Molyneux Reveals Why Fable 3 Will Piss Players Off

[The Diabolical Biz]

It all sounds pretty good in my opinion

 

[House_Vet]

The natal just gets creepier...

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

there will be a "touch" mechanic in Fable 3 that will allow players to punish or play with children

Fox news will be all over this. "OMG CHILD CRUELTY! PROTECT THE CHILDREN!"
I just wonder if it's a simple shove or a smack or something like the parents of say the 1950s would do to their kids before making your kids follow the rules went out of style.

LoL silly Fox doesn't advocate children's rights! They would probably approve of not being afraid of beating children.

Although with Fable's style of choice you could probably beat them constantly for no reason.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

I was happy. Now I am sad. Why get rid of the Health Bar? He's a good guy, he always tries to help but gets rubbed in the dirt. He's just trying to find his feet again!

I'm not pleased with this news. Not pissed off, just disgruntled.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

This looks good, and I will buy it when its released because I actually have liked every Peter Molyneux game I've ever played judged with no expectation. However, I won't let the hype get to me because then I'm going to judge it by the standards of a game written by mohammed, designed by jesus and delivered to me by Jehova himself instead of the standards of a video game made by a person.

 

[Spiner909]

There is a slave trading option? What? I wonder how it's going to piss non-players off.

 

[Therumancer]

Actually this does seem pretty horrible, and he did predict my response correctly. Basically what it sounds like is that he's turning Fable into an action game with improved story telling elements rather than an RPG in any way, shape, or form. What is described wouldn't even pass as an action RPG from the way it sounds.

I imagine the idea is that he (like many) are thinking of RPG gamers as a niche audience and feels that he can make more money by removing all of the stats and such that make something an RPG and get more users/sales by simply making an action game with a decent storyline and some non-combat interaction.

I personally do not care for the trend, largely because I'm an RPG fan,but also because I think it will end badly. All these RPG developers setting sale for "Action land" simply means that the action market dollars will be tugged in more directions and in the end more companies are going to fall when they are overcome. In the meantime the RPG market will go through another dry spell, until someone figures "oh hey, I can make money by doing RPGs, maybe not as much as the biggest action shooters, but a not inconsiderable amount" and tap it again until of course they inevitably get greedy.

So, basically Peter is jumping ship on even trying to make RPGs, and knows that this is going to irritate the RPG fans who had been supporting the series despite their complaints. But in the end he doesn't much care, because the grass is always greener on the other side of the pasture, and right now he thinks he's heading for some bigger paydays. The fact that he admits he's going to upset people, doesn't change the fact that he is stabbing a good portion of what fan base he had in the back.

How is this "horrible" for RPGs exactly? All it does is take away the number crunching aspect of the genre, which imo was never RPGs' selling point anyway.


-

You are incorrect, that is exactly the selling point of RPG games which have pretty much always been around alongside their "action" based counterparts.

Storyline, character development, and other things have been associated with the RPG market but that is not what makes them RPGs. What makes a game an RPG is when your personal abillity has little or nothing to do with the outcome of the events in a game. Rather than having to twitch around and swing your sword, the results of a sword attack are dictated by an assigned skill level and a random number generator simulating die rolls. This is the key element of what makes an RPG an RPG. "Action RPGS" are games that tried to bring this into real time, typically involving very little in the way of player reflexs, and the determination of results by stats and skill selection. This is also incidently why a lot of action gamers have gotten upset with a lot of "action RPGs" over the years as when they dodge a fireball or arrow or something (or think they have) the picture simply curves to hit them anyway because the actual position of the characters never really mattered, all that mattered was that LOS (Line Of Sight) existed, an attack was made, and the skills/rolls determined a hit at that time period. The real time graphics simply being a fancy representation. The reason why some so-called RPGs now are not RPGs is because you can engage in "gamepad evasion" and hitting and missing is dependant on your abillity to line up crosshairs and such far more than any kind of skills.

Another key point of RPGs is of course customization, the abillity to not only select abillities, but to equip your characters as you want and decide what you want them to do. Something which incidently takes a LOT of programming, and can be tricky to implement. A lot of RPGs and action RPGs in their latest incarnations have been doing away with this kind of thing and in many cases ceasing to be RPGs at all. For example in "Mass Effect" all of your companions do a specific thing. You don't for example have to make choices on what kind of weapon each character with master, and which powers they will master (given a lack of points to learn everything), and that's a step down from say Knights Of The Old Republic (to which this was a spiritual successor) where you not only had far more gear choices/slots than even ME1, but could also develop each character in several very differant directions.

The "truest" RPGs and the ones I miss the most are games like Wizardry where combat is turn based (totally stat driven) and instead of one protaganist you create, you design an entire party of six with a dozen or so differant races and classes and thus have to choose what to take with you and build a balanced party based on your playstyle. While traditionally a group of "silent protaganists" games like Wizardry 8 showed that voice acted personalities can be added to a whole party of characters, with them commenting at differant times (with a whole ton of differant voice selections/personalities to selec from... and we're talking more than the "combat comments" and "grunts" from other games).

