Lionhead's community manager Sam Van Tilburg brings us some good news today -- the online cooperative multiplayer patch for Fable II will be available on day one.
That means when you pop your copy of Fable II into your Xbox 360 tomorrow, the game will prompt you for an auto-update which will allow you to explore the world of Albion with your friends ... online!
Speaking with me at Tokyo Game Show, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux was confident a patch would be available at launch, telling me that it was "looking fantastically good for that day one patch."
"This is something we've been doing for years on the PC," he continues. "We always do a day one patch on the PC."
Despite the fact that patches for console titles are becoming the norm, it seems some console gamers still aren't used to them.
"They think there's something disastrous that's gone wrong," said Molyneux, agreeing with me. "But for us, it's just something we do. They're going to have to go online anyway, [so] what's the issue? Then of course, the announcement [of the patch] is made and it's like the sky has fallen in!"
No falling sky here; the patch is arriving to save the day. Fable II will be available in stores tomorrow, October 21.
Contest:
9:45 AM on 10.20.2008
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I dont understand why people are so against patches. Take away the ability to patch games, and all of a sudden big gameplay features like this, that are scrapped due to time constraints, are gone for good. Im certainly not defending the publishers and devs that just throw out a buggy game that needs a patch to be playable; just saying that when done right, patches are nothing but good.
The first reviews are saying that it offers all the things the first promised. I'm pretty excited.
That was ridiculously buggy. At one point my boyfriend couldn't interact with any NPCs until I exited the game.
Also, while in co-op we had little to no control over the camera which was incredibly frustrating when he would wander ahead and the camera would pan in such a way as to trap me behind a turn in a caver or something an make me entirely unable to move. I think they foresaw this problem, as they included a handy teleport button for the second player.
Also, the gold-splitting is a little skewed. Say one person goes adventuring and picks up some gear or gems or what-not. Second person joins in, and is now earning 50% of your gold and experience. Fine. You can even set what percentage gold/xp you share.
But-- say you sell that gear from earlier in a shop. Your buddie there STILL gets that percentage of your gold.
A simple oversight, perhaps?
I'm wondering if the xp split still takes effect when you sell back skills, too?
And, as Golden Avatar stated, there isn't much action. One person is plenty when all you're going up against is a few beetles or hobbes. Even later in the game there's not a big onslaught of enemies. Perhaps if they had increased the enemies when another player is there.... hmm.
All that aside, the game is still awesome. But it's not all that different from the first Fable.
This is great news as well. I was upset when I heard that it might not make it for day one.
Oh wait...
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