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Games Entertainment

Molyneux Apology Explained 40

Posted by Zonk from the explanations-of-enthusiasm dept.
Thanks to the BBC for a follow-up to an earlier story. Following Peter Molyneux's apology to the Fable community last week, the BBC spoke with the game designer about his decision. "[I] owed a duty to fans to explain why some features did not make it into the finished product."
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Molyneux Apology Explained More

Molyneux Apology Explained

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  • I still think it's cool that he apologized, and for whatever reason I have a lot of respect for him as a game designer. At least he tried to do something different...
    • How different was it really? It's a very much "on rails" RPG (in terms of where you are allowed to walk within the maps), that has obnoxious loading times, tiny maps, and is generally too short. The quest structure, with the retries and 'boasts' also serves to always remind you that you're playing a game, not immersed in a world.

      The only innovation was the level of customization and character development. But even that wasn't a revolutionary new idea, it was just dialing up an existing concept.

      Granted, th
    • "Tried" to do something different doesn't help the game consumer at all, nor should it be a good point on the resume of a guy who's become a legendary game developer (Populous? Dungeon Keeper? Awwww, yeah). I've liked what I've played of Fable so far, but the reality is that it isn't anything that fresh or that new. In fact, there are aspects of it (the linearity, the restricted movement within zones and the small size of the zones) which are actually steps BACKWARD for the genre.

      If we're giving credit for an RPG trying to do something big, Morrowind still has to come out on top in that area. It had a very open map where you could go anywhere in the game that you could see, it was dense with subplots and nonlinear gameplay (you could go a hundred hours of play and barely touch the main storyline) and it was free of traditional load screens (yes, there were pauses but I found them quite tolerable compared to the usual RPG load times). Morrowind's main flaw was it's combat system which was, at various times, either cumbersome and annoying or just boring.

      What I hoped for from Fable was a marriage of Morrowind's open-ended nature with more dynamic AI and more interesting interaction with NPCs. What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.

      • Honestly, I think Molyneux games are overrated. He starts out with good concepts, but then ruins it with creepingfeaturitis that's not even relevant to the gameplay (Black and White was terrible for this). Compare StarTopia, an obviously Molyneux-inspired game. Tons of variety, excellent gameplay, a wide variety of buildings. Comes out being a far better-feeling strategy than Molyneux games, even though it has the same premises (all your people are totally autonomous, and you are just an administrator).

      • Re:I still think it's cool that he apologized (Score:5, Funny)

        by fatmonkeyboy ( 257833 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @02:15PM (#10473123) Homepage
        What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.

        Well, maybe he was just trying to be realistic.

        It took me four years to complete the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest and I hadn't even stopped to play with the environment all that much!

        I mean, I was 18 and fresh out of highschool and POOF! I was 22, trying to remember the names of the people I went to highschool with ;)

        Some of my friends who stopped to play with "the environment" still haven't finished yet.

        And, some who did, actually hit a bug in the system. They completed the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest, but no new quest paths opened up!
      • There isn't even any real "time-passage" effect. Your character ages based on you buying skills. And that age affects nothing but your physical appearance. There is not storyline difference depending on your age, none of the other characters in the game age, cities don't change, landscape doesn't change, so it's really just a pointless feature.
      • Actually the only way to age is to level up a skill. Well, there's one mission that will age you anywhere from 0-2 years, but that's it.

  • The biggest news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cephyn ( 461066 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:13PM (#10472296) Homepage
    ...in that article is that "B&W2 is completely playable and looking great."

    Well, B&W was supposedly completely playable too. Maybe we have different definitions. B&W DID look great though. ;)

  • Platform apology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qrlx ( 258924 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:18PM (#10472356) Homepage Journal
    If there's anything to apologize for, it's that this game is only on XBox.

    It's great for Microsoft, since Fable and Halo are pretty much the only reasons for a gamer to own an XBox. I don't understand what exactly Mr. Molyneux gets out of the deal, but I bet it starts with a $.

    • Re:Platform apology (Score:2, Informative)

      by XsynackX ( 775111 )
      He had to apologize because of all the thing he said about the game that weren't true.

      I followed this game for about three years, all along the way excited after Mr. Molyneux would say things like "If you drop an acorn in the beginning of the game, by the end it will grow to a great oak tree." and tons of other over-hyped things like that. I was nearly the number one Fable fan out there on Big Blue Box's (the developer's) message board, but after getting the game, playng it for 8 hours, beating it, start

      • Well, and I'm not trying to be mean here, you do realize that claiming to be the number one fan before the game has even been released doesn't raise your credibility, right?

        I mean, do you blame the advertisers when you go out and buy a new ford mustang because they look so cool, then find out it drives like suck? There is a certain amount of responsibility expected on the part of the buyer here.
        • There was a time when anything Molyneux was involved with was good and met at least most of its expectations. Of course, when that time ended is a matter of debate, personally I feel it was about the same time as the end of the Amiga Forever era...
    • Er... he's in the UK remember, so it probably starts with a '£'...

      Don't you damn colonials go stealing all our game developers!

    • My interest in Fable went straight to nil when I heard that there would be no PC version. I think in a sense Molyneux probably also wasn't thinking in console mode when dreaming up Fable. A lot of the features that were supposed to be included wouldn't have been a problem for a PC release where you are much less limited in terms of hard drive, processor, ram etc.

      • Re:Platform apology (Score:3, Informative)

        by Babbster ( 107076 )
        I know that PC gamers (of which I'm one) tend to think as you do, but the idea that a major game release can have tons of extra features on the PC because of being "less limited" in terms of specifications is something of a fallacy. In fact, PC game releases tend to be just as gameplay feature-limited as console games and just make more eye candy available to the people with the hotter systems.

