On Fable 2 and Economic Design.

Sunday, 31 August 2008

Fable 2- the game (almost) everybody wants to shove in their disk drive at some point before the end of the year. A game with supposedly limitless (hi there, Molyneux) possibility. According to big Pete himself, it will take almost 100 million gold to purchase the entire land of Albion. That would be very fine and dandy, provided you actually earned money conventionally.

The problem here stems with the fairly bad design philosophy of separating quests and the story from gold. You don't get gold for going out, questing, helping people, and saving the world. Oh no. That doesn't count as a real job! Instead, you have to "work", while earning nothing for quests. Working (I'm guessing) will consist of either menial, tedious mini-quests for small amounts of gold, or tiny minigames to annoy the living crap out of us. The problem here is two-fold. Most people will skip over most of the sidequests that they deem stupid or worthless in the first place. Now that there is no money incentive, there is nothing drawing the player in to explore, expand and complete the game in its entirety. Of course, there are always people like me who will try to do every quest just to do them; but even die-hard adventurers are bound to get annoyed eventually.

The second problem is time and age. One of the most annoying things to me about Fable was the aging factor. You play for two hours, and you go from being a 20 year old to some random 30 year old. Just exploring/questing/crafting and doing all of the off-the-beaten-path work in the game for around 6 hours will make you some pathetic geezer by the time the story ends, and it just feels pretty awkward at that time. I would imagine (read: hope and pray) that the game is longer than the original, since it was fairly short for a good ARPG, to be honest. Who wants to work and work to be able to afford real estate only to be some old coot with magic powers? That isn't very rewarding at all.

Much better then, to play the horribly designed Pub Games or the other recently announced web apps that will allow you to unlock more cash and items. When you have such a sophisticated system, the probability of overlap and redundancy becomes much higher. That's a future that has become realized for Lionhead, as people continually farm millions of gold from their glitchy arcade offering. An offering they have yet to fix, and have threatened penalties for abusing (that's the subject for another post). So will the player spend some time playing these little things, racking up gold and transfering it over, instead of actually immersing themselves in the universe, getting jobs, etc. ? Undoubtedly. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks (even if the glitches are fixed). Even if the player risks alienating themselves from the game.

Earning gold in a game should never be a complete grind. There are always things to do that augment your gathering process, stealing, theiving, murder, *usually* questing; but the earning of gold in Fable II has been trivialized by needless overcomplications from Lionhead. The pub games were interesting, if worthless; but they should have stopped there. People aren't going to be playing the Fable 2 to get gold, they're going to have to get gold through other methods just to play the game itself. And that's the complete opposite of the mentality they should take.

There is also the problem of tying the morality system into the way the player interacts with the economy. Personally, I'll probably loot and kill every owner of every house in every town I see. That just tends to be what I do; but do I want my character to be evil? No. Do I *care* enough to actually make a "tough choice" regarding righteousness, as Peter Molyneux would have me do? Absolutely not. I don't care how compelling playing through as intended seems to be, I'm not going to let that get in the way of me enjoying the mechanics I'm buying the game for.

So as it stands from my perspective, the game is probably going to be a rather uncohesive mess, but an incredibly fun one. I will still pick it up and hopefully enjoy it; and hopefully this entire blog post is proven wrong. I just got bored and let speculation get the best of me. Thanks for bearing with me. A Too Human review should be coming soon.

Labels: fable 2, lionhead studios, Xbox360

Author: Jayge | Comments: | Leave Your Response?

The Fable Series

Tuesday, 1 July 2008

Written by: Melaisis

More 3scapism goodness!


You know the feeling (perhaps). You had a total stunner of a girlfriend, but it ended badly. She was hot, but underneath her dazzling looks, you realized there wasn't a whole lot there. You called the relationship off in a bid to save your sanity, and haven't spoken to her since. Then one day, three years or so later, you bump into her, and my goodness she's better looking than ever. What's more, she wants to try again with you. She's practically begging you to take her back. She's changed, she says. She's matured, she's gotten some depth. You want to believe her, you really do, but still some nagging part of you says 'No, you've been here before, it'll all end in tears...'

Well, seeing as Fable 2 is peeping its head round the metaphorical corner, I thought it was as good a time as any to look back at the heartless strumpet that was the original Fable. Bearing in mind that Yahtzee did a review of Fable a while back, this is meant to read more as a checklist for Mr Molyneux to go through before he releases his latest creation onto the public. Quite why he would be spending his precious time reading obscure forum threads I have no idea, but we all live in hope. Here then, is a list of the good that should be retained in the sequel, and the bad that should never have been dreamt up in the first place, let alone actually put in the game.

Note to any and all readers: this review contains all sorts of plot spoilers and summaries. Therefore, if you haven't actually played Fable and want to keep your virtuous innocence of its plot unspoiled, scroll down to the end of this article to read what little conclusion I can be arsed to pull out.

