Fable III is due in less than two months and developer Lionhead has yet to talk about half the game. That’s a noteworthy point for several reasons and not the least because studio boss Peter Molyneux is the consummate media flirt, always armed with a mildly controversial, eminently printable sound bite.
All too often, over-briefed studio heads shadowed by Public Relations advisors frequently stonewall the gaming press, delivering only sanctioned statements in the rehearsed tones of a telemarketer.
Molyneux is no less scripted, it’s just that his lines are candidly contrary to the formula. He’ll talk about his hopes, certainly, but also his fears for a game and it’s that waft of something resembling human emotion in an over-manicured digital landscape that makes pens scribble so enthusiastically within his vicinity.
Then he goes too far. In the past, that openness has landed Lionhead in hot water, features have been announced only to be humiliatingly retracted as the development cycle rolls on. Indeed, Molyneux has already been quoted many times over apologising that Fable II was all talk, no show.
Even so, for some of Fable III’s most revolutionary features to be a case of no talk, no show is uncharacteristically reticent.
Loosely, Fable III is an adventure role-playing game set in the folkloric world of Albion as it enters an industrial revolution. You play as a prince, or princess, who sets out to overthrow your tyrannical brother, the king. The setting is a collage of Georgian and Victorian England, seasoned with a little Les Misérables and a lot of The Complete Works of Charles Dickens.
That world is then brought to life with quintessentially English humour delivered by a cast that includes John Cleese, Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry, Bernard Hill and Jonathan Ross.
In order to overthrow your brother in Fable III you must gain followers whether by intimidation or admiration. All your actions in the world will aid you in earning either the respect or subordination of Albion’s citizens.
Increasing your following will level up your character, in a manner of speaking. Fable III also breaks with that longstanding RPG tradition, the character sheet, by having none. Instead, the game has two 3D menus. The levelling menu is called “The Road to Rule.” It’s a gated path lined with chests and leading to a distant castle. As you physically advance down this road, you’ll be able to reinvest your points in chests that upgrade your character.
The second is an interactive inventory manned by your butler, Jasper (Cleese). Here you’ll be able to equip different costumes and weapons, or access an interactive world map.
Combat options are all bound to a single button and death is largely inconsequential – should your health be reduced to zero, you’ll heroically spring back to your feet with only a minor loss of points.
Along with the cheery presentation and the lack of statistics, this reward-only design philosophy has made many derisive of the series.
The games are a rare commodity, some of the few that bridge the canyon between the casual and core gaming communities. Traditionally, games establish a set of rules for the player, punishing them when they fail and rewarding them when they succeed.
Fable has always set out only to reward. For their part, Lionhead point to anecdotal evidence suggesting that Fable is brought into the household by a gamer, and then often played by its more casual occupants.
Perhaps, but there are entries on both sides of the ledger. For example, the game’s interactive 3D menus are certainly much more user-friendly for inexperienced players than the glorified Excel spreadsheets found in upstream RPGs. However, we can’t help but wonder if these overwrought menus will become frustrating with familiarity.
It’s possible that having to quite literally run into the armoury every time you want to exchange your rapier for a hammer – and listening to Cleese explain again that swords are for combat finesse and that hammers are slower but more devastating – will ultimately become a wearisome chore, one that could leave players pining for the old-fashioned drag-and-drop character pane.
All of the above is the half of the game that Lionhead will happily discuss, and the way it plays will be immediately familiar to anyone who has followed the series. The other half lies at the end of the Road to Rule. Once players have usurped the throne from their despotic sibling, they’ll become the ruler of Albion.
Usually, this would constitute a somewhat prescribed conclusion to an RPG. Instead, Fable III allows you to play out your rule while completing an unknown story arc. You’ll be able to deliver on, or disregard the promises you made earlier in the game, and your decisions will have a tangible impact on the game world. If you hike taxes, for example, you’ll discover that your cities become more poverty stricken as your palace becomes a veritable Versailles.
So we’re told, anyway. A game where you can see your personal actions affect your environment is an idea that has a lot of appeal. On paper, at least.
So for once, we’d actually like Mr. Molyneux to pipe up.
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