        For example, Sims 2 is probably going to go on to be yet another best seller for EA. Whilst requiring a T&L

    • It's great for Microsoft, since Fable and Halo are pretty much the only reasons for a gamer to own an XBox.

      That's a little short-sighted. As another poster pointed out, Ninja Gaiden (and indeed, all of Team Ninja's recent and known-future work) is exclusive to XBox. If you're into racing, it's hard to beat Project: Gotham Racing 2 [gamespot.com] (no, it's not a psuedo-simulation like the Gran Turismo series, but it has the best XBox Live! online play I've seen to date, and the physics engine backing the cars seems m

      • There's no need to buy an X-Box to play a lot of those games. That's the problem being referred to -- a lack of good exclusive titles. Apart from NG, I think the actualy exclusives you mentioned were the worst of the bunch. KOTOR, PoP, Beyond Good and Evil -- I can click three times and be playing any of them right here.
      • I find Pikmin has a stronger pull in the GameCube direction than any of the titles you mentioned for the XBox.

        But, I'm not into sports games at all. And that seems to be the XBox's big selling point. That's fine, it's just not for me.

  • Respect (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:36PM (#10472573) Homepage
    Peter apologizing to his fans and to people who had been waiting with baited breath to play Fable has done nothing but give me more respect for the man.

    It is very understandable how the features didn't make it into the game, and in an industry where its standard practice to hype non-existent features and then give no explanation why they're missing, this makes him stand out as an individual who actually cares about the people who play his game unlike some...*cough*Carmack*cough*.

    • Carmack didn't make a bunch of promises about Doom3 he didn't keep. He didn't need to apologize.
      • I never claimed he did. I was saying that Peter has shown he cares about his fans whereas Carmack just enjoys being worshipped and treats people like dirt.

        • Oh yes!
          he never respects people and treats people like dirt! Carmack doesnt respect his fans! fantastic!

          1) He doesnt enjoy being worshipped.
          (People worship him because he raises the bar of technology of today's games)

          2) Did you ever try writing mails to any of the game developers?
          Carmack respects each and every single individual. He replies to each and every mail even if it is something like (what is BSP)

          3) He never makes any promises. I dont remember him making any promises. Its the people t
          • You left out the fact that he has release the source code for his games: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Quake 2. For programmers, this is a really nice thing! For gamers, it is also a really nice thing because what was once a DOS only game, such as Doom, has ports to modern platforms like Windows XP, Linux, and even the Xbox! How many game developers give away their source code? Most game developers talk nice, but Carmack plays nice.

  • Dear Mr. Molyneux: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Giant Ape Skeleton ( 638834 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:45PM (#10472701) Homepage
    Apology accepted....

    Now can I have my $50 back?

  • Missing features aren't the biggest problems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CodeWanker ( 534624 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @02:39PM (#10473398) Journal
    Even when the features are there, they are still crippled by hype. Black and White was billed as a deeply philosophical exploration of choosing good and evil. And in the end, the high point of the game revolves around slapping around your ape... Spanking your monkey? Yeah.
    • slapping around your ape

      Not only that, but teaching it where to crap. Oh, joy.

      I can only imagine the meeting where that feature made it in... It must have sounded really funny for the first 10 seconds, and then they didn't consider it anymore -- otherwise, they'd have realized that it was just stupid and left it out.

      Add to that the fact that your creature is unavailable/useless for a significant part of the game...

      I have more respect for Romero ... At least his grandiose ideas suck because they're h
      • I believe the explanation for Black and White's suckage was that they were working on the creature control aspect for so long that they forgot they needed an actual game. So when deadline time reared its ugly head they just threw in some Populous 3 style gameplay. The twist being that now you had to take care of your villagers while your ape throws poop at them.
        The creature was kind of neat but utterly out of place with the rather conventional game play. I mean he was mostly a detriment not a help. Hell, mo

        • Hell, most of the time my ape would just be pissed because I was trying to help the stupid villagers fornicate. Damn those villagers were stupid.

          You've got it all wrong. Can you imagine those conversations when you put the people together?

          Man: Woo-hoo! You have to have sex with me because God said so!
          Woman: You'll try anything, won't you?

  • Like his example of growing trees which he admitted was dropped because took 15% of the processor time. Sure Peter wanted to make trees grow for us; but he obviously had no clue how to implement to feature with any reasonable level of efficiency. The man is clearly an 'idea guy' with a very week grasp on reality.
    • Yes, even though the man almost singly created an entire game *genre* (the god game), he has a weak grasp on reality.

      Seriously. Yeah, he probably doesn't sit down and code too often, and probably is more of a concepter than a coder. However, thinking you can make trees grow on a 700Mhz PC with customized graphic hardware isn't exactly out of touch with reality. *I* still think it can be done, and easily, it just doesn't fit within the scope of the game they created.
    • Of course not, he is a game designer not a programmer.
  • ...he should apologize for what was left in. I mean, the controls were dreadful. Autotargeting friendlies -- wtf? And running felt more like skating in NHL2004. Not to mention the horrible graphical bugs -- polygons popping, shadows flaking, and the eyecandy constantly gets in the way of the camera.

    Loading times, severe!
    Maps, miniscule!
    Missions, Bland!
    Role Playing, Diablo II did better!

    It's only saving grace were some halfway funny moments. Still not worth the $50 I spent on it.
  • Ever the optimists, I guess.

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