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What would your game be?

xxNick

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This post is only somewhat related to a hypothetical Fable IV or Fable in general. The relation is that I am going to talk about what kind of game I would absolutely love to spend roughly a thousand hours playing before getting tired of it the first time, and how none of the Fable games are even remotely that game I want.

In the game I want, there will be:

A world and setting greater than that present in the game.
In Fable, you're in Albion. There is almost nothing beyond Albion in any of the games nor any reason to believe there will be anything beyond Albion in any future games connected to the franchise.
In, say, any TES game, you're in Morrowind, or you're in Skyrim, or you're in some other country, some other kingdom, some other unique land with unique peoples with their unique customs, unique creatures, and unique stories.

A story beyond the player.
In Fable, the world revolves around the player. Any Fable game, you're the most important thing in the world. And the villagers will be quick to remind you, perhaps you're needed at Orchard Farm, Darkwood's a dangerous place, stop screwing around on go on the very short quests because if you don't everyone will continue to remind you to go do whatever is next in the gameflow because they have nothing more important to do.

In any TES game (I'll be using them as a comparison quite a bit in this post), Skyrim especially, you're not the best thing since sliced bread. Sure, I'd really like to spend my time to listen to how you're going to save us all from impending doom and such but I have a civil war to fight, I have a guild that's falling apart, I have a city that has been brought to the brink of complete ruin and it may or may not be connected to those creepy wizards up the bridge, your struggle against the world-eater just isn't that important to me in comparison. Countless events happened before your arrival and countless more will happen long after you're gone, so for the time being everyone's problems are going to be bigger than yours. That isn't meant to make you feel insignificant, that's to make you feel immersed and not like you're the only thing in the world that matters.

Non-interchangeable, irreplaceable, unique NPCs.
In Fable: TLC, there are about 200000 possible unique model/texture combinations of generic female villagers. Not counting Snowspire villagers, apprentices, or any special or unique villagers like the witch, tailor, barber, none of that. Just the very basic, typical, unimportant female villager. That does not account for eye color (of which there are about 10), teeth texture (of which there are about 6), or skeletal morphs (of which there are about 5, which can be used alongside each other so make it like 30). Yet there are maybe a hundred of such NPCs, tops, and many of them look very much like their neighbors. Why? The same is true of male villagers, bandits, and still true of hobbes and undead but no one really looks at them that closely anyway. The point is, no two NPCs, friendly or otherwise, should look alike. When you have that much possible variety (excluding apprentices and Snowspire villagers since there's not a whole lot going on with them), you shouldn't be able to come across the same NPC twice. Hey look, there's my wife. Wait, that's not her, she just looks and sounds exactly like her. It's also possible to give every single NPC a name, names that change from one game to the next, and it is also possible to have them respawn with different names and appearances should they die. Of course I'd prefer it if, when they died, they'd just stay dead. All of this is very easy and possible to do which begs the question, why didn't they? It would have taken a little effort, god forbid they strain a finger lifting it to do something good for one of their games.

Morrowind and Oblivion are guilty of this too. Skyrim takes long and effective strides to remedy this. You might bump into a couple NPCs who look and/or sound the same, but you can still tell that they are two very different NPCs, who have different backgrounds, come from different places in Skyrim, have different opinions. And when they die, they stay dead. Molyneux had spoken to great lengths about how he wanted people to feel an emotional bond with characters but it's just not there in Fable. In Skyrim, I felt really sad when some of the more important characters died. Even the bad guys like the villain in the overall Thieves Guild quest arc, or the villain in the Dawnguard DLC. My mind was blown, I pitied those guys, I said a quick prayer for them before looting their corpses and leaving them to rest eternally and get eaten by worms. There was a significant emotional response that I never got playing any of the Fable games, which is a good segue to this next one...

