IGTV: Peter Molyneux Interview

24 Feb 2010 at 14:10:38 by

At this year's X10 event, IncGamers managed to track down game journalists' holy grail, Peter Molyneux, in the hope that the Lionhead man might give us one of his famous accidental reveals. So do you want to know the Project Natal launch line-up, the storyline to Fable IV and when we can expect to see a Syndicate reboot? Well, you've come to the wrong place because he didn't tell us any of those things. For some new Fable III info and an intriguing snippet about Milo, though, read on.

The press release promises an unprecedented action-adventure experience. What can you tell us now about Fable III?

Peter Molyneux: It's all about power, man. As a game designer I want you to feel powerful. I always ask myself – how can I make you feel powerful? And yeah, it's about fighting, and weapons, and combat; we've got that in spades. But maybe I can use the story to make you feel powerful. So here's the big thing in Fable III: part of the game is about building up people to believe in you to take on this tyrannical leader and overthrow him, and then the other part of the game is what it feels like to be king or queen. What would your kingdom be like, man? Would it be a place where no-one starved and everyone was happy? You'd find, perhaps, that with power comes great responsibility. So you mix all that with all the stuff that you've seen in Fable before, some new mechanics like the ability to touch, the ability to craft; it's simpler, more accessible than ever before. More dramatic. It's certainly different to what you thought Fable was.

Talking about the new mechanics and new technology, what's changed? Do you expect a strong reaction? What's your most controversial change?

PM: I think the biggest change... I was inspired by one single thing. It kept rolling over in my mind. Half the people who played Fable II only used half of the features of the game. I thought, “That's just wrong, man!” So when we came to think about things like health bars, experience, levelling up, we thought “It's not working properly. People don't really understand it. Let's just throw health bars away, redefine what experience is, put levelling up into the playing of the game.” Which are fundamental cornerstones of the RPG genre, and that might upset people, but actually, when you get your hands on it and feel it, you can feel how accessible that is.

You've talked about getting hands-on, but what about hands-off? Talk to me about Project Natal. Will it be used in the game? How do you see the potential for it?

PM: As someone who is a designer and someone who's not very diplomatic, I would love to tell you absolutely everything I can about Project Natal, but obviously I have to be diplomatic. I would say Fable III is a controller-based game for sure. As a designer I love Natal; I love the uniqueness and the freshness that it brings to gaming experiences, and as a designer I would love some of that freshness in something like Fable - but maybe not require you to have it.

How do you see Project Natal changing gaming, though? What's the potential for this?

PM: Again, purely as a designer, it makes the industry and designers really think differently about experiences. And that's what you have, you know. When you have a new invention it changes a lot of things, and that's the greatest thing about something like Natal. With me as a designer, it forces me not to just make another action-adventure game, or another role-playing game. It forces me to think about making completely new experiences.

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