Given the threadbare nature of most hero-defeats-evil game plots, it's a laudable idea. The cost of final victory is a pair of sore thumbs.įable III wants to turn that victory into the pivot point of an ensuing narrative. Few games address the hero's need for atonement or depict his descent as anything more perilous than bigger monsters in scarier environments. The problem is that most games adhere to the monomyth's story arc, but do little more than mimic its outline. When you beat him, the story ends." Molyneux sees that familiar end as a beginning in Fable III.
A big baddy does something really bad, you’re the hero, and you work all game long to beat him. “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."Īccording to Molyneux, "Video games are always told by means of the hero’s journey. Molyneux takes for granted that Fable III, and video games generally, are effective delivery devices for the "Hero's Journey" famously described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces: If, at the halfway point of the game, the player has yet to develop a connection to the story, it's unlikely to emerge thereafter, isn't it? They saw Fable III as an opportunity to answer the question: "What happens after the hero wins?" but they neglected to pave an interesting or well-constructed road to that victory. I believe Molyneux and team at Lionhead dreamed the wrong dream. Why, then, after more than a dozen hours in Molyneux's latest version of Albion, do I feel no love? Why, after eagerly investing myself as fully as I can in Fable III's story, do I emerge with so little empathic connection to its characters? Why, on this arranged date between two people presumably made for each other, am I headed home at 8:30 and dreading the awkward kiss goodnight? What went wrong? Study Molyneux's rhetoric, and you'll discover he's fond of words like 'innovation,' 'possible,' 'future,' and 'potential.' We need dreamers like Peter Molyneux. In recent years he's become a tireless utopian prognosticator, promising a future for games that leaps over limits of technology and imagination. He's spent more than 25 years creating games - nearly always as Lead Designer - that provoke us to reflect on our humanity. You can shake people’s hands, you can hug them, too. It’s the ability to have your character reach out at any time and touch things. It’s not just the craft and the pace that’s important, it’s giving people tangible things you can touch. We really want to tell a meaningful and deep story in Fable 3, so we have an amazing cast of actors – John Cleese, Stephen Fry – and some other huge names.and that helps take us one step closer to this emotional story. These enhancements, he believes, will enhance our emotional connection to story and world of Albion: He has hired "the greatest cast that any computer game has ever had ," and he has given players the ability to touch, hug, and kiss other characters in the game. In Fable III, Molyneux wants to go farther. So, we played the cheapest trick on you – a cute dog, with sad puppy eyes – and you know what, it really worked. In so many games there’s nothing to care about or be emotionally involved with. The dog was there to give people something to care about. In Fable II, that exploration resulted in the introduction of a loyal dog that accompanied the hero throughout the game - a sentimental ploy Molyneux believes was successful:
We have tried to approach it in a different way. This is my bold claim - I need you to experience something in Fable that you as gamers have never experienced before.Everybody is talking about emotion, story, engagement and narrative. Three years ago Molyneux expressed his hopes for Fable II this way: It's not the first time he's come knocking. In Fable III, Peter Molyneux wants us to feel loved. I enjoyed Fable II, warts and all, and I'm happy to be propositioned by its sequel. The Fable game Molyneux says he wants to make is the very Fable game I want to play.
If designers seduce us to play their games, I am Peter Molyneux's dream date.