Real motivation.
So bandits came and killed my self-righteous father and my annoying know-it-all sister. I'll mail them a thank you card. So my elder brother is a treacherous, overbearing, totalitarian, maniacal murderous insane madman sitting on the throne. And? I'm supposed to rebel against a person who I may end up being a mirror image of or the exact opposite? That's a lot of work for who cares? I want to say that Fable 2 does a much, much better job of this. Getting shot in the head out a window falling all that way and left for dead in a cold winter night after witnessing the murder of my sister would have me up in arms too, if I cared about my sister. Still, points for legitimately making me want to do something besides turn off the game. Minus points for having a bird crap on my head.

Other games have a hard time with this too. In Morrowind, motivation comes from following the story. Even then, it's only because if I don't do it, sleepers will try to kill me. If I go to sleep, there's a chance I'll wake up to "you heard a noise behind you" which made me jump back the very first time it happened. I was scared when that happened. Then there were the dreams and stuff, and in following the story I became more interested in playing. Before that, it was like "go see this guy in this place" but nothing happens if you don't, so, why go?

In Oblivion it was a little more direct. You stumble across the assassination of a king by happenstance and you maybe decide to follow through on an old man's last wishes, after you realize you can't sell the amulet. In Skyrim, that's a real attention getter. About to have your head chopped off and boom, dragons. Oh, by the way, civil war stuff. Very interesting right from the get go. No personal motivation, mind you, but those are storylines you can jump right into.

Breaking away from TES games for once, Dungeon Siege II, the initial motivation is stay alive and goes to revenge after being betrayed. Kind of typical. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, well, aren't you a unique one. Most people stay dead after dying but no, you have to be special, guess you should go find out why because apparently that makes you very important to a lot of people. Dragon Age: Origins, what's cool about this one is that there are a number of different motivations at the start but in the end it comes down to staying alive and going for revenge. Again, typical, it plays a lot like Dungeon Siege II anyway, so it's only natural that it bear other similarities. Zelda. All the Zelda games have different motivations. Some are good, some not so much. Motivation is hard to do right, some people can do it in really amazing ways. For example, Tales of Phantasia on SNES. Both heroes and villains are trapped to their roles. Either the heroes prevail, or everyone and everything in their time and in the past is gone. Whereas the villain must succeed or him and his people are equally doomed to death. No one's really good or bad here, everyone's just trying to live and save their people. That's my favorite, yours of course may vary.

But enough about story and setting and characters and junk, let's get to the meat of the game.

Balance.
Okay, so this isn't the meat of the game. Let's say it's the bone. Spine even. In Fable, Fable: TLC, Fable II, Fable III, there is no balance. There's not even a real order to anything. I don't just mean difficulty, I mean tiers of weapons and armor in terms of availability and prices and damage/armor ratings. I mean in tiers of enemies and the weapons they use and how difficult or, in this case, not difficult they are to dispatch. I mean in tiers of wealth and important items being so freely available that the biggest risk on your life is choking on gold and health potions. I'll go over all the finer details and throw the comparisons in those. Lionhead has made it tradition to take systems and mechanics that need improvement, and either removing the good parts about them or just replacing them as a whole with something that is worse. Ask Yahtzee, ask Angry Joe. Each succession in Fable titles grows worse and worse, and when you think they can't possibly make it even more awful, trust me, they're going to. There will be so many people disappointed with Legends. But I digress. Let's continue, shall we?

Real combat.
Why is combat bad in Fable? I don't know. Maybe because it's extremely easy, unbalanced to the point of being broken, you can just waltz through the start of the game to the end completely untouchable if you have area of effect spells and/or physical shield and enough mana potions. Or, if you don't mind getting swiped once or twice, don't even use those. Just close your eyes, swing your sword and if you get hit, chug a health potion, though I doubt you'll ever need to. But let's say you completely suck at the game, don't worry, there is a resurrection potion that'll bring you back good as new. This is then worsened in Fable 2, where you literally cannot die at all. Even if you could, I doubt anyone ever would, because now combat is even easier and you can do it with one button. In Fable 3, the custom of turning bad to worse continues, the one-button combat is so ridiculously simple that a one-handed gamer, with a grand total of four fingers and one thumb, said on the Lionhead forums (before they took them down and put up what they have now) that the combat is too easy. Insultingly so. It's a dumbing down. Let's just take out all the monsters, replace blood with blue ooze, turn the swords into wiffle bats and market this crap to children under the age of 5 because apparently that's who it's being made for.

