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Last time, in our multiple-part preview of the ambitious Fable - still scheduled for a September 14th, 2004 ship date, which puts it at about three weeks until it hits store shelves as of this writing - we talked about how Peter Molyneux, one of the game development community's brightest and most respected minds, called Fable "the greatest role-playing game of all time".
Even Bungie aren't that brave to say that Halo 2 will be the "greatest first-person shooter of all time". It's a tall order, to be sure, and it's easy to blow it off as egotistical boasting . . . but could it be true?
Well . . . I'm not sure, but it certainly won't be for lack of trying.
With this installment, we're going to look at the heart and soul of Fable - choice.
Most console RPGs tend to be fairly linear in nature, focused on interpreting the designer's particular vision. You're pretty much along for the ride, in the passenger's seat, with little say as to where the story is going or even who the main character really is. And technically, you ARE 'role-playing', but you're also forced to stick to the script, with no opportunity - as an 'actor', of sorts - to ad-lib: the directors have specific things they want you to see and experience and it pretty much boils down to whether you're enjoying the story and if you can relate in some way with the characters you're given.
And that's not a bad thing, per se - as a huge fan of the genre and many titles that are exactly what I described above, I refuse to take the stance that those techniques are 'broken'.
However, it's ironic that while most role-playing video games are extensions of the granddaddy of them all, the pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons, they tend to just borrow elements and trappings from D & D, while failing to capture the real magic of the game, which really has nothing to do with wizards nor warriors: it's the open-ended system that allows players to affect the outcome of their adventures via their decisions and choices. And, honestly, D & D may just have been one of the most perfect games ever created, because of its adaptability to each individual player. You bring your own sense of personality to the game, and you're imposing your own desires on what you want to see and experience on the game, rather than simply being led through it. You may see some amazing sights on this sort of structured tour, to be sure, but you're sternly instructed to keep your hands and feet in the cart at all times.
The concept of choice has found its way into RPGs - and specifically Xbox RPGs, perhaps in some statement of rebellion against Sony's 'favored platform' status with the PlayStation and Square's standard-bearer, Final Fantasy - often recently, with titles like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic allowing players to cut their own swath through a virtual jungle.
Morrowind, however, allowed much freedom, but at a price - it cut you from the leash in the deepest, darkest, most dense rainforest and expected to find your way out: Morrowind was a fascinating game but with a steep learning curve that allowed players to wander perhaps a little too much and get caught up in minute details, losing sight of why, exactly you were doing all the things you were allowed to do.
KOTOR boasted a more traditional structure and focus that followed a main storyline but allowed gamers to make many minute choices along the way, each of which factored into how the story might end. Even though there were many thought-provoking decisions to be made, in the end, the game was still fairly linear with the only real impact on the player and how he or she chose to play the game being made toward the final stretch.
Both of the above mentioned games were excellent efforts, but they had their rough spots. And therein remains a series of Catch-22s, like some incredibly powerful dragons guarding the fair maiden, nearly impossible to overcome.
It's not really that creating a game like Fable hasn't technologically been possible until now . . . it's that the game development community is, for the most part, a slave to demographics and profit margins. It's trying to find a balance between pushing the envelope and still being enough of a known quantity to not be a risk: why deviate from the Final Fantasy 'formula' when said formula sells millions of units worldwide? Open-ended games can be a nightmare for designers to test and refine, so that players have the ability to tailor and customize their experience with the game but all the choices don't cause huge imbalances. What if you had, for instance, a Final Fantasy where it was possible to kill off important characters to the story, rendering some plotlines moot? Well, you'd have a game with huge gaping holes in it, and no one wants that.
Even Big Blue Box saw that, first-hand, as they struggled to find a publisher to support their vision - which was to let you, as the player, have the tools to create your own epic fantasy adventure. Perhaps you'd like plenty of melodramatic romance, so you should be given the opportunity to pursue that aspect, to the point of wooing a potential mate, getting married, then divorced - or maybe you want none of that, and neither choice is the 'right' or 'wrong' one - the biggest issue is that you explore the situation yourself, and, should you find it not to your liking, drop it and be able to walk away.
Maybe you'd like to be able to interact with the non-player characters who wander around the towns, cities, and villages in a deeper fashion than simply hearing them spout the same one or two lines of dialogue again and again. Maybe you'd like them to actually react to your presence: after all, you've just spent a good dozen hours battling your way deep into the orc encampment to the north and slaughtered the monsters who have been stealing the livestock, burning down the outposts, and generally making the average villager's quality of life pretty poor, and what do you get for your efforts? Nothing. You blew a fortune in healing items saving their miserable peasant necks, and you can't even get a simple fist-pumping cheer.
