Fable 2 from Lionhead

New Community update. Guess who gets mentioned? ;)

http://community.lionhead.com/blogs/fable_2_development/default.aspx

On the game play side for example, secondary motion is being added to the game, so now the hero's weapons start bouncing around and behave more realistically. Children are also being worked on; they will now start mimicking the hero if the hero's famous enough!
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It’s nowhere near finished. Think about that for a second. It is not finished. So yes, the game will look at least a gazillion times better than anything you’ve seen of Fable 2 so far.

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...vast and expansive outdoor locations, with added night and day cycle with realistic lighting effects that dynamically change the environment around you. There will be uber-detailed textures and lighting on up to fifty character models on screen, all of which will cast a dynamic shadow of themselves on that same environment and the same goes for any object in the world. There is a physics engine, a simulation engine and about a thousand years of knowledge of things that I’m not even trying to understand.
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:cool:

According to our water-expert Fran “we are going to kick Bioshock’s water!â€￾ He gets a little excited sometimes; Italian passion!
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Oh and don’t let our Italian developer fool you; Bioshock is amazing.
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:LOL:

So that's what he's been up to... ;)
 
On the game play side for example, secondary motion is being added to the game, so now the hero's weapons start bouncing around and behave more realistically
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Cool.

For all of peter's talk about revolutionizing combat, seeing the character do the exact same block animation everytime looked weak as hell.

Vary up the animations, and they'll have something really nice on their hands.

Not sure if it'll beat Assassin's Creed which has a ton of animations, but at the very least we'll get to see two innovative approaches to a similar problem(more realistic sword combat).
 
The combat is something I'll have to try. Given some of the criticisms of HS being doable on 'only one button', actually designing your game engine around that principle might lead to similar disenchantment by reviewers. I think optional depth to gameplay gets overlooked. If you enable your game to be completed by just pressing the one button over and over, even if you can do challenging and clever things with that as you grow to understand the system, the critics will only acknowledge the simplest implementation.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
If you enable your game to be completed by just pressing the one button over and over, even if you can do challenging and clever things with that as you grow to understand the system, the critics will only acknowledge the simplest implementation.
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Yup, this is always the problem when developers try and cater to all audiences.

Really, they should leave the 'easy' mode for beginners, and then make the real (challenging) game for everyone else, which forces you to use skill.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
The combat is something I'll have to try. Given some of the criticisms of HS being doable on 'only one button', actually designing your game engine around that principle might lead to similar disenchantment by reviewers. I think optional depth to gameplay gets overlooked. If you enable your game to be completed by just pressing the one button over and over, even if you can do challenging and clever things with that as you grow to understand the system, the critics will only acknowledge the simplest implementation.
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I thought the video of Fable2's combat looked really cool. Seemed like you could do a lot of fun stuff with that one button. As long as there are a variety of things I can do, and the method of performing them seems suitably organized, it doesn't really matter if it's one button or five.

If you can complete the game just by mashing the button and not actually doing any of the more complicated movies, then I'd find that disappointing probably, only because it suggest the game is very easy.
 
Scott_Arm said:
If you can complete the game just by mashing the button and not actually doing any of the more complicated movies, then I'd find that disappointing probably, only because it suggest the game is very easy.
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The impression I got was you could just mash the button and your hero would end up doing cool stuff. Like Tekken. Baek on Tekken could pull of awesome combat with just a sort of timed alternating between Red and Blue. Hard-core players would learn the moves, but soft-core gamers would just press buttons and ooh and ahhh at the outcomes. "Hey, did I see what I just did! I'll try and do it again." <Random tappity tap of the buttons>

I'm sure gamers will be able to decide what sort of combat they want, and through positioning and timing maybe pull that off, with just one button. But when it comes to reviews, seems to me reviewers take the path of least resistance in some cases. If they can just mash the button, they won't take time to learn how to pull off more satisfying combat and instead will write in their review 'combat is simplistic button mashing with nice animations but no complexity'. That probably varies a lot from reviewer to reviewer, but it's something to think about if your a game dev.
 
What they didn't mention in the video was how you were going to pull off all the different moves... and maybe it's because they haven't finalized or figured out yet how they were going to implement it. They did mention that the character would learn skills as you progress in the game though.