I'm supposed to mention a game here that does this better in some way, but my mind explodes at the notion that there are any games that aren't. Basically anything with any kind of mechanics whatsoever, or where strategy is involved, or, well, hell anything is better. I saw a kid outside yesterday who was using a stick to duel a stop sign and that combat was better and more interesting than the combat in Fable 3. Probably more challenging too.

Real combat mechanics.
This is a hard subject for me, because it causes severe frothing at the mouth for me. What they've done is absolutely horrid and should be considered criminal.

Let me start this one with what good combat mechanics are. First you have armors and weapons. With weapons, you need variety. You need different types of both melee and ranged weapons, light and heavy, with different ranges, speeds, damages, and type- and class-specific buffs/nerfs. You need an augmenting/enchanting system. With armor, you need variety. You need different weights and classes from not technically armor but more like clothing to massively heavy armor, again with class-specific buffs and nerfs. And again, you need an augmenting/enchanting system. The goal being that there is no one ultimate weapon or ultimate armor. Different stuff is good at different stuff. If you're going to be facing a lot of melee damage, wear armor that is effective against melee attacks. If you're fighting fire-breathing dragons, wear armor that is effective against fire-based attacks and avoid wearing flammable stuff. If you're fighting werewolves, use weapons with a silver augment. The idea is strengths and weaknesses. If you've played pokemans, you already know how this goes.

Now. Fable: TLC's armor and armor mechanics. There is actually a system in there already to make different armors more or less effective than other armors against different things. For an example, let's start with the armor everyone ends up wearing, the Archon armor set. In the battle with Maze when he's using force push, the armor is just as effective as being completely naked, in regards to taking the force push damage. The will user's outfit blocks 40% of the damage from force push, as well as explosions, fire, lightning and drain life. But, since the Archon armor provides twice as much armor, there's no benefit to wearing the will user's outfit instead of the Archon armor. Chainmail is the most effective armor for absorbing ranged attacks, blocking 5% more than Archon armor and 10% more than plate armor, but those armors block more damage overall than is additionally blocked by the chainmail. So why wear chainmail? Chain, plate and Archon armors are all weak to lightning based attacks, let's set aside that I can't think of a single instance besides in the Thunder fight where the player faces off against lightning. Those armors take 20% more lightning damage than leather, 60% more lightning damage than the will user outfit, and 10% more lightning damage than everything else, yet it's still more beneficial to wear the Archon armor. That kills any reason to wear anything else. The same system allows for augmented weapons to do different damages to the player's armors. So how much of this is used? None. None at all. Those bandit fire crossbows? They'd do the same damage to you without that augment. Wasted opportunity.

Same system also provides for the same kind of thing for enemies, it's worth noting that in most cases ranged weapons are more effective than melee except against Thunder and bandits. This is especially noticeable when shooting any kind of troll in the head, then swinging your sword at his feet. It's all over the place in a nonsensical manner. Just skipping that half of it, let's go to augments. There are very few instances where it would be less beneficial to use three sharpening augments on a master weapon than any other augment. Those are: Balverine, use silver, especially against white balverines for six times the damage; wasp, fire augment, two times the damage; hobbes, hobbe killer augment (unavailable without modding), 175% damage. Screamers, that's a tricky one. You definitely want to use an augment - any of the five basic kinds will net you five times as much damage. But if you use three sharpening augments (they stack with each other as well), you'll deal 660.5% damage. Now if only they had a whole lot of health and armor, then it'd really matter. But you can kill them in droves much easier with force push so why bother? Now, I said it'd be more effective to use three sharpening augments. Not really. Just use the legendary broadswords, or Sword of Aeons/Avo's Tear. They deal more damage anyway and get you other bonuses.

So now you're using the same weapons and same armor. Why bother with anything else? There's no reason to. This is a sign of broken combat.

