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Preview Fable 2: One button to rule them all

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Tags: Fable: The Lost Chapters; Lionhead Studios

<a href=http://www.worthplaying.com>Worthplaying</a> reports that Molyneux is <a href=http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=44488&mode=thread&order=0>talking crazy again</a>:
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<blockquote>Molyneux began with a discussion of the considerably altered combat system...
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"I want a system which is really accessible to use within a role-playing game, but a system that is much, much deeper than it was in Fable," he claimed. "[Fable's] combat was a little bit too button-mashy for my tastes. There wasn't enough variation there."
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Surprisingly, his solution to this quandary was to simplify the control scheme, eliminating two of the three combat buttons from the original game. ...
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"I know that's a pretty strange choice," he said, "because normally, in [Fable], we had the attack button, we had the block button, we had a parry and flourish button. We had three buttons, and we've reduced all that down to one button. But we want to try to make that as deep as we possibly can."</blockquote>Not as strange as one may think. Dumbing things down and claiming that what's left will be loaded with depth is a <a href=http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=5523>standard fare</a> these days.
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<blockquote>With that, Molyneux launched into a brief discussion of how death is portrayed in video games, calmly (but sharply) voicing his displeasure with how recent games have used checkpoint systems as a crutch. "The idea of most games, including Fable, is that when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint or the start of the level," he said. "I just think that that's stupid nowadays. It really pisses me off. And I really feel ... if I do it more than twice, I feel like throwing the controller across the room. Because all the flow of the combat is broken by that, by you being defeated."</blockquote>Fable 2: a game for 12 year olds by a grown up with a mentality of a 12 year old.
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<blockquote>In place of such a system is one in which the player will fall in battle, but not actually die. Instead, as the surrounding enemies continue to pummel the hero, he will earn permanent scars that will shape the way he is perceived by other characters. "If you 'die' a lot, you get scarred a lot," Molyneux said. "You get scarred a lot, people react to you differently. Your wife, when you go back home, will come out and say, 'God, what happened to your face?' And that is a new emotion."</blockquote>... Huh?
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Naked Ninja

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I saw the demo video of his "amazing combat system", it was completely lame. It relies on context sensitive actions, but you'd better hope the game thinks the context is what you believe it to be, otherwise you end up doing something completely different to what you expected. Pete himself, who you would expect to be competent with his own system, fumbles move after move (even though it just boils down to button mashing). It looks so clumsy and pointless. Someone obviously thinks he is above the KISS principle.

Keep It Simple Stupid. You have what, 8 buttons on a controller? Use them. I cringe when I think of how much development time was wasted on the context sensitive action system just so that the one button could do an inferior job of replacing 4. Just to feed the ego of one developer. The original name of the Fable games, Project Ego, now that was accurate.

As to the death thing : typical Petey rubbish. The moron frothed on about his aging system in 1. A world where you are the only character that ages, yes, SO awesome.
 

thesheeep

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Wow... this is ridiculous.

Fable 3 might be playable with only a single button AT ALL.
You just have to press Enter all the time to walk to your destination, attack, block, make the right decisions in dialogoues, save, load,...

A whole new level of dumbing down has been reached.
 

Sovard

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Yeah, doesn't surprise me.

This guy's idea of replayability is going through the game with a different weapon type ("You could play it again bare-handed, so that's one more way right there.")

Behind the scenes videos are a bitch, eh?
 

GhanBuriGhan

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This man is fall-from-grace incarnate. So your enemies beat you and are happy to let you go with scars... that offend your pixel-wife? Right Peter, totally makes sense.
 
Joined
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In place of such a system is one in which the player will fall in battle, but not actually die. Instead, as the surrounding enemies continue to pummel the hero, he will earn permanent scars that will shape the way he is perceived by other characters. "If you 'die' a lot, you get scarred a lot," Molyneux said. "You get scarred a lot, people react to you differently. Your wife, when you go back home, will come out and say, 'God, what happened to your face?' And that is a new emotion."

Wh-wh-wh-wh-WHHHAAAAAT?

No, no, he can't be fucking serious. No way.

I mean, no fucking way.

Holy shit.
 

pkt-zer0

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But... but I liked Magic Carpet and Populous and Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper.
Why must it come to this? WHY?!?


*erm*

So, yeah. Sounds like a deep combat system. At least you won't have to go through a lengthy combat tutorial or anything, just PUSH TEH BUTAN!!
 

Claw

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Hey guys, couldn't you very nearly play Ultima VII with only a single button? :P

The scars sound like they could be an interesting feature - if implemented in a completely different way, that is.

PS: Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that Bullfrog made great games.
 