Firstly, the good:

- The humour. Whereas most RPGs take their end of the world plots all too seriously, Fable is remarkable light hearted, and dammit even funny on occasion. Being able to play football with chickens, the scripting, even the funny accents, though that's probably more to do with the fact that I will laugh at anyone who hails from the West country. Keep the humour intact, Mr Molyneux, and you'll be doing fine. A laugh a day keeps the doctor away, and all that.

- Combat. Or to be specific; melee combat. If Fable can claim to be superior to Oblivion or Morrowind in anyway, it's the sword combat. Combos are easy to pull off, satisfying to watch, and decapitating a bandit and kicking his head around never gets old. There's not a bad selection of weapons either (though by no means fantastic), and it's nice to see that hammers and maces feel slower and heavier compared to swords and katanas. Soul Calibur it ain't, but for an RPG it's not bad at all. Well done Mr Molyneux, you actually beat Bethesda at something. Have a coconut and a pat on the head.


Erm...

Well... Onto the bad then. [Pulls out the goggles and rubber gloves in preparation for some good old fashioned punishment]

- Combat. Specifically, magical combat. Yahtzee may have already pointed this out, but I think it bears repeating so that Mr Molyneux gets the idea. Magic is meant to be a viable alternative to swords and bows. Spells that start off piss-weak and end up mightier than Armageddon itself are NOT a viable option, they are a bloody frustration. If you are going to have magic in the next game, sort out the fecking balance issues so that we can dip into our fecking pools of magic without having to have a fecking war hammer on standby in case it all goes tits up. Ahem...

- The linearity. Fable, despite what Mr Molyneux may say, is actually a very, very, VERY linear game. The story itself doesn't change at all until the final few seconds of the game, where you have to choose between throwing the Sword of Aeons into the Ether, or keeping it and for some unexplained reason gutting your blind sister. The game doesn't care if you're good or evil, your actions will have no effect on any of the main characters or events whatsoever. The blurb said 'for every choice a reaction'. Bugger that, it's a case of the same bloody reaction regardless of your choice.

Example: At one point in the game you have to choose between killing a bandit lord or letting him live, having beaten him in combat. If you kill him, then later you are warned that his followers have hired a bunch of assassins to come after you as retribution for his death. If you let him live, then you are warned that he has hired a bunch of assassins to come after you as retribution for his humiliation. In both cases, the assassins appear in the same places, running headlong towards you screaming in a way Altair would never think of doing, even at his most conspicuous. The developers had a chance to actually branch the story a bit, and they purposely decided against it. This is one example of many within the game.

Mr Molyneux, if you are going to tout Fable 2 as being non-linear, then bloody well make sure it is non linear before you send it to the publishers.

- Good vs Evil. Right Mr Molyneu...ah, bollocks to all the niceties

Molyneux! If you're going to include a moral choice system in Fable 2 then for god sakes man, bloody well make sure it has at least some small vague trappings of depth to it! If you're going to have a bloody Guild that supposedly doesn't care whether its graduates follow the path of good or evil (a highly suspicious arrangement if you ask me), then bloody well stick to that, rather than having the Guildmaster suddenly telling me his surprise at Whats'isface's betrayal and ordering me to stop Jack of Blades 'because he's evil'. That's the point you twit!!! He may be evil, but he's also the most powerful hero you've ever produced and according to your rules you should be bloody proud of him! Continuity, Molyneux, continuity!!!


And that leads me to my next point. The story. My goodness, if I ever see a more generic bunch of characters assembled together I'll have to phone the creators of Fantastic Four to let them know some of their cast has escaped. Would it hurt to give the bad guy a little bit of depth? Motivation? Just a tad of humanity?? Note for next game, Molyneux; choose a bad guy who's middle name isn't 'Generic with a capital 'G''.

And finally, to end this rant and bring up my final point- hype. It killed your last game Molyneux, don't let it kill this one as well. All that talk of growing trees and whatnot. You had our little hearts in your hand like butterflies, and you crushed them mercilessly with your iron grip of Rushed Production. Keep a lid on it this time. Don't promise us the world on a stick, just give us a good time. All we want is a little bit of fun to brighten up our otherwise dull lives. Give us that. Who knows, maybe you'll exceed expectation this time round...


...But wait. You've already been talking to the press about the dog. Spouting off about how it will be the first ever virtual creation to win our unconditioned love. Lecturing us on how we can buy absolutely anything in the game. Oh dear God no, you've even used those cursed words, 'A living, breathing world that reacts to your every move'!

Damn you Molyneux! Damn you!!!

j-e-f-f-e-r-s

Labels: 3scapism, 3scapism reposts, fable, fable 2, fable series, jeffers, melaisis

Author: Melaisis | Comments: | Leave Your Response?