So, how did they fix it in Fable 2? They cut half of it out by doing away with armor and armor mechanics entirely. Don't fix it, just dike it. A+ for non-creative solutions, Lionhead. F for effort. And the weapons? I wish I could say they improved it. And I would, too, but they didn't. Never mind that every weapon is basically the same weapon, and never mind the gun argument. This is beyond the gun argument. It's just a lifeless facsimile of an already bad system. But man, when I thought for sure there was nothing could do to it to make it worse, they release Fable 3. Still no armor, and now your options in weapons have been reduced to four types and again they're all basically the same thing over and over with different buffs that don't really matter because the game is already pathetically easy. And that weapon morphing, not even a good idea on paper, but you have no say in what upgrades you're going to get. It's a very obvious trend, take junk, make it worse, release it in a sequel.

So what games do get this right? None that I've seen. A union of Morrowind's variety and Skyrim's handling would be nice, with the crafting and enchanting and improving and the dual wielding. It stands to be improved by having creatures damaged more by specific classes of weapons, say, dragon bone, and different types, like, daggers. As for armors, well in TES games the weight of armor is a factor as it slows you down. But aside from that, armor is armor and armor ratings are armor ratings. Dwarven armor is no more effective at blocking specific types of attacks than elven armor, so the one with the higher armor rating is superior. In Dungeon Siege and Dragon Age, different armors can carry with them certain buffs and debuffs that would prevent an ultimate armor. So a union of all these systems would be ideal for my kind of game.

The original Fable had so much untapped potential to be great at this, and they just threw that away. It's such a damn shame, they could have had one, one good solid thing in a game that people would wish they had in those other games and they ruined it. Alright, let me wipe the foam off my face and we'll continue.

Reasonable economy.
I get it. You have to make money somehow. Making pies and being a busker, that is not the answer. Opening chests and finding tons of gold. That is not the answer. However, finding small amounts of gold here and there as well as getting small monetary rewards for quests, you have yourself a bingo. In Fable, there are also exploits. Manners of getting rich quick with little to no effort with a small start-up fund. Not like counting cards at the blackjack table, no. More like buying a house, renting it house, and then literally doing nothing but collect rent. Or buy x item, sell x item, buy x item, sell x item, repeat until rich. There are means of doing away with those exploits with very little effort, changing just a couple variables and then done. But no, this system is totally better, because I like that I can walk into towns, kill everyone, buy everything, pay the fine, come back a few days later and pick up all the rent and then be even richer. Not that you'd need to do these things anyway. Sure you could use the gold to buy potions or sell potions to make gold, but you find more than enough gold and potions to last you through the game. There's no point in any Fable game to actively try to get monetary gain, as at some point you'll trip and accidentally drown on your own gold. That's going to happen.

In pretty much any other game, the rewards for quests are small. Many times there aren't even any. Your reward is knowing you did something good. Or bad. You get an alignment bonus, or someone in your party thinks better or worse of you. Thanks for saving my family from a life of poverty, here, take this small memento so you can always remember me. Thanks, I'll just put it in the trash here. For serious monies collect rare artifacts for eccentric collectors from the depths of the hellmouth. Even when the rewards are significant, stuff is more expensive. 500 gold? That might get you two potions, which you'll actually need because enemies in those games are going to beat you mercilessly and you are capable of dying and not coming back.

An economy is broken when you have too much or too little in way of items or monies. If I have thousands of potions, millions of gold, and I achieved it in an hour, it's broken. If I scrape every dungeon, every home, every corpse and sell every single thing I find and I'm still too poor to get the basic stuff I need, it's broken. Balance is in between, when I have almost enough or maybe just a little more than enough if I'm fortunate. So who does this better? Seriously, everyone else. I can't think of anyone who does it worse, anyway.

