GDC 2007: Fable 2 (Xbox 360) Preview
Posted by Ramon Aranda on 03.08.2007
Who loves you?
Tuesday afternoon, we were given a chance to sit in for Peter Molyneux's GDC speech. Peter opened up by talking about his motivations for Fable 2. He mentioned that he took the many criticisms from the original Fable to heart and wanted to create something new that would address those issues. Peter's main focus was on innovation and on the need to bring something that's never before been done in a video game. He then spoke about adding an emotional aspect to the characters and finally added that he wanted to incorporate love into Fable 2. "How does it feel to be loved?", asked Peter as he proceeded to explain his vision. One thing that Molyneux feels is missing from many games today is emotional attachment. An attachment to your character is not something most players feel today when playing through countless adventures. How will Peter Molyneux attempt to do this?
First and foremost, players will be able to select either a male or female protagonist. Your character will begin as a child and age as the game progresses. Though the aging process will be partially in real-time, there will be chapters within the game that will advance you to different times in your life. Players can also choose between going the evil route or the heroic one. As you progress through the game, you can begin purchasing stands to sell products, a new place to live and you don't necessarily have to stop there. You can literally purchase every house you please...assuming you have the dough. Hell why not just buy out a castle? It's possible if you manage your incomes just right.
As for the emotional elements of the game: your character can get married and have children. The interesting part of that is that when you are married, you can actually have sex w/your wife. Not only can you do that but you can decide if you want to fornicate with a condom or not. Of course you realize that not using one will probably result in her getting pregnant, or you'll learn that the hard way (no pun intended). If you decide to have kids, they will play with you, show affection and look for you. Picture yourself coming home after a hard day's work of killing creatures only to have the door swing open and your little girl running into your arms, glad that you're home. That's only the beginning of it and Molyneux would not offer more details on how to incorporate feelings with your family.
The biggest revelation however was the addition of a dog. Yes that's right a dog! Molyneux showed us a demonstration of how this dog will affect your way of playing. The dog for the most part looks very realistic and the developers took time to really get the dog's movements to appear accurate. This dog will also show you a plethora of affection as a real dog would. The dog will play with his ball, follow you around, dig stuff up and basically serve as your companion for the entire game, that is assuming you want a dog. Your companion will also listen to commands and you are given a good variety of things to say and how to say them. Also, this time around there will be no more mini-maps in the game and instead, the dog will serve as that purpose. He will look for clues, and bring things to your attention when exploring or when in battle. The animal can get injured during battles and it is up to you to cure him along the way. One of the saddest things was shown to us during the demo. In one of the battles, the dog gets injured and ends up with a major limp in his walk. It slowly walks towards you after the fight, looking for you to fix him up and tell him it's ok. If you really don't want a dog, you can simply run away and never look back. Think that's heartbreaking enough? Well the dog will continue to look for you no matter where you go. If you happen to hit up the local tavern you will eventually hear him scratching the door and hoping you'll come get him. Eventually the dog gives up if you don't come to his aid.
Honestly that demonstration had the journalists in attendance ready to cry (not literally but it definitely had our feelings involved). It was an emotional thing to see that animal looking for your affection and the fact that we were all so captivated by the relationship with the dog means that Peter Molyneux had us hooked in.
It will be very interesting to see if all of these things can be put together well enough to make Fable 2 a success. There is definitely some potential here and we'll be anxiously awaiting some hands-on time with this sequel in the coming months. No release date was mentioned and only a short tour of the world was given. Even though we were told that the game is still very early in development, the graphics still looked very good. The world appeared lush and colorful and things can only get better. When I asked Peter if there would be different breeds of dogs (currently there is only 1), he said that the dog will change depending on how you raise it and didn't rule out the possibility of adding new breeds down the line. Xbox Live perhaps? We shall find out soon enough.
