Develop 2010: Fable III Presentation

After a rather nice lunch at Develop 2010 the crowds returned to the conference rooms, the vast majority heading off to see Peter Molyneux give a presentation on Fable III. After a slightly late start due to traffic everyone settled in to hear the head of Lionhead Studios give one of his renowned talks on Fable, as well as show off a fairly lengthy demo of the RPG title.

However rather than jumping straight into the Fable III gameplay, Molyneux started off with a brief history lesson. When he started in the industry just over twenty years ago he said that sequels were fairly rare, and that they were generally considered lazy by developers. Rather than creating something new, you were just updating something that already existed. It was almost like saying that you’d run out of ideas. Of course now the industry has changed significantly and sequels make up a huge chunk of games every year.

After the short history lesson, it was time for Molyneux to talk Fable. A fair amount of this boiled down to talking about the flaws in Fable II and how these were addressed in Fable III. It seems that accessibility was at the forefront of the design of Fable III. Molyneux gave two main reasons for this particular direction, firstly that a large number of the players in Fable II only actually accessed around 50% of the game. Given the breadth of the game it’s no surprise that not everyone used every aspect of the game, but for the usage to be as low as 50% obviously shows at least some failing of the game’s design.

Secondly he made a point that makes a lot of sense, that an RPG’s accessibility means it’s accessible to people who already play RPGs. Given how ingrained and relatively complex the mechanics of an RPG can be it is easy to see how that could put off potential players. Trying to address this issue is obviously important in growing the base for the Fable series and making it appeal to as many people as possible.

Talking about the storytelling in Fable, Molyneux revealed that he honestly didn’t feel it was very good. He related an experiment he tried at E3, where he asked every person who interviewed him to give an overview of the Fable II storyline. Not a single one could remember what had happened in the game.He said that this was a result of Lionhead not taking the story writing process for the previous Fable games particularly seriously. They were no real beats to the story, no highs and lows to the story. Obviously this had to change for the third game in the series and starting with a great cast Lionhead have looked to make the story simple and understandable.

The simple story has already been revealed, a story of revolution and becoming a king. Rather than having any cheesy voiceovers guiding you through the story or explaining your motivation, the clues come from your environment and will provide persistent reminders as to why you want to overthrow the tyrannical king.

With the presentation segment over it was time for some gameplay. We were shown three segments, all fairly early in the game, that showed off some of the new features that Fable III boasts. Perhaps the most impressive is the fact that there’s next no menus or UI within the game. Everything from changing clothes to equipping weapons to assigning XP and levelling up is all handled within the world and all has a reason and explanation for being the way it is. This may just sound like pointless PR speak but it’s actually presented in an interesting way in the game.

When questioned on the persistence that would exist in the game Molyneux discussed the concept of promises that you would make in order to get backing. These can range from simple promises to an individual, to giving a people back their lands. Depending on how well you keep these promises, you can drastically alter the whole future of the game.

The final thing I took away from the demo was the added freedom the game gives you. This largely comes from the way the breadcrumb trail now works. Rather than permenantly encouraging you to stay on your current quest, it dims or brightens depending on context. In addition to this your companions may move on and wait for you at a tavern or in a town if you stray off the quest. Whilst Molyneux talked about the testing they’d done with these features to see how much freer a player feels, it’s immediately obvious. You no longer feel pushed to move forward on the story. Want to stop and chat up a woman? That’s fine, the quest will still be there when you come back.

Before today I’d never seen Molyneux talk. His reputation for being a great speaker is well deserved, everything he said was engaging and interesting. What surprised me is he really sold me on Fable III, before the talk I didn’t have any huge amount of interest in the series. As they say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and Molyneux straddles it beautifully to create a truly unique atmosphere.