GDC 2008 Coverage: Wrapping it Up

Making Gaming Compelling: Fable 2 Discussion

Whether you can get on board with him or not, Kurzweil is amazing in the simplicity and grandeur of his take on the world. And if anything, Peter Molyneaux is Kurzweil's analog in the game industry (with the exception that Molyneaux's reach sometimes exceeds his grasp). Games like Black & White and Fable really stretched out there and challenged the way the industry and society view games. Maybe a little more excitable and overreaching than Kurzweil, Molyneaux is once again preaching revolutionary ideas and amazing concepts for Fable 2. Some of the fundamental ideas behind the game really push back against traditional game design practices while trying to achieve basic goals that make games (and indeed all creative content) great.

Some of the details revealed about Fable 2 include the fact that the combat system is incredibly simple. All you need to do is push one button and you'll be able to do a variety of things to kill people. To make it interesting for advanced gamers, additional actions can be taken with other buttons that exponentially increase the experience you gain from a battle. For instance, one button may control your sword and all its moves. Pressing it once might do one move and subsequent presses would do different moves that are context sensitive. But then imagine pressing the sword button followed by the gun button to knock an opponent off his or her feet and shoot them before they hit the ground. This is they type of combination of simple actions that leads to what could be a truly engaging complexity for the seasoned gamer.

Co-op mode will allow gamers to visit each other's worlds. And the host gamer will be able to set limits on what the co-op player can do. For instance, a gamer can adjust the scale on which his or her co-op partner splits gold and experience in the game. The idea is that giving a gamer more control over what a co-op player does in their world will help protect gamers from the potential adverse affects that letting someone else in your house could have.

The additional incentive in Fable 2 to play co-op is that there are no gold drops in the game, and all money must be made by working for it. It just so happens that co-op players can make money by fighting for someone else and then take that money back to their own world to spend as they please. Essentially players will be able to really act as mercenaries for hire to other players. This was underlined as the most important new aspect of the game, but even with incentives to play co-op it just won't appeal to some people. If they pull it off well, it could certainly be the start of something bigger in co-op play, but the same could be said of a lot of Lionhead's more edgy gambles.

The final key that Molyneaux talked about (which he addressed first) is drama: a good compelling story and experience that really draws the gamer in. This is the thing that so many writers (for movies, games and books) go after but fall short of, and Peter thinks he and Lionhead have it figured out. They're gonna cheat.

First, he said that the story will be loosely based on dark European folk lore. He mentioned that this would probably involve lots of violence and sex, and underlines the fact that they had sex before hot coffee (of course they blanked the screen). This will continue in Fable 2, and you will be able to have children as well. At the mention that the screen would again be blanked when teh sex was happening, the entire audience sighed in disappointment. He paused for a moment and the said: "Don't blame us. It's you Americans: there's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany I'd be…" something about dancing around naked on stage that I couldn't quite catch through the laughter.

In any case, in order to "cheat" and tie the gamer into this world, Fable 2 will help show players that they are appreciated for what they do in the game. This will be facilitated through a dog, a family, and the world itself. The dog is there as a constant companion who will like the same things and people the player likes and will evolve with the player. Additionally, the dog will help warn of danger and point out areas of interest. Which brings us to a certain to be controversial topic. There will be no minimap on the screen (as Molyneaux notes, "minimaps are shit;" a comment which received uproarious laughter), and instead the gamers will be able to turn on and off a trail of bread crumbs that leads them to their destination or to areas they've been before. The dog is there to help pull the gamer off the bread crumb trail if there is something interesting to do near by. This doesn't sound very compelling to me, but we'll reserve judgment until we actually play the game.

Children in the game will tend to take on the traits of their parents, and there are many issues that can arise from procreation (like killing the other parent and orphaning a child) that the game does take into account. The deeper it goes in this area, certainly the more involved in the story it can pull the gamer.

Beyond the dog and family, decisions the gamer makes can affect the world itself. It won't change the story line per se, but things the gamer does will have an affect on, for instance, the capitol city of the world in which the game is set. There weren't many details here, but, depending on how far they take it, this could be a very cool thing.

Aside from saying that the co-op mode was inspired by Lego Star Wars, Molyneaux said he wanted to make it difficult to be good. Most players do end up taking the path of good in games like this, and adding to the drama by making it difficult to make certain choices on the path to being a good character should really draw the gamer in. The goal, Peter stated, is to build a scenario where the gamer must put down their controller and really contemplate what they want to do; whether they are willing to sacrifice something important to them to continue to play as a "good" character. I wish them luck in this endeavor and I look forward to seeing what they do here.

For those out there wondering about the other aspects of the game, Molyneaux gave a loose list of the features of Fable 2. He underlined the fact that we shouldn't take this as literal, as some things may be plus or minus. This is a general list of the types of goals they had when building the game.