A preview on Fable 2, telling us a lot about the gameplay mechanics in there, the dog, and some more stuff.April 5th, 2008 by MarvellousG
Fable 1
When the first Fable was released on the original Xbox, it won over many fans with its interesting good/evil mechanic. Critics received it well and large numbers were sold. But what annoyed many who followed the game before its release, was the fact that Peter Molyneux promised so many features that did not make it. It was hard to criticise him much because he expressed himself so enthusiastic. But only half the ideas he revealed that had a chance of making it into the game, made it.
Now, four years later, the Xbox 360 is enjoying a great wealth of good RPGs, both Western and Japanese. Molyneux still believes his Fable series has the chance to be the best role player out there.
Innovations
Fable 2 certainly has enough innovations to support this lofty claim thus far. The first one is the dog. Whereas most Role Playing Games rely on radars and journals to point you in the right direction, Fable 2 decides to ditch this. Instead they simply give you a dog. According to Molyneux, the dog will have the best AI ever seen in a videogame. Demonstrations thus far have shown it to be intelligent, if not award winningly so. AI aside, the dog will bark to alert you of enemies, sniff out hidden treasure and side quests, and trot merrily along towards your goal in an area.
Alerting you to enemies, sniffing out quests, and treasures....hmmm, that's interesting.
BTW, didn't Fate have a dog as your companion?
(Yes, it did -- rhetorical question).
I liked how my dog in Fate would go back to town and sell "any junk I didn't need," while I stayed in a dungeon and did my thing.
It all sounds well and good, but I’m still unsure whether or not this will end up being a frustrating gimmick, leaving players wishing for a good old fashioned journal screen. However, what has been shown so far -has- been promising. What also seems interesting about this trusty canine figure is that he will change his looks according to the player’s actions. Be good and so will your dog. Be bad, and you’ll have a yapping rottweiler as company. This seems a nice elaboration of Fable’s behaviour mechanic, and will make for an interesting man and his best friend duo that differs for every player.
I can see it now...
"Rosebud...sick 'em, boy!"
Combat
In combat lies the second innovation. Apparently it is ‘simple yet deep’. Your controls are X for melee attack, Y for ranged attacks and B for magic. These are all context sensitive, so going through an area full of enemies via a different route might lead to seeing many different animations each time. However, could this simply be making the classic error of mistaking ‘accessible’ for ‘shallow’? It seems not, as players will be able to upgrade their powers as they see fit, to build whatever character class you want. You could unlock more combos, better weapons or more powerful spells, and a wealth of other abilities.
Okay.
Co-op
The third innovation Molyneux announced is co-op. At any point in your game, a friend can turn on his wireless controller, press start, and he’s in. This jump-in jump-out play, reminiscent of Lego Star Wars, has never really been tried in an RPG before but it looks it will work extremely well. You and your friend can run around each other’s game worlds, killing each other’s families if you so choose (come one, you know you will), and generally wreaking two times the amount of havoc you would experience on your own.
Man, you know, that would be bad-ass if that could be over Xbox Live.
If there's a PC version, that could be hell of a lot of fun over The Internet...
One thing that’s been dropped from the cooperative play is the dog, so you won’t be able to see whose pup can fetch the best. Lionhead says this is due to the frame rate hit the game would take. Co-op was a feature planned for the original Fable, and was playable at one point. It is good to see all of the best ideas that didn’t make it into the original finding their way into this game.
Dammit, it would've been cool to see two heroes and two dogs fighting it out...
Love
The fourth and final innovation revealed so far is love, simple as that. What, you cry? Love? Well, yes. At some point in your game you will find a lady friend, and have the routine that we have in real life: appear pleasant, go out on dates, become close, and then hopefully marriage. And then, hopefully children. Yes, there is sex in Fable 2. No, you don’t get to see it, but you will see the results. When that mini-you pops out, you’ve got your very own virtual family to take care of. Joy.
Sounds like there will be more expansion on the "Sims" side of stuff here than the original Fable, which laid out a pretty good foundation for what could come in a sequel.
Your child will then, much in the same way as your dog (stay with me), emulate how you yourself behave in the game. Be good, and little Sam or Samantha will be coming home with good grades and praise from all of the teachers at their school. Be bad, and you’ll be getting letters home asking for your ray of sunshine to ‘please leave our esteemed educational facility’. Maybe it won’t happen quite like that, but your family sure will take after you. Molyneux also talks of Fable 2 forcing you to make decisions that may linger with you after you stop playing, much in the same fashion as Mass Effect so triumphantly succeeded in doing.
“There will be a moment six hours into game where you walk into room and someone will ask you to do something and you will have to sacrifice something precious to you as a gamer. You will put down the controller and ask, what am I going to do?” So, what are you going to do? Is Molyneux hinting at maybe killing an innocent to save the world, or something maybe smaller in the scheme of things, but a little closer to home? Will you have to say goodbye to one of your children? It would seem so, and that’s where ‘love’ comes in. Molyneux promises that you will get to know your virtual family as if they were your real one, and that you will truly have deep feelings of affection for all of them. Big claims indeed.
Let's hope out it turns out as good as it sounds.
Can’t come soon enough
If this article seems a little sceptical of Lionhead’s epic, it is because of all the features promised for the original Fable but were never delivered. If anything, I’m simply trying to contain my own excitement by believing everything Molyneux says to be cruel lies. But if even half of what he says makes its way into the game, then we may truly be in for an RPG revolution. Q3 2008 can’t come soon enough!
I hope it turns out well on the X360...and that of course, we get a PC port later on.
