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Peter Molyneux Talks Revolution

Lastly, Molyneux showed off a unique project his team has been experimenting with. (He also gave people a peek of this at The Game Designer's Challenge). It was called "The Room," and Molyneux admits it breaks every rule he described above. It's not even really a game yet, but rather a demonstration of possibilities.

Molyneux wants to "play around with what people think of reality." To that end, the demo shows a startlingly realistic room. You can see the stress of the wood, the age of the wallpaper, and the fabric of the couch. Everything is interactive, so you can tip aside a bowl of oranges and they'll spill out and roll everywhere. You can tug on a bookcase, pull out all the books, or dump them on the ground.

Nearby players will find a mirror that can be stepped through like a portal into another room. Playing with portals is one of the ways that the game twists your idea of reality. For example, inside the second room you'll find a great big chest. Opening it will reveal a tiny version of the room you started in. Dive into the chest and you're back where you started.

These portals can really twist your noodle. In one room there were two mirrors, a large one and a small one. They were tied to each other. So, if you looked through the large mirror you'd see the room as viewed from the small mirror. The crazy part is that you could throw an orange through the large mirror and it would bounce out of the small mirror, but it would be tiny. Or, vice versa, you could roll it through the small mirror and it would emerge from the big mirror twice as big. Do it again and you had an orange that was taller than yourself.

There was also an object Molyneux called "Digital Clay." You could pick up a blob of this clay, drop it to the floor with a splat, then begin stretching and tweaking it. If you sculpted it into a shape that the game recognized -- like a phone or a chair -- the clay would magically become the item that you created.

In one demo, he created a chair. The chair, however, was too big to fit into the nearby chest. So you could toss it through the big mirror, then pick it up as it fell through the small mirror. Now, the smaller chair could be dropped into the chest where it would land into the tiny room within.

What's the game here? There isn't one -- not yet. It's a toy that plays with new concepts, and it shows a little of the experimental flair and creative play that could lead to some wild new games in the future. It was a good way to end Molyneux's talk: an abstract look at using new technology in crazy ways. An art project for gaming geeks.
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Mmmmm imagine that sort of stuff with the rev controller.

Just imagine it as a adventure puzzle game with you having to search through stuff for clues etc. WOW
 
Drinky Crow said:
Fable was only as good as you let the hype make it be for you -- because in the end, it was really just a bunch of load screens between non-interactive corridors, the same shallow fights with the same limited set of monsters, and regular trips to the virtual barber. Like Shenmue, the game is probably better if you pretend that flipping the occasional character status flag suggests deeper mechanics and world simulation, although that still leaves you as a undiscerning idiot.
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I hate to agree with Drinky but he's on point :lol :lol :lol
 
I'd love to see an expanded Theme Hospital, they could include the operation stuff from trauma center and tendo dokuta, along with managing the hospital

plus, they could add stuff like, visiting pacients, examining them, driving ambulances etc
 
It's great that he likes the controller though. Peter Molyneux is very passionate about what he does. For that, I have a great amount of respect for him. When you hear him talk, it's obvious that he's giddy; reminds me of Miyamoto in some ways.

He hasn't come through on all him promises, but I won't judge him solely on that. Fable is a good game imo. Black and White is great; on the Revolution it could be even better - actually making you feel like a god with the controller.
 
axxxj said:
Link

Mmmmm imagine that sort of stuff with the rev controller.

Just imagine it as a adventure puzzle game with you having to search through stuff for clues etc. WOW
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That sounds awesome.

I think it would make a great psychological adventure game like Sanitarium, or like the movie Cube.
 
The guy was heavly involved with Fable, i'll buy any game he makes from now on.

Fable TLC is phenomenal btw, so much stuff has been added. I actually look foward to going home to play Fable..
 
I have a lot of time and respect for Molyneux, he's passionate and is prone to exaggeration, but y'know at least he's making an effort and experimenting with the medium. He comes across as a great producer* who is in great need of a great director* to syphon off his ideas and make them into a workable game.



*Or should that be the other way round? :/
 
well, im interested in seeing what he comes up with. he'd said in a speech once that he didn't believe next gen gaming would come until someone, somewhere, created a new controller interface.

it's clearly something he's been wanting for a while, and this controller seems like it would blend with him really well.

i've never been interested in any of his games really, but i do agree with his views about the industry.

apparently he's hit-or-miss though. being that i've never played any of his games, i'll give him the benefit of the doubt with his Revolution game though, just cause he's making this seem like the missing piece to his puzzle.
 
borghe said:
This is 100% incorrect. During fable has was/is DIRECTLY working on B&W2 and The Movies. He only served as company figurehead for Fable.
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No sorry borghe what you say is 100% incorrect. Project Ego was an idea of Dene and Simon Carter and Peter Molyneux, all three of them worked together on the original Dungeon Keeper too. All of them took an active role in the development and design of Fable, I can assure you that Molyneux was very deep into Fable, and even more in its final year of development.

And to stay on topic: I am myself curious to see what game might come out of his brain for the Revolution... :)
 
SamVT said:
No sorry borghe what you say is 100% incorrect. Project Ego was an idea of Dene and Simon Carter and Peter Molyneux, all three of them worked together on the original Dungeon Keeper too. All of them took an active role in the development and design of Fable, I can assure you that Molyneux was very deep into Fable, and even more in its final year of development.

And to stay on topic: I am myself curious to see what game might come out of his brain for the Revolution... :)
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project ego != Fable, at least in its final form.

As with most Bullfrog.. err.. Lionhead Projects, the scope of the original idea was vastly beyond the final product. While Peter was heavily involved in the design of Project Ego, by the time the development matured into what is now Fable, as was said, he was already into development of B&W2 and The Movies, both of which he is directly in charge of.

