Fable II E3 Preview

Eurogamer weighs in with a new preview of Fable II, courtesy of a hands-on demonstration during the E3 Media & Business Summit.

Co-op in Fable 2 is a bit like inviting a friend to see your Animal Crossing village: players come to your world to look around as much as anything else. “This works for us because your character and world will be so different from theirs,” explains Molyneux. “It’s shaped in part by the decisions you’ve made in the story, and then there are all the little additional choices: ‘Jesus, you bought that house? You have three kids?’ These simple things that change the world can make showing off your version of Albion very special.”

A focus on showing off isn’t the only innovation. Guests join your game not as an equal adventurer, but as your henchman, a role that is actually classified as a job within Fable 2’s career structure. This means the game will pay them an hourly wage for working for you, and you can negotiate an additional split of gold and experience gained, using a set of bargaining sliders on the invite screen. Anything your guest earns will travel back with them to their own game when the co-op is finished; it’s a bit like temping.

This sounds a little complicated at first, yet the more we saw of it, the more it impressed. Lionhead’s system acknowledges the social context of co-op that other games ignore, and the bargaining over who gets to be the hero and how much the henchman is paid is a crucial part of the fun. “Your friend might say, ‘I can’t work out how to open this door,'” suggests Molyneux. “You can say, ‘I’ll give you a hint, but you’ll have to pay me.’