In fact, they're following the exact same routines that they were when they were being oppressed.
This is what Fable does differently from just about every other game in the RPG genre - taking all those instances of playing through an RPG and pondering "Wouldn't it be cool if . . ." and then coming up with an idea that the game developers might not have considered, and even if they did, probably didn't give the scenario more than a second thought, because game design is like a delicate house of cards - you don't start pulling aces from the deck without possibly throwing the whole thing out of whack. Besides, you, along with a relative handful of others that make up a small percentage of the game's total audience, might be the only ones to even think of doing that certain thing - or even being interested enough to follow that off-the-beaten path to see if it could be done.
Big Blue Box, led by the Carter Bros., Simon and Dene, working with Peter Molyneux, have an answer to that question: "Yes, it WOULD be really cool if . . . "
In fact, with what I've seen of and read about Fable so far, they've come up with a whole list of possibilities that you probably haven't.
Fable is more than just being good or evil. Yes, that's a large factor of the game, and will impact a huge number of your decisions. As you choose to walk through one door, three others may close to you, perhaps permanently, for the remainder of the game, depending on the situation.
For example, you're free to kill almost any character in the game (children excluded, for obvious reasons). Perhaps you've got a valid motive: you could go on a killing spree, thin out the town's ranks, and make the price of real estate go down as a result - after all, who wants to live where some nutjob with a broadsword is running around indiscriminately attacking people for no apparent reason?
Then you buy up some properties, and after things have calmed down (because you've decided to stop lopping people's heads off), the price of land begins to rise: you sell it or rent it and make a tidy profit. Of course, there's more noble ways to make a buck without gaining a reputation as murdering psychopath, and now you've got other baggage to deal with - for example, while you've got the cash on hand to buy plenty of trinkets to impress the ladyfolk, a good deal of them aren't going to want to be seen with a notorious criminal like you, anyway.
Or maybe you're just going to have a little genocidal episode here and there simply because you can. Fair enough, but know that this isn't Grand Theft Auto: once you gain a 'Wanted' level here, there's no handy little icon to make it go down. Go on enough rampages and you'll find people flee from you in terror: not a good thing when you need some information on where to find a certain monster. Maybe you'll have a momentary lapse of reason and do some bad things, but find out much later, down the road, that those bad decisions come back to haunt you.
More here!
Even Bungie aren't that brave to say that Halo 2 will be the "greatest first-person shooter of all time". It's a tall order, to be sure, and it's easy to blow it off as egotistical boasting . . . but could it be true?
Well . . . I'm not sure, but it certainly won't be for lack of trying.
With this installment, we're going to look at the heart and soul of Fable - choice.
Most console RPGs tend to be fairly linear in nature, focused on interpreting the designer's particular vision. You're pretty much along for the ride, in the passenger's seat, with little say as to where the story is going or even who the main character really is. And technically, you ARE 'role-playing', but you're also forced to stick to the script, with no opportunity - as an 'actor', of sorts - to ad-lib: the directors have specific things they want you to see and experience and it pretty much boils down to whether you're enjoying the story and if you can relate in some way with the characters you're given.
And that's not a bad thing, per se - as a huge fan of the genre and many titles that are exactly what I described above, I refuse to take the stance that those techniques are 'broken'.
However, it's ironic that while most role-playing video games are extensions of the granddaddy of them all, the pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons, they tend to just borrow elements and trappings from D & D, while failing to capture the real magic of the game, which really has nothing to do with wizards nor warriors: it's the open-ended system that allows players to affect the outcome of their adventures via their decisions and choices. And, honestly, D & D may just have been one of the most perfect games ever created, because of its adaptability to each individual player. You bring your own sense of personality to the game, and you're imposing your own desires on what you want to see and experience on the game, rather than simply being led through it. You may see some amazing sights on this sort of structured tour, to be sure, but you're sternly instructed to keep your hands and feet in the cart at all times.
The concept of choice has found its way into RPGs - and specifically Xbox RPGs, perhaps in some statement of rebellion against Sony's 'favored platform' status with the PlayStation and Square's standard-bearer, Final Fantasy - often recently, with titles like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic allowing players to cut their own swath through a virtual jungle.
Morrowind, however, allowed much freedom, but at a price - it cut you from the leash in the deepest, darkest, most dense rainforest and expected to find your way out: Morrowind was a fascinating game but with a steep learning curve that allowed players to wander perhaps a little too much and get caught up in minute details, losing sight of why, exactly you were doing all the things you were allowed to do.
