Peter Molyneux Talks Next-Gen Combat and Wii 57
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the Games Convention Developer Conference in Leipzig, Peter Molyneux gave attendees a sense of what he believes the future of combat in games will be like, some of which he is trying to get his team to include in Fable 2. He also showed videos of some prototypes based on his concepts. Later in his presentation, he responded to a user's question about Nintendo's Wii, saying that he's not sold on motion-sensing controllers."
Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conflict of Interest (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think it's actually a bit more complicated than that. Obviously, Microsoft is a competitor to Nintendo. Which means that the employees (many of which worked very hard on bringing the 360 to life) are going to hold personal pride in that machine, even to some detriment of their objective judgement.
Most likely, the environment at Microsoft is one of extreme pride toward the 360, and a general belief that the system is superior to all others. Being that Peter is now imm
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I think the Wii will have plenty of fun games, but they're not going to be like the 'traditional' video games. It'll be a blast to swing a sword at enemies. Can you imagine a fencing game? That'd be AMAZING fun! Or how about a gamewhere you're the conductor for an orchestra? I can see that being quite enjoyable. A baseball game would actually be FUN, instead of "Who can time the button presses better".
But you know what? I can't fence for
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The market seems to have a different opinion.
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NO! He's saying that dance mats aren't a good replacement for the controls in every type of game. Read his comment again. Disagree by all means, but you shouldn't have been able to mangle the message that badly.
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I disagree with your sentiment. You asked "how many games outside of arcade use lightguns" to which the obvious answer is basically "none" This is an unfair question though because rail shooters and first person shooters aren't the same thing. The reason why there are no FPS games that support lightguns is spread between the design and the economics of development.
#1 every lightgun game that I know of is designed as a rail shooter, you don't (or have VERY limited) control the game. With that in mind a reg
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Bushido Blade... (Score:2)
The environment wasn't very interactive, but it was also a PS1 game.
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Think of it. You battle your brother in law for who gets to/has to host Thanksgiving that year. The one who wins, is the one who kept his head! Just don't let Jack Thompson get ahold of this.
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That game needed a
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The weapons were great, at one point we picked the two weakest characters and the two heaviest hammers, after what must have been an hour long fight neither character could stand or had enough strenght to land a killing blow on the other.
T
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Off-key (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not gonna touch the obvious joke about pr0n here.
But if I've learned anything while playing videogames with friends over the decades, it's that people often look like idiots while playing, and it doesn't lessen their enjoyment.
And if I've learned anything about repetitive physical exercise, it's that the more often you do it, the less tiring it becomes... you know, cardiovascular and muscular conditioning?
Molyneaux works for MS. And while some of his past work has been great, I think he's a bit ff-key and I of course, as others have pointed out, have to question his motives.
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As for Molyneaux, I could give a rats ass. B&W2 blew, Fable sucked, B&W had some neat ideas but was ultimately just dull. Why exactly is it this guy get's fawned over?
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I think it's mostly because of his past with Bullfrog. Syndicate, Syndicate Wars, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Populous. Molyneaux was the designer of Bullfrog's games, and they are arguably some of the better (if not best) games created during the MS-DOS era of gaming. I know Dungeon Keeper was one of my favorites, and Syndicate Wars was pretty damn cool, too. After Bullfrog died and he founded Lionhead, and after the huge disappointment (for me, anyway) of Black & White, I stopped following their games
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I have a similar reaction to people walking down the street while talking on a cell phone. They always remind me of something out of a George Romero movie, particularly if there is a whole crowd of them.
Maybe I wouldn't have such a negative reaction if any of them was actually talking about anything that was important enough to warrant an email, much less a phone call.
-Eric
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Something else to mention is that a lot of these games will have you standing up now and then, just because you either need to for an action (like in certain WarioWare minigames), or because you're getting into what you're doing on screen.
It's been stated time and again (including articles on Slashdot) that you become tired more
I RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Later,
Towards the end of Molyneux's talk, he made it clear that this panel was not a thinly veiled way of promoting the combat in one of his company's upcoming games, though these are naturally ideas he and his team are considering. "A lot of what I've talked about here will never make it into any game, but maybe some of it will," he said. We expect to see Fable 2 at Microsoft's X06 event next month, and we'll be on the lookout to see how much, if any, of the ideas in today's talk make it into that game.
It doesn't sound to me like he's saying anything about what is going into Fable 2. Rather, the author seems to be trying to mention Fable 2 as much as he can, despite the panel not having any information at all about the game. This was simply a talk from Molyneux about what would be cool to incorporate into a game, not what is feasible or what will go into any games he might be designing.
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Who cares? (Score:1)
Pretty gimmicky (Score:5, Insightful)
I base this on history: The canonical example in my mind is the megazoom in Black and White from an apple with a worm in it out to the full island view. Cute, but in-game, there was nothing else with the level of detail of that worm, other than that apple. The video, hyped as a promise of things to come, was actually the complete set of cool actions you could take. Molyneux seems to keep giving us that.
Honestly, combat is the one thing that modern action-based video games do tolerably well at; it's the other aspects of the game I'd like to see improved first. (Note that I really do mean "tolerably well"; it's not perfect, but the fact that it has been the primary focus of gaming for nigh unto these many years shows, and the near-complete lack of attention paid to anything else but graphics also shows.)
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I can't wait till Slashdot updates its quotes (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you just love quotes taken out of context?
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Its been a while... (Score:1, Insightful)
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Dying is a negative concept, reenforcing the idea that the gamer has "failed," which some might find disturbing.
We prefer the term "value added rebirth."
KFG
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All talk, no action (Score:5, Insightful)
The fighing especially was a horror. Every single weapon handled exactly the same making no difference except for the stats.
So talk all about how fighting in games is going to be in the future but when your own game is a throwback to the 1980 were the only difference between types of blades is their stats then don't expect me too be too impressed.
Yes better fighting would be much appreciated but don't talk about it, do it. He already talked enough about what Fable was going to be like. Why are we still listening to him doing it all over again with Fable 2?
It ain't the first time. Remember Dungeon Keeper? Remember Black & White. Both games wich in their first incarnation were more hype then delivery. Both times admitted by the guy and both times the press drooled all over it and then the sequel only barely admitting that their drooling over the original was a bit too much. I for one am not going to be fooled anymore.
The gaming press just can't be relied upon to be objective when it comes to this guy. With 3 games so far that completly failed to live up to the hype why is this guy still hailed as some kind of gamer god?
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I will be the first to admit that Fable wasn't the game it was touted to be. But, if one takes the game solely for what was in it, and ignore the hype, I thought it was rather good. It may not have had the best main quest, or have been the longest game, but it had character. That was a game where I could sit down for an hour, pillage towns, have sex with wives and generally just cause general mayhem and have fun with it. It was the statistics that kept track of your farthest chicken punt, how many beers you
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Molyneux vs Miyamoto? (Score:2)
Totally OT, but I once ran into Peter Molyneux at an E3 party in Atlanta. He was wandering around with a drink in his hand, looking annoyed because nobody wanted to talk to him. Kind of amusing to watch.
I for one, will not be buying (Score:1)
Re:I for one, will not be buying (Score:1)
Hooray! (Score:2)
Molyneux wants Dragon's Lair back. (Score:2)