1. Secret: Nope, we are having no secret achievements, none, nada, zero, zip. We have been told by a reliable source that games with secret achievements actually sell less copies as people like to check them out before a purchase. This is a pity as I (and most on the deb team) wanted the whole achievement system handled in game with ALL of them secret, and that by talking to villagers and finding things around the world, the achievements get revealed. Oh well, it's a pity all you guys are such achievement whores!
2. Story: There have to be a number of achievements set aside for reaching certain points through the story, so these are taken as read.
3. Combat: Obviously combat plays a major part in Fable, and therefore there are a number of achievements based on the player fighting bad men and monsters. However we have tried to steer away from grinds like ‘kill 100 Hobbes’ or ‘Butcher 100 villagers’ and focus more rewarding players who use all the aspects of combat. Therefore there will be rewards for doing ‘cool stuff’ in the 3 realms of combat and overall combat achievements.
4. Simulation: Every player will play the story in Fable 2, but we don’t know how many people will go and explore the huge simulation the game has, and that’s why we have put a decent number in that cover it. These achievements are planned to encourage the player to do all the fun things in Fable 2 that they might otherwise miss, the mantra is ‘getting achievements should be fun’ not a grind.
5. Collectors: Of course, some of you out there are completionists and there will be a number of achievements based on collecting various sets of things around the world. This also pushes players to explore all the dark recesses of every dungeon and level, and again, shouldn’t be actually repetitive.
6. Stupid: How can we have a Fable game without taking something and making it funny, well, at least we think they are funny. Some of these are a little close to the bone, so MS US might give us a poke and say ‘nope you can’t have that in’.
7. Morality: Some of us noticed something interesting when playing Mass Effect, as we knew there was an achievement for being
or
, some of us changed our decisions because we wanted achievement points. This was really bad as it meant the 'hero' was less about our decisions and more about getting points in game. Fortunately, unlike Mass Effect, Fable has an infinite number of
and
points lying around (as well as the other scale...Hmm, don't know if you know about that yet, think I mentioned it in my feartheboot blog) so hopefully people will play however they want, rather than push to an achievement. Which comes to a question, what do you think? Do you want something outside of the game (usually called a 'meta' game mechanic) influencing the way you play the game, does it spoil it for you? This is one of the categories I am split down the middle of keeping at the moment.
