Peter Molyneux Apologizes for Fable 113
A message from Peter Molyneux.
There is something I have to say. And I have to say it because I love making games. When a game is in development, myself and the development teams I work with constantly encourage each other to think of the best features and the most ground-breaking design possible.
However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.
If I have mentioned any feature in the past which, for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise. Every feature I have ever talked about WAS in development, but not all made it. Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense. For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in. That 15 % was much better spent on effects and combat. So nothing I said was groundless hype, but people expecting specific features which couldn't be included were of course disappointed. If that's you, I apologise. All I can say is that Fable is the best game we could possibly make, and that people really seem to love it.
I have come to realise that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.
Our job as the Lionhead family of studios is to be as ambitious as we possibly can. But although we jump up and down in glee about the fabulous concepts and features we're working on, I will not mention them to the outside world until we've implemented and tested them, and they are a reality.
Thank you for reading.
Peter.
Re:My only problem with the game (Score:5, Informative)
Not in the works, but already out: Tales of Symphonia by Namco for the Gamecube. Took me 49 hours to complete, and that's without doing much of the optional stuff (though there isn't a lot of it). I'm also not a slow player...
I found the story a bit cheezy at times, but that's pretty standard for Japanese-style RPGs, no matter how serious they try to be.
Beten Kaitos is coming out in November, also from Namco, and has been receiving positive buzz since its release in Japan last year.
--Jeremy
Re:Fable Features (Score:2, Informative)
While I find Fable to be a good, albeit short, game, it has very little to do with Zelda or havest moon. No 'dungeons', in the zelda sense, about 2 puzzles in the entire game, lack of a sense of exploration (you walk on 'tracks', no expansive countryside/ocean to explore. It's more like a more RPGish version of an action RPG like BG:Dark Alliance. If you're looking for Zelda+Harvest Moon, you're better off with Dark Cloud & Dark Cloud 2 for the PS2.
Re:My only problem with the game (Score:2, Informative)
Star Ocean - 1-3 hours of utter boredom and then the game gets good. About at the 30-40 hour point.
Shadow Hearts - Just came out a few days ago, haven't played it yet, but I've heard good things about the series.
Baten Kaitos is coming out for the Cube in november. It's got a wierd card-based combat system.
Paper Mario should be pretty good, albeit wierdly genre warping like everything else in that series has been. Comes out here in a week or so.
Then, well, there's not much for a while.