14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, Peter Molyneux announced that there was a big Fable III announcement coming our way, and it was one that would aggravate a lot of gamers. The day of Fable III announcements came and went, and, while several game details were revealed, it's hard to see which one of them is the controversial one that Molyneux spoke of. At Microsoft's X10 conference in San Francisco, Lionhead's boss revealed that the third installment in the Fable saga would feature plenty of gore and violence, but also that the energy bar had been removed, giving the title an almost nonexistent HUD.
Another thing the game received was the "touch" system that was meant to act like the evolved form of Fable II's expression mechanic. Now, we'll be able to hold hands and hug video-game characters, but, fortunately, we can also use it in some more useful ways, like "dragging" unwilling victims to our lair, where they will suffer unspeakable horrors at the hands that they didn't want to shake earlier.
As for the violence part, Molyneux said that it was necessary to implement it in order to give a more realistic feel to those of us that chose to develop our character as an evil-doer. Talking to CVG, he said that, "Violence is part of the combat. We spent a long time thinking of the teen audience, and we decided [ensuring Fable III would be available to teens] was a very hard goal to aim for, if the game was to have any sense of freedom to it." Molyneux further added that, "It's very simple: We listened to the Fable community. We found the more evil players wanted more gore and the 'good' players didn't. They can make their own choices – and their weapon is aligned to that."
Evil Fable III players will also get to experience other details, as those who chose to slay the innocent will brandish a weapon that reflects their moral compass. These weapons won't act as organic projections of out black, festering hearts, changing their shape to a visceral one, but will simply have blood dripping from them. Because, obviously, this could only happen when they will kill the innocent, since we all know that there's no blood flowing through the veins of evil men that could stain our blade. Maybe good characters in Fable III will have hot fudge and honey-dripping weapons.