To say that Fable is the result of Molyneux is like saying Superman Returns is the result of Kevin Smith or Tim Burton. He had hands in the project a long time ago but the final result holds little sembelance to that original idea.
 
Some of you Molynuex doubters really need to play Black and White 2, I cant play simcity4 any more because the city building in B&W2 is SO intuitive, dragging out roads and buildings from existing ones seems like such a simple improvement but it just makes everything so effortless.

The only thing that lets it down is the enemy AI, but if you get into the city building, you wont give a shit about what the enemy is doing anyway :lol
 
http://www.gamespy.com/company/027/027655.html

Founded in 1999 by Simon Carter, Dene Carter, and Ian Lovett, Big Blue Box is the first of Lionhead Studios' satellite development studios. Although Big Blue Box is an entirely autonomous entity, the developer receives full support of Lionhead, which includes amongst others the talents of Peter Molyneux and Steve Jackson. The company is based near Guildford in the UK.
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And finally, just hit the BBB forums as has ALSO been said and look at all the devs mention that Molyneux basically had very little to do with the game.

The only REAL Molyneux game to be released since B&W is B&W2. Use THAT as your gauge, not Fable.
 
Ghost said:
Some of you Molynuex doubters really need to play Black and White 2, I cant play simcity4 any more because the city building in B&W2 is SO intuitive, dragging out roads and buildings from existing ones seems like such a simple improvement but it just makes everything so effortless.

The only thing that lets it down is the enemy AI, but if you get into the city building, you wont give a shit about what the enemy is doing anyway :lol
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I know exactly what you mean, I keep on clicking on roads in Simcity 4 to draw them out. Hehehhee...

And like I said, I've spend many days, nights and weekends at playthrough sessions of Fable with both Dene Carter and Peter Molyneux always there, and everyone else who was supposed to be at these 'meetings'. The Fable video interview at Kikizo is a must see if you're unclear about the development of Fable.
 
Ghost said:
Some of you Molynuex doubters really need to play Black and White 2, I cant play simcity4 any more because the city building in B&W2 is SO intuitive, dragging out roads and buildings from existing ones seems like such a simple improvement but it just makes everything so effortless.
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It's brilliant, it really is.

As was Fable: TLC (played it on PC). Loading times were short, the quests were cool, the choice good/bad was cool...

Didn't enjoy a game so much for quite a while.

I can only hope Molyneux goes developing for Revolution, would be awesome :)
 
I've watched the video and I've seen Molyneux talk in other places like that, but from other BBB devs' postings, having read how deeply into B&W2 and The Movies he was/is, and understanding basic PR, I just have never for a second believed that he was involved heavily with it, and comments from within the company have supported that.

but anyway, it doesn't matter. the point of this is that even taking fable AND B&W into account, the guy's track record is still a winning season. The fact that fable and b&w were both scaled back from his original tremendous visions doesn't make him any less of a creative guy. B&W2 is a perfect testament to what you get when you have a team of developers that can adequately bring his ideas to life, and I guarantee The Movies will be even better.

Give him RevCon and I can't stop imagining what we might see.
 
soundwave05 said:
Didn't hear you guys complaining when Fable came out.

All he's saying is something that should be obvious to anyone with half a brain -- Revolution is the first console controller that allows for manipulation of a game pad in 3D space, that will naturually open up new possibilities for basically every developer.

That's why every developer who's actually gotten a chance to use it has said Great things about it.
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That pretty much the damn bottom line. Hell even Team Ninja had to admit how awsome the Rev-con was. Yet the second we get someone like Mark Reign who has never held the Rev-con saying something negative, we get a 6 page topic about how he's preachin the gospel and totally ignoring the overwhelming praise from those who have used it.
 
I felt really bad for molyneaux when he was forced to admit he maybe over-egged things with enthusiasm in the run up to releasing Fable... at the end of the day its still good and lots of people loved it. He really sounds like a clued up guy, and I love the way he rambles on about his dreams of emergent gameplay and stuff. And I thought it was pretty funny that this guy who has dabbled in all sorts of fantasy things, god sims and what not wants to make a football game and thinks they've been essentially the same thing for two decades. Thats pretty wild. The guy cares about games, and I've gotta admire that.

And of course, its good to hear he's as pumped as I am for the wand possiblities.
 
I think PM and Nintendo would be a great fit together. He might have not lived up to the hype with his last couple of games but he is definitely an ideas man. I'd love to see what he comes up with for using the controller.
 
koam said:
Has Peter EVER said a single sentence in his life without adding "I mean" or/and "you know" in it?
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PM: Well, I mean, you know, absolutely. It, it's so exciting to actually, for the first time, feel that you can move something in a 3D space. I mean, you gotta remember Jeff, that, the controllers that we're currently using on the other consoles, really have their origin in platform games. They have no sympathy for moving around in a you know, a 3D world, and that's what makes Revolution so exciting. Yeah, I would love to be doing something for it.
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yes, he did.

Also, if he knows more than we do, could 'feel that you can move something in a 3D space' mean something? ;)
 
When I get drunk, its usually when I'm out with friends having a good time.

I guess for you its...bumping old Revolution topics?

Thats a great idea! Revolution comes packaged with hard meths to drink before hand. No matter what the fuck blur you see on screen, you WILL say "wow".
 
Founding Blugfrog, creating/designing/helping: Populous, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Syndicate (one of my favorite games, ever) and Dungeon Keeper (he didn´t were in Bullfrog with the second part), all that alone is more than enough to give this man the biggest respect. If he wants to try to get his games as far as possible, I don´t why is bad he wants to talk about it.

And B&W 2 rocks, IMO of course.
 
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