Fable 2 Hands-On & Molyneux Interview

Find out why Peter reckons "most role playing games are shit" in our new chat with him, and enjoy these rare hands-on impressions of a very early demo of Fable 2.

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"All the drums are under your control," he advises, "and if you're successful in your attacks, you hear the music start to ramp up." He told us to play just by doing whatever felt natural. And it seemed to work immediately.

A very low pitched, bassy hum created impressive tension from the very moment he handed me the controller, and after a few seconds of successive attacks and enemies closing in, a fast clicky sort of snare rhythm kicks in, which actually gives a release of adrenaline as the pace picks up. Perhaps the combat already felt more engaging, or perhaps we were frightened of messing it up in front of the game's own creator.

But as more colour came into the screen, reinforcing how well the player is supposedly doing, our confidence started to pick up. The rhythm 'subconsciously' tells us what the attack rhythm should be, we're advised, and rewards us with different sounds coming in, to form the unique music. Deeper bass sounds boomed in, like a thumping heart beat. We tried to vary our attacks a bit more, moving the character to create better space from the many enemies that were surrounding us, and experimenting with this single attack button. "Ah, you're a charger-upper," realises Molyneux as we charge attacks up to see what happens. "I am as well, but if I were a button masher, this music would sound completely different. It's procedurally generated music generated by your combat style."

He added: "Remember, this is a role playing game; all the different weapons have different music sounds and give a very individual feel to the combat." A few extra tips later (if you get your opponent against a wall they're in trouble; loose objects in the environment can also be used as weapons) and the battle is nearing its conclusion. After a short while, a more orchestral sound of glory kicks as we're on the way to victory.

Molyneux also went on to discuss the concept of 'death' in the game for the first time, and why it needs to be different to other games.

"Death in computer games, it's been the same since we invented them. What death is in most games is: you die, the screen goes black, and you go back to the last checkpoint, go through the same story bit, fight the same little fodder, and do the same boss fight. That is rubbish. It makes me feel bored and it's tedious. We've got to think of another way to make combat feel like it means something. What we historically do in a boss battle to make you feel more tense, is send you back further, which is even more frustrating. We've been thinking about how we can address that.

"As we saw in Fable 1, the world reacts to what you're like; if you walk down the street and look heroic, people will greet you, but if you look evil they'll run away. And this is our answer to death. Very simply put, when you're fighting anybody and you see your hit points go down to nothing, your hero collapses, but instead of the screen going black, we keep the camera on the hero. The baddies will come in and start laying in to you - kicking him, punching him, slashing with a sword - and it's quite an emotional thing to see that with everybody laying into you.

"What actually happens is your hero is getting permanently scarred all over his body. And those scars will never go away. The more times you die, the more you get scarred, the more ugly and disfigured you will look, and the more the world will react. We tested with loads of kids, and most people loathe looking like it, and the interesting thing is how that makes you feel. If you're willing to pay 500 experience, you can get up immediately and not be scarred at all, and continue the battle from where it was. The longer you wait, the cheaper it costs to get up.

He concludes: "That actually works; it makes combat so much more impactful, because the cost is not tedium any more; the cost is your look and how cool you are as a player, and that coolness is very important."

But what if you're so scarred that there's less to lose and maybe no pay off at all? "The whole of your body, except for your private parts, can be scarred. You are clothed most of the time, but not in front of your wife, and not when you swim, either. Don't forget, it's the emotion of being scarred. I promise, just try. It is like when we lay down this whole good/evil thing [in Fable 1], the fact is, 80% of the people were good. And the remaining 20%, half of them converted to good within the first hour, so only 10% went down the evil path!"

I challenged Peter about whether he's suggesting that the combat system I had just played is something that casual gamers can really approach easily.

"I am certainly suggesting that a good proportion of those people can't even control a character, and get stuck, and we're spending a lot of time getting that right. I could say draw your sword and they wouldn't even have a clue what we're talking about. But if you say push forward and just push the button more, they could get through the whole game like that. It would take them a lot longer, and the hero would look atrocious by the end of it, and wouldn't be nearly as powered up as 'your' hero, but they could finish it. And I want to do that, because I want more people to play the game."

A few other details came out of this latest meeting. One companion you'll have throughout the whole of Fable 2, is a dog, which Peter described as "the most amazing piece of AI that we have ever produced and I've ever seen in the industry." Secondly, you have a lookout key (LB) that will show you the most interesting thing on the screen at that time - which was how our first battle was initiated earlier. Finally, cut scenes will be interactive: "I never want to take control away from you, I want you to feel like you are in the world, and I never want you to put down the controller and 'watch' something. You have the ability to modify the story as you go along, which I'll talk about next time."

Molyneux put his ultimate goal with Fable 2 another way: "When you go and do your hateful lists of the Top Ten Games of All Time, then just maybe, just maybe we've got a chance of getting in that list. Because that's what I really care about! I've always been obsessed with this. When you see a magazine or website with the top 100 greatest games of all time, you just feel suicidal as you work your way down the list, and it really matters to me that I deliver a game that makes a difference."

Lionhead is at least a year away from completing Fable 2, and there is of course a lot of balancing and polishing to do, but it works today, and from what we played of the game, it already works very well indeed.

Oh, and anyone expecting anything new on Peter's other project in development, the top secret game codenamed Dimitri, still has some time to wait. He told Kikizo it's still some way from being shown - but that we'll be amazed by it.

Click here for our previous exclusive coverage with Molyneux: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 features.

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