Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux may be a bit of a hype machine at times, but he’s certainly got some smart ideas. As part of his plan to make games “talk” to each other, it has been revealed that not one, not two, but three upcoming XBLA games will be compatible with Fable 2 — as money won in the former can be transferred as funds in the latter.
“The idea is this,” Molyneux explains. “Carbonated Games, part of Microsoft, have made some great casual games, Arcade titles. They have got three titles, one call Keystone, one called Wizard’s Tower and one called Mage Dice. Why not make those what we call ‘Fable-compatible’? And that means that when you play those [semi-gambling] games, when you win, you win Fable gold, and you can transfer that Fable gold to Fable when you buy Fable. If you’ve already got Fable, the money will transfer automatically. If you’ve yet to buy Fable then your balance will be transferred. That’s cool.”
He said Fable way too many times in that explanation.
Molyneux also wants to add some spice by using the achievement system to dangle carrots over the heads of gamers. He promises a “tough ride” and hints that achievement points would be tied to the game’s new morality scales — purity and corruption. “Pure good, being the purest and most noble of individuals, is all to do with sacrifice,” Molyneux suggested. “How much are you willing to sacrifice to be good?”
What exactly does Peter mean by that? He talks of pushing the player, to have them make “sacrifices” for achievement points. Sounds like there are some tough decisions to be made in Fable 2, and hopefully this will lead to a game far more engaging than the original, which I felt fell short of its ambitions. We shall have to wait and see exactly how deep this game runs.