Inventory management.
In Fable, you can get a bunch of trophies and things, as well as collect a number of expressions. You have all kinds of stuff in that imaginary bag of goodies. Like what? Don't know, let me find out. So much in there, it's everything I've collected over the time of playing this game. In Fable III You get to put it in the sanctuary, a breakthrough in video game science. Since everything is done through the sanctuary, anything you want to do outside of play the game (and who wants to do that anyway) takes a minute or two of being in the sanctuary, how lovely! No. No no no. Angry Joe's 32 worst things about Fable 3 does a very good job making it very clear why that system blows in every conceivable way. The argument for the sanctuary was that losing the UI helps immersion in the game. No, what it does is take me five minutes to do something that should take five seconds every single time I go in there and that breaks immersion because it takes time away from playing the game. The sanctuary is half the game. Loading screens are the other half. The whole game could be played in ten minutes without the sanctuary and loading screens.

You need an easy to use interface, practical, so when you want to change out weapons or outfits you can do it quickly with little interruption of the game. But, and this is more important, you need to not take your entire inventory with you everywhere you go. When everything's in your pocket, none of it matters as much. When you can only take so much with you, suddenly every slot in your inventory is real estate and everything you bring with you is important. But what about the stuff that doesn't fit? This is new territory for a Fable game, the ability to stash your stuff, not in a shop but in a chest. Taking items out of your inventory and putting them back into a container, like in your house, which then gives all the pretty stuff in your house a practical purpose which is otherwise just there to look pretty and do nothing. So, when you kill the hellspawn deathgod and rip his horns off his head as a trophy, and you don't have anymore spots in your house for another trophy and don't want to carry them around, and definitely don't want to sell them or throw them away, you can just toss it in a chest and fondly remember how his eyes crossed and rolled back when you stuck your sword in his forehead every single time you come back to that chest to stash more stuff or pull out something important.

Having more than one of the same weapon or armor would be nice. Going back into combat mechanics, with the ability to augment both weapons and armor comes the ability to have two or more of the same armor that are very different from each other and useful for other things. As it is in Fable, you can have one master katana, best customizable light melee weapon in the game, load it up with three silver augments for easily killing balverines. But what if you're going up against something else? Sell the weapon, buy it back, use three other augments to buff it, and then repeat the process to get your balverine killer back. The weapon's individual kill counts revert to 0 each time this is done, not to mention that's a lot of time and gold and augments wasted. What if you could have two or three or ten of them, all different? That'd be better.

What game does this well? There are two systems I've seen that I like. There's the tile system, where items take up 1, 4, 6, 8 tiles and you only have 10x20 tiles in your inventory. Then you get to play inventory tetris to fit in more junk. I liked it, other people did not. So another system is, well, like Skyrim, or other TES games. Weight limits. In Dragon Age or Kingdoms of Amalur, you get a specific number of slots, right, and you can have more than one type of item without it taking more slots, and buying backpacks can expand your inventory. Most of those games come with a way to stash stuff you want to keep but not carry on you, nor sell. Most of those games are widely considered better than Fable games.

Party system.
In Fable, you can hire bodyguards. Not that you'd ever need or want to, and the discussions they have amongst themselves seriously discourage having them around. They don't level, their equipment is fixed and there's no real way to command them. Thanks for charging their lines idiot, why'd I even pay you to follow me to battle if you're just going to have your head removed from your body the moment we get into a fight. But they're very cheap, forgiving, and make decent human shields. In other Fable games you can have people go with you, but there's less choice in the matter and co-op is the worst in the industry (how is this a AAA franchise?).

I really liked how it's handled in Dungeon Siege II. Up to five characters follow you out into the world and do stuff. They level up independently. They're good at their own things to compliment different aspects of the party, making it more than the sum of its parts. You can split up the party. You can have six different characters in six completely different parts of the world. Just hope one doesn't fall in battle, it's a real pain to pull out of one island and go all the way to where the body is to revive him/her. The game can also be played as an RTS in combat. Pause the game, position your guys into specific points in the field employing different strategies to effectively bring down foes. The problem with the system, in that game, is that it gets tedious, and the combat is effectively turn based. A more modern franchise that improves on this pretty well is the Dragon Age games but it's still a drag.

In Skyrim, you can have one follower at a time (without mods), they don't level independently and in many cases not at all, although commanding followers is easier to do in a real-time sort of way where you can actually feel like you're telling them to put an arrow through that guy's head over there.

