Fable III Preview and Interview

The editors at Xbox360Achievements.org have cranked out a preview of Fable III and an interview with Peter Molyneux, both of which are courtesy of the time they spent at GamesCom.

A snip from the preview:

We already touched upon (The Sanctuary) in our E3 preview – an in-game hub that replaces Fable II’s clunky menu system – but this time we were hands-on and got to check it out in a bit more detail. The Sanctuary plays home to your in-game butler, the legendary John Cleese, who will offer helpful hints and sharp witticisms along the way. Whilst in our hub, we got chance to check out the new clothing dyeing option which offered hundreds more different colours and combinations than the 2008 version did, as well as the new 3D map, which not only allowed you to manage your properties, but also allowed you to see the area’s available missions and so on.

At this point the topic of conversation flicked from the in-game hub to the game’s world morphing improvements, which according to the Lionhead dev on hand would be more noticeable this time around. Instead of just relying on key events to dictate the future of a town or area, the general economy and well-being of each area would this time be indicated by the general look of the area, whether it be poor and dilapidated, or rich and thriving.

And a little something from the interview:

Fable III picks up 50 years after Fable II, so what impact will that shift in time have on the gameplay?

Let’s talk about that and let’s talk about the story in Fable 1, because that was a problem, that was a rubbish thing in Fable 1 and Fable 2. Let’s be honest about it. The gameplay was gimmicky, it wasn’t connected to the story, marrying people didn’t really have an effect, going and farting in people’s faces was funny, but it was a gimmick. There was a whole collection of unconnected toys, so we really thought about that in Fable III, that’s the first thing. The second thing is feeding things into the drama and story and then the third thing is deciding on the pace of the game. But we’re going to go to the levelling-up stuff, so we’ve tackled all of this in one neat package.

Interestingly, there’s a mechanic in role-playing games called levelling-up, we all know what it is, we all love it and we all love the idea of starting at level 1 and progressing to level 10. We wondered if we could use levelling-up, reinvent it a little bit, so that it would help us with a.) the gameplay, b.) the story and c.) your compulsion to play.

So, the story in Fable III is very simple. You’re a rebel, there’s an evil king, he’s called Logan, you’ve got to get followers and when you get enough followers, you attack the king, take out the king and become king yourself. That’s the story. And this word ‘followers’, we got very interested in and very fascinated with. We realised, if you crossed out the word ‘experience’ and made levelling-up less about combat and more about gaming and story and replace the word ‘experience’ with ‘followers’, then we could invent this place [shows the road to Logan’s castle in-game] where you spend your followers.

You earn followers through everything you do in Fable III. You get followers for fighting well, you get followers for doing quests, you get followers for marrying well, you get followers for doing well in business and you’ll lose followers for doing badly in business, getting divorced, dying in battle or failing quests. So followers equals power. The more followers you have, the more gates you’re able to go through and when you get through the final gate, you’re ready for that battle, you’re ready to take on the king and his forces. So, levelling-up is part of the story, it’s part of the same game mechanics and that’s pretty cool, but we wondered whether there was something else we could do.

One of the problems with Fable 1 and Fable 2, was we gave you a big bag of stuff and we just gave it to you. We kind of puked these game features on you and then just let you choose whether you do them or not, it was up to you. You had no control over when you got something or when didn’t get something, and people forgot about it. So, now we’ve invented something called ‘gameplay chests’. In each level and between each gate there is a chest and in each chest, there is a piece of gameplay, an entire gameplay mechanic. For example, in here is the ‘friends expression’ pack. If you want to play the ‘friends’ game, which gives you the ability to go and make friends with people – once you become friends with people, they become your followers and anybody in the world of Albion can give you quests then unlock that box. If you want to play the ‘simulation’ game buying and selling houses, running a business then open the landlord box. If you hate all that stuff and you just want fighting and combat, then you can open the red chests, which are all about combat, spells and special moves. That means the game flow, the levelling-up, the story, what the game of Fable is, is all integrated into this one system. God knows how you’re going to review it, I don’t know.

The interesting thing is, because you spend followers to open these chests and the gates, it means the speed-runners will only get one or two of these chests per gate. The grinders will do exactly what they want to do. They’ll grind and get enough followers to gain all of the boxes before opening the gate.