We recently had a chance to catch up with Josh Atkins, Senior Design Director for the publishing unit of Microsoft Game Studios. He was heavily involved in developing the combat system in Fable 1, and now works at a higher level, liaising between Microsoft and external developers such as Lionhead Studios.
In demonstrating the workings of his new baby, Atkins stressed that as well as being an action game, Fable II is a simulation.
"The villager AI in Fable is incredibly deep, and is a large part of how players will spend their time. When you look at how alive the town is, when you look at the fact that each of these villagers is fully interactable. That you can talk with them, that they have an opinion of you, and that you can actually influence that opinion, it lends to incredibly enormous depth of gameplay.
"It actually is interesting enough that [for] players that are just into the action elements of the game, this provides an incredible whole new avenue of gameplay, and a whole new kind of experience."
Atkins steered a pink-haired adventuress around Fable II's largest settlement, her loyal pooch — a constant companion in the game — bounding about behind her. NPCs were generally friendly, until Atkins let off a few fireballs; that sent them running. He also stressed the importance of real estate, snapping up a terrace house.
"In Fable, you could get married, have a child, and raise that child. The first step in getting married is buying a house. In order to actually make this house really meaningful, I'm actually going to decorate it up a little bit, because if I want a nice husband, I need at least a reasonably nice house. So you can actually rebuild your house. You can customise it. The more you put expensive items into it, the more the house is actually worth.
"I'm gonna do one last thing — I'm gonna place a trophy. These are the trophies I collect from doing quests. I'm gonna place the sex change souvenir on the wall."
Wait.... What?
"There is potentially a potion, which is called the Sex Change Potion, that you get at the end of the game. If you've played as a female maybe you could become a male. Or vice versa. I think that allows players to have a chance to really change their experience up quite a bit.