Sovard

Sovereign of CDS
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Hellraiser said:
Is it me or did molyneux stop making good games after he formed lionhead?

Yeah, I think he has more "creative" (read: maniacal) freedom now.

Bullfrog holds a place in my heart, but it's obvious it wasn't all him back then.
 

Mamon

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I don´t know why you people jump at him like that. "One button is dumb down"....RPGs have been like that for an eternity, especially JRPGs (XXXXXXXXX...XXX).

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_4133_en.html

This video from gamerside is very interesting. Yes, we see a lot of Moly´s hyperbole (deep as Virtua Fighter, lol no Mr. Moly), but that´s expected from him.

I am actually looking forward to the game because I actually had a good time with the prequel (it was short, but much more enjoyable to me than the trainwreck that was Oblivion), and it seems Lionhead is using. the same lighthearted art from the first game (which was fresh, in comparison to the generic dark medieval world we are used to)
 

Claw

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Generic dark medieval world doesn't accurately descibe the commonly used generic fantasy setting.
Gothic is dark medieval. Oblivion is high fantasy.

At least we seem to agree on not taking Moleyneux too seriously.
 

dagorkan

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I remember back when I was posting on ESF saying I didn't like Morrowind because it was a dumbed down non-RPG, all the ESFers told me to go check out Fable, that it would be me kinda game.
 

Kotario

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He's been doing this type of thing for years, yet people still take him seriously. Apparently no matter how incompetent he is at game development, Molyneux will continue to be lauded with the "visionary genius" label forever, no matter how obvious he makes it that his day has passed.
 

VonVentrue

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whitemithrandir said:
Wh-wh-wh-wh-WHHHAAAAAT?

No, no, he can't be fucking serious. No way.

I mean, no fucking way.

Holy shit.

*In Darth Vader's voice* Search Your feelings, You KNOW it to be true!

Seriously though, it just occured to me that we have entered the dark era of cRPGs...
 

thesheeep

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Mamon said:
I don´t know why you people jump at him like that. "One button is dumb down"....RPGs have been like that for an eternity, especially JRPGs (XXXXXXXXX...XXX).

What nonsense...

In Final Fantasy games for example, you can at least chose what you want to do... attack, defend, spell, etc.
Also, the major difference is that almost all JRPGs are turn-based or semi-turn-based.

There is no problem in having one button do most of the work in TB systems...
But a non-TB-system where you only have to push ONE button for EVERYTHING in a combat?
Even baby apes would laugh at such an easy thing.

A game has to be challenging (at least a bit) to be fun.
A game without any challenge may be fun to look at, but nothing more...

And Fable 3 seems to be fun to look at, but nothing more.
You need only 1 button to fight.

You can't even f*cking die! And, honestly, nobody cares about scars...
The last game which did something like that, was "Prey". A nice FPS, but the fact that you were invincible took much fun away...



Edit:
Watched the video... so it's one button for weapon, one button for magic, etc.
Okay, that sounds better... but still... a game where you can't die, where being beaten down has almost no effect is kind of worthless.
 

Bradylama

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Mamon said:
I don´t know why you people jump at him like that. "One button is dumb down"....RPGs have been like that for an eternity, especially JRPGs (XXXXXXXXX...XXX).

CRPGs tend to have point-and-click interfaces with hotkeys, and JRPGs have menu-driven interfaces which provide multiple options for a single button press.

What we're talking about here is basically a fighting game with one button.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Vault Dweller said:
In place of such a system is one in which the player will fall in battle, but not actually die. Instead, as the surrounding enemies continue to pummel the hero, he will earn permanent scars that will shape the way he is perceived by other characters. "If you 'die' a lot, you get scarred a lot," Molyneux said. "You get scarred a lot, people react to you differently. Your wife, when you go back home, will come out and say, 'God, what happened to your face?' And that is a new emotion."

In Fable 1 you could get scars without having to die, just by plain combat. So, what's the great step forward in that system? None. It's a great step backward because you cannot die and that's retarded and without any challenge.
 
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I don't really see how deep a consequence is if people don't like you because you're scarred. Does that even affect the game at all? I'm fairly certain I'll still be able to do basically every quest, but with a "Bloody 'ell you're ugly!" tagged on the end.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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The only good emotion is greed:

rpgdialogueue7.jpg


Coming tomorrow.
 

Mamon

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People...its not one button for combat. Its one button for weapon, another for magic and other for melee...just like the first one. Its just seems that he is refining the weapon button to be multi-action (like Ocarina of Time or something). It doesn´t seem button mashy in the way he portrayed in the video.
 

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