Molyneux Talks Fable 2

Eurogamer has some details from a discussion with Peter Molyneux, on the upcoming Fable 2 and the as-yet-unnamed 'Project Dmitri.' The site comments on Molyneux's obvious enthusiasm for his work, and manages to get a few tidbits of information from the designer on these in-production titles. From the article: "I think it's exactly what Lionhead stands for - it's uniqueness, it's originality and it's taking something and doing something with it that no-one's done before. And that's really what the core of what the whole of Fable is. Fable 2 should be everything you expect, then 10 times more that you don't expect — and that doesn't just apply to this one feature ... I almost said it then! — that applies to the whole game."

The Molyneux Curse

[spyrochaete]

I just hope Fable 2 breaks the Molyneux curse. His games always have a fantastic premise and are executed quite well, but always have one or two fundamental flaws that are difficult to ignore.

• Theme Park was a blast but NPC pathfinding was weak so areas of your park would get trashy and puke-riddin, and guests would get lost behind fences.
• Black and White had awesome potential as a "hands-on" (pun intended) god game with a cool creature that developed a unique personality, but the game lost its sandbox appeal in lieu of an average RTS with a counter-intuitive interface for that genre.
• Fable (for PC) was very pretty, had great voice acting and tons of personality, but was short and basically a world full of several simplistic minigames.
• The Movies was a surprisingly fun tycoon game and making your own movie was really nifty and amusing, but there just weren't enough scene emotes and the post-production editing suite was too bubbly and dumbed-down.

I'll definitely check out Fable 2 but I just can't look forward to Molyneux's games with the same starry-eyed enthusiasm anymore. His games are wonderful the first time around, but unfortunately when you go back for a replay the first thing you notice is the most annoying bug you encountered last time.

Regardless, Molyneux is a risktaker and an innovator and the gaming world has a lot to thank him for. It's tough to do something right the first time around, and many successors have built empires atop his various foundations over the past couple of decades.