I'm not sure what it would look like to have a marriage of the best of both of these systems, but that's what I want.

Freely open, explorable world.
This is a problem that gets progressively worse with the release each Fable game. The world gets more and more detailed and beautiful and this leads you to believe that the Lionhead art department gets all the time and resources and attention they require. That's not necessarily the case, I'm merely saying that this is one of the the impressions a person might get when playing. It's just truly a shame that you can't see much of it because in each game you're basically on rails. You're following a path and you can't stray from that path. It's worse in Fable 2 and Fable 3, because you're not even paying attention to anything other than the glowing trail telling you where to go. That is the essence of a game on rails. This is taken a step further in Journey, where the game is literally on rails. Tons more to say on all of that, but trying to stick to the topic of an explorable world.

Free roam. That's freedom. If I want to walk up that mountain and possibly die trying to get back down, that's my choice, that's what I want, that's what I'm going to do. If I want to go to a town, I'll walk through the front gates. If I don't want to go to that town, but still get on the other side of that town, I'll walk around. That's freedom. That's exploring, a key fundamental in adventure, the meaning of the word being exploring the unknown. And now I'm really paying attention to all that art, not just because it's pretty but now it's also functional - landmarks to help me navigate, not some glowy trail thing.

So, games that do this right, well, TES series. Morrowind especially. There is nothing that so clearly demonstrates freedom and choice so much as being completely lost in the world by choice and because you can't navigate for crap. Other games also do this to some extent, Kingdoms of Amalur, Dungeon Siege II. There are limitations. Not open world, more like open map, and you can go anywhere that's accessible which is still an improvement on Fable. Games that don't do this well, Dragon Age, basically the same system as those but there's much less map in between, and you get to see an actual map when traveling between cities with a chance for encounters. I mean that's cool, it's just not the same. I almost prefer Fable's system to that, except there's still more freedom in that you can choose where you're walking to, different directions and stuff whereas in Fable, you can go forward or backward and there's rarely reason to go to the same place twice.

Intelligent design.
So, this one's a hard one to explain. There's a lot of stuff here. I've said a lot of things in this post and even if they were all implemented in the same game, it could still be done poorly. Think about why you're doing it, the intention of the features and don't just throw in the features but make them as good as possible, make their use count in the best ways you can. For example, the armor mechanics and augment-specific responses, that's a very good system that they could have had in the original Fable. But they screwed it up. Or imagine having free roaming and no where to go, great big explorable world out there and nothing to see or do in it. That'd be an example of good ideas gone bad. But this one doesn't stop at feature design, implementation and use.

Built to be expanded. I'm talking modding support. Not just that, but in the kind of way that TES games do it. Updates, DLC, expansion packs, with exception to core updates these things are implemented the exact same way mods are in those games. A problem Lionhead has had was figuring out how to patch and update their games post-release. There's a perfectly good system being used by its competition right now, but Fable can't use anything like that because their data is all mixed up all over the place with very important things hardcoded and no override potential. In Fable 2 and Fable 3 it's better, but the modding community is screwed completely and thoroughly because Lionhead is using more licensed properties than Wreck-It Ralph not to mention all that crap being exposed to LUA that has no place being in LUA. The reasons for them doing it that way is now unimportant, because they're not updating anymore, but that doesn't change anything for the modders, nope. Still screwed.

A game, built right, designed to be expanded upon, can be done so much better and you can get near infinite support from the community, who will in turn keep the game alive for years and years past what the shelf life would have been otherwise.






If I saw all this done correctly in Fable IV, there is possibly nothing I wouldn't do to promote the game to everyone in the world twice over. I would herald it as the best game ever made, I will tell all who make games to give up, for the best game has already been made and none can be made better. I highly doubt this will happen, however, as the tradition at Lionhead is to disappoint, to underachieve, to excel at nothing but mediocrity.


That's all for me. Thanks for reading.

Edit:
but+wait+theres+more.jpg


There is? Yes, yes there is.

Customer support.

