Molyneux has pulled his shit together for this one.

 

[Gragt]

I knew someone who once met Molyneux, he said that the guy was very charismatic and had a way to explain his ideas and make you feel enthusiastic about them. Talking with him seems to be a real pleasure.

Then you see the final result and conclude the guy must have some kind of hypnotic power. I was tempted to tell him maybe he was too dumb to just believe people based on their charisma score but unfortunately I did not talk to him since.

 

[JarlFrank]

Fable 2 is going to be a fun RPG just like Fable 1 was. Fun and un-serious with lots of lulzy stuff and character customization that is similar to these games.

If he manages to add choice and consequence and other good stuff to it, all the better.

 

[RK47]

So when is Fab2 coming out anyway? I'm waiting for these games atm:
1. Mass Eff: End of May
2. F3: Unknown
3. GTA 4: End of Year?
4. Fab 2: Beats me.

 

[Texas Red]

Every game comes out somewhere during Christmas.

 

[Lord Chambers]

In the early 90s we were standing on the brink of what everyone was certain was going to be an entertainment revolution - we were set to entertain the world in a way that they'd never been entertained before," he says. "But instead of thinking of that as our central vision, we went down another route where we made games for just the hardcore gamers, completely forgetting about the huge untapped potential of casual gamers. And then surprise surprise, Nintendo releases the Wii and targets all the millions of people that thought that games were dumb, or that they were too dumb to play them.

It is rather astounding how long gaming tended to resist expanding it's customer base. Either it took a long time to be big enough for real business minds to migrate to it, or for designers with business sense to enter it. Looking back, a lot of the games I played as a child were impossibly difficult or had learning curves which, had I other options for entertainment as a friendless egomaniac, would probably have repelled me. Nowadays this market of gamers is still catered to, but the big news, especially here, is all the places the casual people are being catered to. The question is, why now and not sooner?

 

[MetalCraze]

because 10 years ago you were required to have some skills to use PC - and that means that dumb people weren't there, so making dumb games were possible only on consoles (I got myself PS1 emulator and then I saw that there were almost no even remotely good playstation exclusives except sport games when I've tried to look for them. the same goes even for earlier consoles btw - console exclusives always were dumb and sucked in their majority)

 

[JarlFrank]

But Super Mario Brothers was awesome.

 

[MetalCraze]

but the tons of their clones weren't.

 

[JarlFrank]

Just like with Diablo.

 

[VonVentrue]

at least Molyneux doesn't hide that he is making this game for dumb retards.

What vexes me is that provided the game turns out to be a massive success in terms of critical acclaim and/or sales, many developers might make an attempt to follow in Molyneux's footsteps. The perturbing thought of such a scenario becoming reality offers substantial reasons why we should worry.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Yup sounds great.
Molyneaux's games always sound great and are full to brimming with "o man that is gonna be sweet!" ideas.
Then of course you buy one, install and play it and realize that all those great ideas never materialized. It is hard not to get swept up by his PR - he does have some cool ideas for games; some very cool ideas. If only some version of those ideas actually ended up in his games. I truly believe he'd like to implement and I don't know what goes wrong between his idea(s) for a game and the realization, but it goes wrong. And it goes wrong big.
If I even bother to take a gander at Fable 2 it will be with the outlook that it will be a fun-ish action/rpg-lite game with visual flair, good music and good voice acting and will not tax or astound. And if *everything* works out there will be maybe one part of the game that somewhat resembles one of those very cool ideas he touted pre-release.

 

[Trash]

it's not that black and white (hurrr). He did create some groundbreaking games in the past like Populous and still occasionally a very fun one like Fable. I just think that he gets too enthousiastic for his own good.

 

[Trash]

Double post, or alternatively "coffee induced, boss walks near button smashing syndrome".

 

[Texas Red]

What cool ideas are you talking about? One idea is to dumb down his game like there's no tomorrow and the other one is to implement C&C, a rather old idea successfully done long ago. He wants to turn the game industry in to McDonald's and you call him creative.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

"One mission at the beginning [of the game] has the character meeting a town guard who is in search of arrest warrants," Molyneux smiles. "If you don't help the guard find the warrants, criminals end up running that area of the city. When you come back to it at later stages of the game, you'll see that it's become a crime-ridden slum and assassins are being trained there - and your character can also become an assassin. This is one whole storyline contained within the game that you'll never experience if you give the warrants to the guard. If you do that then the area become a nice middle class area with a strong economy and all the inhabitants are happy."

Molyneux says that all of this is geared towards producing a game with multiple endings and massive re-play value.

Yep, that does sound really cool. I shudder to think of what it will become when reality sinks in.

The problem I have with this is basically the Mean Value Theorem. The guard loses the original warrants, time magically passes, the town is a crime ridden slum. As you're moving away from the number of 1 towards the number 2, you have to cross 1.5. During that time that magically passes, those original criminals have to commit more crimes thus there would be new warrants for those new crimes. Unless we assume that the guard that you didn't help is going to continue to lose warrant after warrant the entire time, it doesn't make sense that the town is going to go to hell in a handbasket.

In fact, I would argue that the results of the quest could easily be switched. Because you helped the inept guard, he was able to go on and continue to screw things up landing you in the Law of Unintended Consequences - Crime Town. If you didn't help the guard, he was fired for not being able to do his job and they hired a better guard - Town Flourishes.

It also seems a bit small minded to have such a small event like papers about a few criminals staying lost resulting in the fall of an entire town.

 

[Chefe]

Fable is a game of extremes. It looks to still be that way, but on a much larger scale (the town going to hell because of a few bandits). I hope there are a few more factors into play though when condemning the town.

Even though it was hyped to hell and back, and ended up cutting alot of stuff, Fable still did unique in a way that no other developer would. It wasn't deep, but it was fun, for the most part. It was also original, and it cloned nothing except Zelda OOT/MM in several ways (which needs to be cloned more anyways). The world might have been small, but I found it worth exploring.

Fable 2 being a better version of Fable 1, and featuring tons of crazy shit that would only fit into the fantasy world that Molyneux created here, is good enough for me.