14 DAY TRIAL // Peter Molyneux definitely knows how to make his voice heard, especially when he's talking about his games, the latest one being the Xbox 360 exclusive RPG (Role Playing Game), Fable II. The game emphasizes the wide variety of choices given to the player and how each and every one of them will affect his character.
He has just talked about his recently launched title and compared it to a very successful RPG, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. For those of you who don't know, Oblivion was one of the most popular RPGs and it is still among a lot of gamers’ top choices. Bethesda's title offered a massive amount of gameplay and gave players the chance to explore a wide environment in which to undertake various quests.
"Well, Oblivion was a fantastic achievement. But for me, that was a true 'blood and guts' RPG. There was an initial dungeon that you went through that was fantastic — but then you came out into that open world, and I just thought: 'What the hell do you do now? Where do you go? Who am I? What do I stand for? Who am I against?'" Molyneux said.
"And there was this huge, vast rolling story. And to finish Oblivion would take sixty or seventy hours. Now for me, as a designer, if I hear 'sixty or seventy hours', then in my mind that is the equivalent of giving me a book that is twenty thousand pages long. And if I said to you, here's a fantastic book, go and read that... Are you likely to finish a twenty thousand page book? No." he added.
He definitely has a good point, because, although Oblivion was a top notch game, many gamers didn't have the time or got really bored and never finished it. Here's how Molyneux thinks Fable II will handle. "So in Fable 2, the story lasts thirteen to fourteen hours and by the end of that story what you are like, what you look like and how the world treats you is completely up to you. If you want to be evil or good or kind or cruel, then that's totally up to you. With Oblivion it was basically all about me killing things."
Well one thing's for sure – we should wait a bit more to see how the game handles in terms of sales and then see if it really offers players a worthwhile experience.