Fable 2 from Lionhead

Well, I will say that the fences and blocked off areas was the most annoying part of Fable. I thought it was ridiculous that you become some hugely powerful guy but you can't get through that fence! Really? I can throw multiple fireballs that engulf hordes of enemies but I can't burn down an old crickety wooden fence?

Of course, that's a gaming issue that has existed for a very long time. It goes back to my fully destructible environmental issue, as well as the 'You can't go in THESE buildings' issue.

If I see it in the environment, I want to be able to interact with it.

It's great that we're finally getting to the point this generation where those things are getting realized. I was very disappointed with the first two generations of games for these consoles that were still using those old restrictions.

As far as the combat system discussion goes, does it really matter?

I mean.. could you really DIE in Fable? If you went some place you weren't supposed to really go and just got slaughtered, you just start over right before you went there, know that you should take a different path and go that way instead.

The combat in all these RPGs are rather secondary, IMO.
 
Oddly enough, I never really abused the combat system with the spells. :p But it was fairly apparent that the first game was unbalanced with the ability to upgrade your character completely in all forms without any real class distinction. It just took away any replayability.
 
IMO, the "real" problem with Fable was the ability to buy karma (is that what it was called, I forget?) with so much gold.

So you could easily go from evil to hero and back and forth again simply by spending money, and generating money is really only a time issue.

You could be the most evil person in the entire world/kingdom and then pay some gold and suddenly become the most beloved person.

I'm not a real RPG fan, Fable was the only RPG (I don't consider GTAIV an RPG) I played last generation, and all the classic flaws of RPGs really bugged me.

Like the fact you can't die. Like the fact that if you wanted to change from evil to good you could do so, it was only a matter of time.

While the choices you made influenced the game, they had no lasting impact because there was always a way to revert.

I guess I understand the fact that people don't want to play a game for 10 hours and then go into a battle and DIE and have to start over from the very beginning.

On the other hand, by making it so you don't, it made combat a completely worthless exercise.

In fact, when I first played the game I was AMAZED at how cool everything was and how everything I did influenced something that effected how people would interact with me, etc...

The second time I played the game, I realized "This is just a game, with a set of rules, and all I need to do is understand the rules and treat it like any other game."

At that point, I beat the game easily and it was rather boring. It was just a waste of time, really, to get to the next cut screen to tell me the story.

When I started, I was afraid of losing contests or dying in combat. When I realized none of that actually mattered, the game lost its appeal.

I really don't know how people play all these RPGs or JRPGs which are designed to give you a 'test and play' experience. You just try things and nothing you do really has any consequence at all. You either succeed and move on, or you fail and try something else.

Different Strokes, I guess..
 
RancidLunchmeat said:
I really don't know how people play all these RPGs or JRPGs which are designed to give you a 'test and play' experience. You just try things and nothing you do really has any consequence at all. You either succeed and move on, or you fail and try something else.
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I never played Fable, but aren't most games like that? You get to a point where you die and you keep trying until you don't die. Each game varies in how much you have to replay, but the mechanic is the same. Of course dieing in my example could be replaced with losing a race, etc.
 
AlStrong said:
Oddly enough, I never really abused the combat system with the spells. :p But it was fairly apparent that the first game was unbalanced with the ability to upgrade your character completely in all forms without any real class distinction. It just took away any replayability.
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Honestly, if you only spent your experience on berserk, you could probably win the entire game just by clicking the attack button as fast possible.
 
3dcgi said:
I never played Fable, but aren't most games like that? You get to a point where you die and you keep trying until you don't die. Each game varies in how much you have to replay, but the mechanic is the same. Of course dieing in my example could be replaced with losing a race, etc.
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Ha!

You're correct, of course.

The only difference really is on how much you have to replay and how easy, or how much of a waste of time the replay-ness actually is to get back to the point where you die and try again.

So maybe I'm not expressing it correctly, but there really was something that was just wrong with Fable because it really left me with no sense of caring at all as to the outcome of combat.
 
RancidLunchmeat said:
I guess I understand the fact that people don't want to play a game for 10 hours and then go into a battle and DIE and have to start over from the very beginning.

On the other hand, by making it so you don't, it made combat a completely worthless exercise.
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Which is why Lionhead's solution seems rather smart.

What they've done is accept the fact an RPG character never really dies, and literally implemented that into the game. Rather than a fairly trivial death, they are imposing penalties for losing a fight. The penalties then have an impact on your role playing experience.

For example, should you lose a fight, you get beaten up. This gives you scars, and pretty soon everyone is calling you ugly, and none of the ladies will give you the time of day :devilish:

You can also sacrifice exp, or gold in lieu of getting the beat down, so it'll be interesting to see how they manage to balance that. In theory, it sounds like a great approach to an old problem.
 
It's very original. I want to see how it plays out for real. They said in testing players were very apprehensive of dying because of the penalties, but I've known a lot of things [play-testers have okayed in game be a bit rubbish in the final product! If you end up caring about your character. I think it'll work. If you just see them as a soulless avatar, I think it'll lose impact. In my cynical case, I expect I'd take the scars every time and keep hold of the gold! Plus if they have a decent human reaction system, plenty enough girls like a bit of rough for some battle scars not to matter ;)
 
So are they ditching a regular save system :?: Being the obsessive compulsive that I may be at times, I always demand perfection for my RPG characters. ;)
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Plus if they have a decent human reaction system, plenty enough girls like a bit of rough for some battle scars not to matter ;)
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Where are you finding such girls? :devilish:

I definitely think the WoW/MMORPG system for death needs to be transitioned to single player RPG's. Punish the character for dying in a way that's not simply a "Game Over" screen, making you click "Load Game" from the title menu. The choice of XP, gold or "uglifying" your character is novel, but I agree it will be difficult to balance.