I am not saying that this kind of thing is to everyone's taste, I understand it's an anathema to a lot of hard-core twitch gamers. However there ARE plenty of RPGS fans out there, and there is no reason both groups cannot be catered to. The biggest problem of course is greed because while the RPG market can sustain a pretty massive profit, the success of a major action title can be bigger. Hybrids trying to make both sides happy, usually wind up annoying both groups, and while a few have been decent, mostly I think that tendency has caused development to go wrong in more cases than it has gone right.


Fable was always very much a "lite" RPG, but you still had to make desicians on character build. Yes you COULD max everything out unlike many RPGs (part of what makes it 'lite') but typically not until the end of the game, so you had to carefully choose what to build up especially in the beginning based on how you wanted to play. Of course to be entirely honest one of the criticisms of Fable has largely been that some playstyles/selections are more viable than others which tends to lead to most people playing exactly the same way which is not a good thing.

But hey, let Peter Moneyneaux do what he wants to, it's his game series. I bought both of his previous "Fable" games and actually wound up defending them as action RPGs despite some criticisms. If he goes in this direction I simply am not going to buy Fable 3. Going by his reaction he suspects this I think, and pretty much feels he'll draw in enough new gamers to more than counterbalance the people he loses.

 

[Silver]

Aww... When I read the first part I was almost overjoyed since I misinterpreted it as him having nothing to do with the game.

It sounds like it's going to move in a more annoying direction, which isn't THAT sad, considering the first two weren't all that good, but it could have been salvaged, which would have been joyful.

 

[jthm]

This just in, Peter Molyneux is often full of shit and dreams that never materialize in his games and he seems to think quite highly of himself.

 

[Sinisterair]

The only way this game can piss me off is.....Well if its anything like fable 2......That was the worst Rpg Game i have ever played i loved fable 1 it was amazeing from the missions to the wardrobe to the weapons but in fable 2 they took an axe to the face of fable 1 and put a cheap mask on to make it look good.....plus they chopped all the limbs off.....so if fable 3 is like fable 2 ima assassinate Peter Molyneux for what he did to the game series

 

[Tyrannowalefish_Rex]

As long as it doesn't have some stupid movement control, these new ideas sound perfectly alright to me. New ideas in a game, oh no!

 

[Stormz]

It sounds kinda cool I guess. Still not buying this game though.

 

[Ironsouled]

Maybe I'm just a craven optimist, but this actually gets my hopes up about this game.

This is Peter Molyneux.

Don't get excited until it comes out.

Lolol... yeah whay he said plus... Dragging Beggars off to slave traders? Better than killing them, and will get me money? Hell yes. Past that... Meh.

 

[A Pious Cultist]

there will be a "touch" mechanic in Fable 3 that will allow players to punish or play with children

I thought this article was about Fable not the next Rapelay?

 

[GameGoddess101]

Honestly, I am a little pissed. I'm a little pissed as to why these changes needed to be made. It's like the cat mini-game in No More Heroes 2-- it's completely pointless, adds nothing to the gameplay, and is just a useless waste of time gimmick so that Fable 3 can be called a sequel rather than an expansion...

And it's probably going to use the Natal as well.. fan-fucking-tastic.

 

[greenislegaming]

not angry lloking foward to how it will play out and i want to see fresh ideas. *starts wondering*....................

 

[Jumpingbean3]

The other changes sound pretty cool (given that Fable is supposed to be all about choice) but completely removing the HUD sounds dodgy at best. I can already picture myself having to pause the game anytime I want to check my mana, items or gold. Then again they could be clever about it. They could have a glow around the hero represent the mana bar and it fades away as mana decreases or something along those lines. They could still have you assign items to the d-pad but that probably wouldn't work out to well with no HUD interface.

Still I can deal with him removing the health bar and MAYBE the mana bar and it could very well help the player become immersed in the game but I just think it would be too inconvenient to remove the whole interface.

Peter I am begging you, begging you, please, use your head!

 

[alittlepepper]

Maybe I'm just a craven optimist, but this actually gets my hopes up about this game.

This is Peter Molyneux.

Don't get excited until it comes out.

Amen. These changes don't sound all that world changing to me, if I was to be honest. I never had a problem with the HUD in Fable 2. It was the cotton-candy coated world and inventory system that always annoyed me. It was always difficult for me to get into a darkly-themed brooding character when the world around you is so sugary sweet.
Needless to say, I spent most of my time in Wraithmarsh and similar areas.

Anyway, back OT:

Okay, I'm calling it now. The entirety of this game will be spent chasing around the same generic NPCs and spamming a button to either massage them or molest them, depending upon whether you want to look like Jesus or Satan.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Again. Amen. Though if it turns out anything like B&W1 as another poster said that might be interesting. That was actually subtle and semi-intuitive.

 

[Angel52]

good ideas, too bad it is likely a load of shit like everything else he says.