The entirety of the support out there for Fable 1, TLC, 2, 3, Journey, and Heroes all comes from what little community there is out there. Official support for those games has been completely dead and they take a very cavalier stance on the matter. If you go over there to the LH forums and try to get help, you'll have plenty of very sympathetic people over there but the people with the power to do anything about it just do not care. Demand a refund all you want, but they'll laugh knowing you probably bought the game more than 30 days ago meaning you don't qualify for a refund, so you're just screwed.

All those resources that could be used helping customers is instead being used creating the next Fable-branded product that will cause widespread discontent, disappointment and distaste for Microsoft, Lionhead and Fable. Can't wait. Thanks guys.

I should seriously send them a letter of thanks, were it not for them I'd never be able to speak or write as well as I do now. With all these rants and criticisms, I feel I can truly discern the exact nature of games and the things in them with ease now. Without Fable, I'd merely be a player, now I'm a connoisseur, I know what I want and nothing out there has it. Worse than that, Fable is the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality, and the only reason I know that is because of them. Thanks Lionhead.

And because I'm just one person.
There's a gentleman at the Lionhead forums, Lucifer JOG, who has been kind enough to allow me to share a link to a thread he's made over there that goes into several points I didn't even touch. Be sure to read his thread, it's good stuff. Many ideas have been collected just waiting to be harvested and realized.






To anyone who reads all of this, I want to give my sincere thanks. The length of this post rivals larger chapters in novels. I know people have things to do, so that you spent the time to read this means a great deal to me. Thank you very much for your time.
 
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I completely agree on all counts. Now if Lionhead would get their heads outta their asses and do something that people actually want.....
 

Swanky_e

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If I saw all this done correctly in Fable IV, there is possibly nothing I wouldn't do to promote the game to everyone in the world twice over. I would herald it as the best game ever made, I will tell all who make games to give up, for the best game has already been made and none can be made better. I highly doubt this will happen, however, as the tradition at Lionhead is to disappoint, to underachieve, to excel at nothing but mediocrity.


I am sorry but that line alone is shame-full. You seem to be completely Obsessed with Fable yet you bash it for not living up to your standards its sad. Fable is the GOAT RPG in my opinion and the people who worked at Lionhead are amazing you should be grateful that fable even exists. You are clearly Narcissistic and incapable of any introspective thought , Make your own game .........thats right if you could you wouldn't posting slander like this , spend your money and make a game so people can say how flawed it is ,this is so typical everyone is a big critic on Fable ,Lionhead ows the fans nothing , fable has some horrible fans out here its really disappointing kids these days think the world revolves around them and game developers must kneel to their demands omg grow up people make your own game and see how hard it is.
 

Zach sTEPHENSON

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If and when they decide to make a Fable 4, I would like my chance to kill Reaver and Theresa. I have been waiting for my chance to kill Reaver since Fable 2 when he tried to sell me out to Lucien, and then in Fable 3 when he tried to have me and Paige killed. Just for fun, I shoot him during our quests at the end of the game of Fable 2. He's lived long enough. Well over 600 years. His time is coming. As for Theresa, for Fable 4, my idea for her would be to kill her because all that time in the spire has made her to powerful and has corrupted her. She now uses the spire to cast her own wishes and make the citizens of Albion do want she wants. Kind of like slavery. Albion a horrible place to live, and a new hero has to restore order in the world.
 

Swanky_e

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Sorry I regret what I said I was wrong, hope you succeed making that mod , I agree with most of your points It just bugged me to see hardcore Fable fans disparage Lionhead for not living up to Peter Molyneux hype, I just think its unreasonable but I think I understand your position. We both know that Fable had/has incredible potential to be a much greater game than it is. That Mod of Bowerstone you made is a good example of what Lionhead should have done.

