Molyneaux: Fable 2 Is All About Love
This year’s speech from Peter Molyneaux, the man behind the Black & White and Fable franchises, showed a Molyneaux a little more cautious and mature than what we’d seen at some of his previous appearances. Gone were the wild promises regarding features that might make it into his future games, and instead I found myself sitting ten feet away from a man who seemed both a little wiser and a little chagrined at some of his previous statements in years past. Early on, he wryly reflected upon some of his more notorious moments, like when he claimed Fable was going to be “the greatest role-playing game of all time” and then brought down the wrath of every Final Fantasy fanboy on his head. “This time I’m not going to talk about things that aren’t definitely in the game,” he said.
Instead, the speech was focusing more on the overall goal of Fable 2, which (aside from the obvious technical achievements) is aiming to deliver a new level of emotional content for players. “We need to create “Wow” moments,” Molyneaux affirmed, and cited memorable moments from certain hallowed titles like
“What we need is for the player to experience emotions… including excitement, fear, and achievement… and love.” The type of love that Molyneaux discussed will arrive in three different forms: from the player’s family, from the world itself, and from the player’s dog; a feature first unveiled at today’s speech.
In order to start a family, players will need to get married and have sex, it doesn’t matter if you decide to play through the story as a male or female. You can have protected and unprotected sex in Fable 2, which will result in how your family grows. Characters can have a baby, which will kind of look like the player and you can watch them grow up. When Molyneaux was discussing this, he got rather emotional and seemed to almost break down for a second or two. The kid’s behavior will mimic the player’s, as well; if you’re good, they’ll be a goody two shoes and if you’re evil then your kid will turn into a bully. No information was given as to how this will work if you decide to make your character gay (yes, it’s been confirmed!), but I’m sure there’s a system already in place.
In terms of love from the game’s world an example from within the game was given: one of the quests is to save a gypsy camp. Now, if you end up saving them and then come back a couple of years later, the gypsy camp will react by saying things like, “hey, it’s the guy who saved us!” Essentially, this is the fame system taken to its next logical step, but it sounds like this might very well add a couple of Warm Fuzzy Moments to the gameplay.
Finally, we were presented with the dog. It sound like the dog will be a part of the game from the getgo, and will morph in appearance according to a player’s path. As a result, no two players’ dogs will ever look the same. His first and most important thing in life is not to aggravate you; one of the critical features of his design was to not irritate players: “His first thought is not to piss you off. His second thought is this: he absolutely loves you: he cares about you, he worries about you, he doesn’t like the things you don’t like and loves the things you like.” There are no buttons on the controller to control the dog, because, “the dog will worry about himself.” While this sounds a little worrying, it actually seems to have been implemented without a hitch. As a result, the dog acts like an early warning system. His intelligence system seems pretty intuitive, like how he will stay close if you draw your sword but will go after other characters if you aim your gun at them. You don’t have to keep the dog, though, and are free to walk away from it any time you so feel like it.
The dog will try to stay in front of you the entire time, as opposed to most other “psychic” characters, which typically stay behind a character and/or get in the way. Training will allow players to modify his behaviors. You can also play fetch with him, which apparently led to some problems with a tester who decided to throw the ball off a 200 foot cliff.
We were shown a couple of other things as sort of sidenotes: there was a flyover of the new version of Bowerstone: it’s no longer a town, it’s now a full city (which makes sense since the game occurs 500 years after the first one) and is utterly immense. There were a couple of quick displays showing The Slums, where you start, the merchant district, and the docks; the place looks like it’s a fully functional city.
Finally, Mr. Molyneaux made an obtuse comment that hints at Xbox Live compatibility: players will want to meet and play with each others’ dogs. Take that as you will.
All in all, Fable 2 looks like it’s going to be a fantastic title, and, admittedly, that dog looked pretty damn cute, too.
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 8 March 2007
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: awesome, dog, fable 2, family, lionhead studios, love, microsoft, peter molyneaux, xbox 360
So many gay questions, so little time.
If your character is gay, can you still get babies? Gay adoption? Surrogate mothers? Baby stealing?
Can you change the breed of your dog? Pit bull? Chihuahua? Poodle?
If the dog is as great as the one in Haunting Ground then they have a winner. I risked death because I wanted to play with the dog.
"wow" moments are to include your dog dying and your children dying, because those are like the two saddest things ever.
...unless you kill them yourself, you evil, heartless bastard...
I want to see the aging system fixed. No good reason why my character should be in his 50's half-way through the game while everyone else remains the same age.
I really hope the player's dog can evolve into a cat (clearly a being of higher intelligence), or else that just sucks! XP
Oh well... It's not like I'm very likely to play this game anyway, being the J-RPG fanboy that I am. The gay-option is a nice touch, though, quite considerate of Molyneux.
i read in an article from ign that you can't kill your dog...but they hint that he might, perhaps as part of the story...
i am not really planning on having babies, really...they have to include some sort of equality for all kinds of couples so they probably will feature adoption...
i just wish the male possible partners are at least as attractive as the females...
i mean...in the first fable i actually couldn't stand the gay relationship being that all the guys are the same height and size and bore voices that were terribly stereotypical...
and the women, though relatively more pleasing in the eyes, are just as irritating...although the evil sounding ones were pretty sexy...
so yeah...if they are going to make romance a more intuitive experience...they'll have to do better than the first fable...