I guess they're thinking of making use of the joystick a lot? It'd be a throwback to those Street Fighter days in a sense, except that the power or swiftness of the move would be related to your character... :???:
 
Molyneux gave a dev talk on the subject, and he was all about keeping it simple and context-sensitive. Using motion combinations to achieve different moves would be counter to that idea, I think. To me, it was all about where the player character was and what was happening as to what their response would be when you hit that attack button.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Molyneux gave a dev talk on the subject, and he was all about keeping it simple and context-sensitive. Using motion combinations to achieve different moves would be counter to that idea, I think. To me, it was all about where the player character was and what was happening as to what their response would be when you hit that attack button.
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From what I gathered it has 5 elements:

1-Tap X to hack and slash
2-Hold X and release to do a more serious strike/flourish
3-Hold X to block
4-Counter attack by pressing X at the right time
5-Context sensitive: press X near a wall to slam his head into it etc
 
I don't much like the idea of automatic fighting. :( Well... actually, I would like to see context sensitive moves where the context enables particular moves that you could pull off via the joystick. I don't know how that would really work in practise though. :???:
 
scooby_dooby said:
From what I gathered it has 5 elements:

1-Tap X to hack and slash
2-Hold X and release to do a more serious strike/flourish
3-Hold X to block
4-Counter attack by pressing X at the right time
5-Context sensitive: press X near a wall to slam his head into it etc
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That rings a bell. Though if my mates are anything to go by, the average player will just go 'tap-de-tap-tap...tap' and see what happens!
 
Shifty Geezer said:
That rings a bell. Though if my mates are anything to go by, the average player will just go 'tap-de-tap-tap...tap' and see what happens!
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A system like this is almost certainly aimed at players like your mates. Well, not so much "aimed at" directly but put together with players like that in mind.

It's a nice concept, and thinking it over will naturally lead to alot of theoretical benefits. But in practice, this sort of thing ends up unsatifying or even frustrating.

Here's hoping PM can pull it off. I've always been a fan of him as a designer. But not always of his games.

Hmmm... I've got my SNES hooked up and a copy of Syndicate. Maybe give it a go....
 
Crayon said:
A system like this is almost certainly aimed at players like your mates. Well, not so much "aimed at" directly but put together with players like that in mind.
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Possibly. Such a system might prove popular too. But I doubt it'd get reviewed highly...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Possibly. Such a system might prove popular too. But I doubt it'd get reviewed highly...
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Well I think the key will be the contextual actions. If they can nail those, then that will be something we've never really seen before.

For example, thinking back to the bar fight demo, if they made it so you would Tap X- grab a chair throw it at the guy, Tap X - swing from chandalier kick someone in the face, Tap X - Smash someone's head against the bar and finish it all up with a flourish killing move...well I think that;s something that would make people take notice.

Of course, that sort of thing is extremely hard to do without making it frustrating, so I'm not really holding my breath.

To me, Fable will be a great game if they have a huge world, with tons of sidequests etc, and the dog is really cool, if the combat is great that's cool, but I'm not expecting it to be.
 
Wow, what great timing for my brain to remind me of Fable 2:

New update today:
http://community.lionhead.com/blogs/fable_2_development/archive/2007/11/08/2802262.aspx

The first half:

By Xmas, we'll be having all the Core quests in the game ready to be played by Mr M himself, yes, that's his xmas holiday, playing through the whole game at home, he never stops working.

Most importantly this means the designs are finished, the speech written and recorded (most likely by me, with my dulcit tones), and placeholder sections for every single element of every core quest. We will finally have a
g_o_o_d.gif
feel of how the story fits together, how the character arcs work and how, ultimately the hero can choose to live their life.

Once Peter spends his holiday playing the game, he'll then come back with a mountain of feedback, this should be the last time that major elements of the story will change, but once signed off, it will be virtually locked down until release.

That doesn't mean of course that we don't have all the optional quests in, the seperate trees, the achievements, the secrets... They are all there in some form too, but they are all placed off the main core scripts and are of much lower importance at the moment.

So, the end of November and December will be busy times for the Script Department... Wish us luck! :)
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The last half of the update is about how one can get started in scripting... Nothing exciting.
 
Thanks for the heads up. :)

The brief fly-throughs of the town looked promising (graphically). And yeah, great that our hero can now hop over simple barriers like that. :p

Alternatively, one can download the HD WMV video or stream (differing quality) from their official site, here.

[gs]5851_en[/gs]
 
AlStrong said:
Thanks for the heads up. :)

The brief fly-throughs of the town looked promising (graphically). And yeah, great that our hero can now hop over simple barriers like that. :p

Alternatively, one can download the HD WMV video or stream (differing quality) from their official site,
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What's with these guys getting interviewed in darkness. Way to reinforce the stereotype that nerdy gamers never see sunlight.

Game looks cool. I was a fan of the first one, even though it didn't seem to reach its potential. One thing I forgot about was the music. It really has a recognizable score. Normally I don't pay attention to videogame music at all.
 
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