I am not that good at modding and do not understand completely how Fable works but from what I do know , I think Fable was going to be a much more open and technically advanced if Lionhead had designed Fable for PC from the very beginning.I think they had to compromise a lot to make Fable run on Xbox. The early Project Ego screen shots look like Fable would be in a seamless world like Oblivion but the Xbox puts a limit on whats possible , I know Morrowind was on Xbox but its animations and textures look like they belong on nintendo 64 , and compared to Fable, Fable was all around more advanced imo.Making Fable open world on xbox would require the graphics to be much lower quality that my guess, but everything you said about armor and weapons could have been done easily , maybe they got lazy , maybe they ran out of time ?

I think that Fable should have been on PC then ported to Xbox or just stay on PC only, if Fable was made for PC I think it would have been Much closer to the vision that Molyneux had , heck they might have even had trees that grown in real time ;) I see why you are so frustrated with Lionhead they really didn't maximize the game at all , maybe I have been giving them to much credit. Its sad they will probably never make Fable4 because the recent Fable games are not very good , If Fable legends is not a huge success I don't think they will make another Fable , and if they did ever make Fable 4 they need Peter Molyneux , Dene Carter , and Simon Carter to come back to Lionhead.

I read your whole GIANT rant its actually well said now that iv revisited the it
 

Eric4991

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My preference for IV is that they set it at the start of the Old Kingdom. Let you play as Archon, let you see Jack's true form and his comrades' in all their wicked glory, let you explore this ancient, all-powerful society and witness its rise and fall. We already have two games set in the post-gunpowder era. It's time for a change of pace and I've wanted to see the backstory about the Old Kingdom for a very long time.
 

Little_Sparrow

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My preference for IV is that they set it at the start of the Old Kingdom. Let you play as Archon, let you see Jack's true form and his comrades' in all their wicked glory, let you explore this ancient, all-powerful society and witness its rise and fall. We already have two games set in the post-gunpowder era. It's time for a change of pace and I've wanted to see the backstory about the Old Kingdom for a very long time.

One thing I actually loved was the enlightenment era with the gun powder. Having my red dragon pistol was a blast and so many fantasy games stick with bow and arrow it was a nice change of pace.

I would love to see another game in the gunpowder era sometime after the people of albion hunted down the heroes with guns and you play an outlaw hero that works hard to gain the respect of citizens.

Either that or like you said Old kingdom era would be awesome or the time around Nostro formed the guild or right after Weaver and Maze revolted and made the guild have the option to be good or evil.

Would be cool to have a more dynamic co op system with a heroes guild making an almost mmo type feel since there being so many different heroes.

Still having a guild seal to teleport to major locations with cullis gates but having a horse and dog still and the landscape being so huge that needing a horse is mandatory.

Of course the horse and dog morph with your good and evil/corrupt and pure nature.

Would love the 5 star rating of items, clothes, weapons and homes back from fable 2. Thought that was an amazing feature and being able to buy reavers mansion and brightwood tower and fairfax castle was very cool.

I would love to have a fallout 4 style master recording list like what codsworth had.

In other words preset hero titles but also the option to create your own title and have 1000s of different recordings from voice actors saying something you named your hero.

I would love to have more quests with the family like your children growing up to become allies or antagonists depending on how much time you spent with them.

Also my decisions effecting the outcome of the world like what happens to oakfield if you side with the temple of shadows.

I feel Fable TLC had the most compelling personal story about the bloodline, while fable 2 improved making the world of albion more interesting, with every quest having so much replay value for each interesting cutscene and location and sense of atmosphere.

Fable 3 tried really hard on making you feel the weight of your decisions more with sometimes having to do a crappy thing in order to benefit everyone long term.. I liked this idea to an extent but people should have been more grateful if I have to save money to save their lives and by doing so unfortunately tax them hard or drain bower lake ( by the second playthrough I managed to make all good choices and donated my income to the treasury so the worlds integrity wasnt compromised)

I would like to have more options like in elder scrolls on race abilities.

Like choosing to be from a different hero blood line.

Coming from Archons blood line you are a pale white guy or girl who struggles in the beginning but is able to master all 3 disciplines easily later on

A descendent of Maze masters will very easily.

Descendent of Thunder masters Strength easily.

A descendent or ancestor of Reaver masters skill easily ect..

Biggest request of all is that the game is released for PC since I dont have a console.
 
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