Peter Molyneux Interview

Eurogamer has slapped up a three-page interview that they conducted with Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux during this year’s Develop conference. In it, they talk about Fable III, console development, how video games have become a “serious” industry, and what it’s like to get a perfect review score.

Eurogamer: You said there were aspects of Fable II you weren’t happy with. Eurogamer gave it 10/10 and it sold millions of copies.

Peter Molyneux: I know you did. That was one of the first reviews that we saw. You know, this is what you don’t realise being journalists – and you should, you should do this, it would make your life so amazing – when you give a score to a game, you should cherry pick one of those teams and you should go to them with the score. What you don’t see is what we do when we see that review.

Eurogamer: What do you do?

Peter Molyneux: You know what I’m going to say now: ‘It’s f***ing amazing!’ I can remember getting that Eurogamer score – because remember, this is where honesty comes in – before that you had been really critical about Lionhead. These things hurt, just like anything else.

I can remember standing in the studio holding up this f***ing 10/10 from Eurogamer. Everybody cheered. It was great. It was like getting a huge award. It really was. You never see that. The press never sees what it feels like to get a 10/10.

…

Eurogamer: Perhaps accessible is a dirty word when it comes to hardcore gaming.

Peter Molyneux: Well it shouldn’t be. With Fable, because the weapons morph, if you’re crap at combat, your weapon’s going to look not nearly as good as if you were a hardcore gamer. You weapon is going to be bigger, is going to have more moves unlocked, you’ll be able to trade it, you’ll be able to show off.

Every time you die your weapon gets a tiny notch in it. That’s accessible, and it’s real consequences to you being non-core. I can look at someone’s sword and I can almost say, ‘Right, this guy is an amazing gamer. It’s a perfect sword.’ That all makes sense. It’s building accessibility and core into one thing.

The fast weapon switching we’ve added in, I know the most casual gamers will just go like this [button-bashes]. That’s all they’re doing. No matter what I say, no matter how many times I say you can hold the button, they’ll totally button-bash.

You’re beating your head against a brick wall if you try and force them to do anything else. You have to take the controller away from them if you want to do that. But that doesn’t mean I should just support button-bashing. You can now in Fable III be button-bashing, and you just slip your finger to the other button and you can shoot your gun at the same time.

Or you can button-bash, slip, and hold the other button, and you’re charging up a shot. I love that. I know that 50 per cent of our audience will never discover it. But the other 50 per cent will love it. I love the fact that you and I can co-op together and we can use those combinations in ways to get through a battle far better.

Don’t forget, if you do it really successfully, your weapon gets better. That’s the levelling up which I really, really adore.

And now Eurogamer is guaranteed a huge advertising campaign when Fable III comes out. Everyone’s happy, right?