KOTOR boasted a more traditional structure and focus that followed a main storyline but allowed gamers to make many minute choices along the way, each of which factored into how the story might end. Even though there were many thought-provoking decisions to be made, in the end, the game was still fairly linear with the only real impact on the player and how he or she chose to play the game being made toward the final stretch.
Both of the above mentioned games were excellent efforts, but they had their rough spots. And therein remains a series of Catch-22s, like some incredibly powerful dragons guarding the fair maiden, nearly impossible to overcome.
It's not really that creating a game like Fable hasn't technologically been possible until now . . . it's that the game development community is, for the most part, a slave to demographics and profit margins. It's trying to find a balance between pushing the envelope and still being enough of a known quantity to not be a risk: why deviate from the Final Fantasy 'formula' when said formula sells millions of units worldwide? Open-ended games can be a nightmare for designers to test and refine, so that players have the ability to tailor and customize their experience with the game but all the choices don't cause huge imbalances. What if you had, for instance, a Final Fantasy where it was possible to kill off important characters to the story, rendering some plotlines moot? Well, you'd have a game with huge gaping holes in it, and no one wants that.
Even Big Blue Box saw that, first-hand, as they struggled to find a publisher to support their vision - which was to let you, as the player, have the tools to create your own epic fantasy adventure. Perhaps you'd like plenty of melodramatic romance, so you should be given the opportunity to pursue that aspect, to the point of wooing a potential mate, getting married, then divorced - or maybe you want none of that, and neither choice is the 'right' or 'wrong' one - the biggest issue is that you explore the situation yourself, and, should you find it not to your liking, drop it and be able to walk away.
Maybe you'd like to be able to interact with the non-player characters who wander around the towns, cities, and villages in a deeper fashion than simply hearing them spout the same one or two lines of dialogue again and again. Maybe you'd like them to actually react to your presence: after all, you've just spent a good dozen hours battling your way deep into the orc encampment to the north and slaughtered the monsters who have been stealing the livestock, burning down the outposts, and generally making the average villager's quality of life pretty poor, and what do you get for your efforts? Nothing. You blew a fortune in healing items saving their miserable peasant necks, and you can't even get a simple fist-pumping cheer.
In fact, they're following the exact same routines that they were when they were being oppressed.
This is what Fable does differently from just about every other game in the RPG genre - taking all those instances of playing through an RPG and pondering "Wouldn't it be cool if . . ." and then coming up with an idea that the game developers might not have considered, and even if they did, probably didn't give the scenario more than a second thought, because game design is like a delicate house of cards - you don't start pulling aces from the deck without possibly throwing the whole thing out of whack. Besides, you, along with a relative handful of others that make up a small percentage of the game's total audience, might be the only ones to even think of doing that certain thing - or even being interested enough to follow that off-the-beaten path to see if it could be done.
Big Blue Box, led by the Carter Bros., Simon and Dene, working with Peter Molyneux, have an answer to that question: "Yes, it WOULD be really cool if . . . "
In fact, with what I've seen of and read about Fable so far, they've come up with a whole list of possibilities that you probably haven't.
Fable is more than just being good or evil. Yes, that's a large factor of the game, and will impact a huge number of your decisions. As you choose to walk through one door, three others may close to you, perhaps permanently, for the remainder of the game, depending on the situation.
For example, you're free to kill almost any character in the game (children excluded, for obvious reasons). Perhaps you've got a valid motive: you could go on a killing spree, thin out the town's ranks, and make the price of real estate go down as a result - after all, who wants to live where some nutjob with a broadsword is running around indiscriminately attacking people for no apparent reason?
Then you buy up some properties, and after things have calmed down (because you've decided to stop lopping people's heads off), the price of land begins to rise: you sell it or rent it and make a tidy profit. Of course, there's more noble ways to make a buck without gaining a reputation as murdering psychopath, and now you've got other baggage to deal with - for example, while you've got the cash on hand to buy plenty of trinkets to impress the ladyfolk, a good deal of them aren't going to want to be seen with a notorious criminal like you, anyway.
Or maybe you're just going to have a little genocidal episode here and there simply because you can. Fair enough, but know that this isn't Grand Theft Auto: once you gain a 'Wanted' level here, there's no handy little icon to make it go down. Go on enough rampages and you'll find people flee from you in terror: not a good thing when you need some information on where to find a certain monster. Maybe you'll have a momentary lapse of reason and do some bad things, but find out much later, down the road, that those bad decisions come back to haunt you.
More here!
