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Fable III officially announced.
Late 2010 release date. Xbox 360 exclusive.
Teaser trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI6P7...layer_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yLYHipNphk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-VEWuStpOU
"This whimsical Fable III concept art is all we have. There are some familiar locations in there."
Eurogamer: Fable III Preview
Details:
[]You start the game as the son or daughter of the Hero from Fable II
[]For the first half of the game you must lead a revolution against the Tyrant king
[]Gather support, gain followers, unite factions.
[]On your Journey to Rule you must make promises. Will you keep these promises when you rule?
[*]On the Journey seeing injustices of the current rule, and deciding which you will change when you rule.
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Molyneux says you can feed the entirety of a population, and actually walk into the royal coffers to access your treasury. You'll be able to set tax rates and decide what type of attitude you'll have while ruling.
Trailer showing. Voice over says the kingdom of Albion needs a ruler, king or queen, good or evil. Zooms out on a crown in a firest with a skirted character looking over. "The race for the crown has begun." It said at the end.
So in Fable III, you will become the ruler of Albion.
This is to emphasize the feeling of power. Molyneux seems to want the game to be much different from Fable II where you can affect the entirety of your land.
Your family will also play a role in the game, though no more details are available on the slide onscreen.
A few of the balances you'll need to strike include poverty and greed, tyranny and compassion, and progress and tradition.
From the beginning of Fable III, you'll gather support among the people in Albion, and pull together followers and bring people together.
There'll be a campaign element as well, as you have to make promises to your people along the way, and you'll need to keep the promises once you toss out the tyrant on the throne and take over.
So you can make any number of promises as you're moving through the first half of the game, the trick is being able to keep them once you're in office.
"Look at Obama, he's not looking as fresh-faced as he was, is he?" Molyneux says the world expects so much from its leaders, so why not give that kind of power to the player?
As you move toward the throne in Fable III, you'll witness a number of injustices as you get through the world. So you may think of course you're going to set that right, but it might be difficult to hold true to that once in power.
Once you rule, you'll be seen as a hero type of ruler, which Molyneux compared in style to Captain Kirk from Star Trek.
You can still fight, you can still lead your people, you can have royal visits to locations within Albion.
As far as gold management and your treasury goes, you must decide where you want to allocate the funds. It's possible to build up certain regions or exempt areas from taxes if there's poverty.
Bower Lake is in the game, with a new house in the middle on an island.
Bowerstone has continued to grow, which now includes industrial districts where there's a lot of crime and poverty. It sounds as if you can dramatically change regions.
He says there's a very noticeable difference in how places develop depending on your actions as ruler.
Albion isn't the only setting. It's just one continent in a much larger world, which Molyneux wouldn't say more about.
Molyneux says that with Fable II's story they were still learning the art of story creation.
"This time, for me, we really are taking this seriously." [So they didn't take it seriously in Fable II?]
There will be some characters in Fable III that return from Fable II. Molyneux is going on about how the story for the game is being inspired by real-world historical events.
He wants to squeeze the intrigue and drama of real life into Fable III's virtual space, but Molyneux says one of the issues is being able to set up the story properly before things kick off.
He says Lionhead has been experimenting with a new way with seeing the story internally, he's talking about internal development process.
The developers have been looking at the story as they develop the product, so instead of everyone seeing the finished story at the very end, the staff is acting through the story as they build the game. He says it's really important, as a designer, to get a good sense of story as the game is in development.
Showing a video with Lionhead employees on a stage acting out the game's scenes to try and "get to the heart" of this story, which Molyneux describes as massive, with plenty of choices and consequences.
These videos then go back to the design teams to inspire the staff at the studio. There's to be returning voice talent from Fable II in Fable III.
There's a new gameplay mechanic in Fable III, called a judgment system.
He says that as a king, you should be able to point at NPCs who come before you in your throne room or while you're out on adventures, you can listen to their stories and judge them accordingly.
It's not clear how this works, but it sounds like this is a side-quest mechanic, since you can listen to the story and investigate the characters involved to see if it's truthful.
There's another new mechanic called touch, with expressive and dynamic touches.
The expression system from Fable II doesn't really fit in in this game, since as Molyneux said it wouldn't be regal if you were doing a Micheal Jackson moonwalk.
If you're trying to court a woman, the touch system will allow you to shake their hand, and later on you earn the right to turn that handshake into a hug, and that can later turn into an embrace, and eventually it can turn into "a full, passionate, snog."
Molyneux says it shouldn't take too much of the imagination to think about where that may lead.
Quote:
That's the expression touch, now he's going into dynamic touch, which lets you, at any time, reach out and touch someone.
Quote:
To hold their hand, to walk side by side holding hands and watching a sunset.
Molyneux is describing a scenario where you hear the cries of a child screaming from the room of the house. In Fable II, it'd say something like Press A to save the child.
With the dynamic touch system, it sounds like there'll be a more natural system where you pull the child from the house and cuddle them and reassure them.
Quote:
Molyneux says the touch mechanic is only one tiny sliver of what's new.
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