I definitely think creating a boring blank avatar is not something a Molyneux game would encourage. The primary thing I really dug out of Black and White was my pet... and I honestly couldn't imagine anyone playing the game without thinking the character of your pet made the game.
 
I *hated* WoW's death system. I only played a free trial, but it was the worst death experience I've ever known. The game would kill you in a cave say, and then when you boringly wandered back to your body, you were surrounded by respawned monsters.

Rogue Galaxy was quite the wake-up call with deaths. Death was final. No respawning at the last checkpoint. If you died, you were taken back to the menu screen and had to load your last saved game. That's made gulping potions and keeping an eye on health all the more important. Personally I prefer games where death is a Bad Thing rather than a Minor Inconvenience as long as it's suitably balanced that death can be avoided. In Halo 3, respawning was essential or we'd never have got anywhere. Games where you can be sniped kinda need that...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I *hated* WoW's death system. I only played a free trial, but it was the worst death experience I've ever known. The game would kill you in a cave say, and then when you boringly wandered back to your body, you were surrounded by respawned monsters.

Rogue Galaxy was quite the wake-up call with deaths. Death was final. No respawning at the last checkpoint. If you died, you were taken back to the menu screen and had to load your last saved game. That's made gulping potions and keeping an eye on health all the more important. Personally I prefer games where death is a Bad Thing rather than a Minor Inconvenience as long as it's suitably balanced that death can be avoided. In Halo 3, respawning was essential or we'd never have got anywhere. Games where you can be sniped kinda need that...
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Sure, buy you can quick-res in town for a sacrifice (XP or gold, I can't remember since I've been "clean" for about two years now). Or you can fight your way back to your corpse if you're tough enough to try again.

I always found the "title screen" deaths in games - especially RPG's - very wanky, since you know every gamer will simply load their last save or checkpoint. Why not try and keep the gamer in-game? It seems like the most logical evolutionary step in gaming to me.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I expect I'd take the scars every time and keep hold of the gold! Plus if they have a decent human reaction system, plenty enough girls like a bit of rough for some battle scars not to matter ;)
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Well, if you end up as a souless avatar, then they really haven't created a vrey good Role Playing game, and have already failed in their main objective.

Whether or not they pull it off in this title, I think this is certainly the right direction to head in. Rather than dying, and simply reloading, in a role playing game, your failures should impact your role playing experience as you traverse the game world. Not only is it much more inline with the theme of an RPG, but it can potentially add some significant replayability as well.

Personally I think Fable 2 will pull this off fairly well, if there's one thing Fable 1 did well, it was make you care what other people in the game world thought of you.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Rogue Galaxy was quite the wake-up call with deaths. Death was final. No respawning at the last checkpoint. If you died, you were taken back to the menu screen and had to load your last saved game. That's made gulping potions and keeping an eye on health all the more important.
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I personally hated Rogue Galaxy going to title screen instead of load screen directly,
and it was more painful than FF12 since reaching to load screen was quicker in the latter.

(Which reminds me, how come you haven't played FF12 (yet or before Rogue Galaxy)?)


scooby_dooby said:
Whether or not they pull it off in this title, I think this is certainly the right direction to head in. Rather than dying, and simply reloading, in a role playing game, your failures should impact your role playing experience as you traverse the game world. Not only is it much more inline with the theme of an RPG, but it can potentially add some significant replayability as well.
.
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I think reloading is a unfair, "unrealistic" advantage which generally breaks the experience.
Actually I always imagined a game where bad guys reload after dying. :)

Still I don't see how Fable 2 can eliminate loading all together, so cannot say their method is better than any other.
If getting beaten is cheap, it will make the game less attractive, if not people will still reload, unless checkpoints are sparse which is also not good.

Also dying is part of life, so it should be as valid to have it in games too.
 
I'm not sure how they're going to avoid reloading either...

If you lose a boss battle...you still need to fight him, so how do they transition from the beat down, to the rematch battle??

Maybe you'll wake up in an Inn or something in the closest nearby town and then have to trudge back...or maybe you just evetually get up with full health and resume the fight?? It'll be interesting to see what they come up with...
 
Woohoo, you can jump over fences and walk around as you like. My nr.1 complain that I had against Fable1 has been fixed, the world looks much more open now and the town just looks amazing, I am so glad they have kept their artstic style. I can't wait for this game...
 
Gametrailers has some walkthrough videos up.

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Fable 2 has a lot of nice features, but I'm worried it'll go the way of Molyneux's other grand ideas. What put me off was some of his talk 'you've never seen anything like this before' when in fact I have. Perhaps not to the same degree, but coop with assignable resource sharing and drop-in coop aren't new things themselves. The coop camera seemed excellent, especially the transition to interiors, but to say no game was the same inside as out? Even Morrowind managed that! The meat of the game, the combat, seemed totally lacklustre, with his character swishing around pointlessly in the air. And the openness just highlighted the fact this was a simulacrum. If you are to allow characters to kill dad's in front of kids and at the same time want an emotional game experience, you need a reaction from the child. Then you'd need incredible AI behaviour simulation with suitable animations. As it was they just wandered off and the experience was the same as so many other games. Yep, you can kill peasants, and it'll affect a rating by so many points. What's so special about that?

Added to that a last-gen animation system, and I think the end result at the moment is destined to be nice ideas that don't really get out of the game mould, and will be a worse game for it, not offering the best game experience and yet neither offering some new virtual-life experience. 'Jack of all trades, master of none' I feel at the moment.
 
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