Despite "generally favorable reviews," there were quite a few people out there who had some serious problems with Fable 2. And to hear Lionhead's Peter Molyneux talk at the Develop Conference in Brighton today, he's one of them.
Molyneux's hour long on-stage presentation of Fable 3 included a veritable smorgasbord of self-deprecating remarks about the problems in the first two Fable games that would be fixed or mitigated in the threequel. For instance, Molyneux lambasted his studio for throwing way too many unnecessary features into Fable 2, even citing a study showing that most people didn't use more than 60% of the available features. Even when a feature was used, Molyneux said, it was often only used once and didn't factor into the larger game enough. For example, "most people did get married, but it didn't mean anything, it was just an excuse to have sex," he said. At one point Molyneux likened Fable 2 to "designing a car with 300 buttons on dashboard when you only need a steering wheel."
Apparently, Peter Molyneux is making the mistake of assuming that he has incorporated too much choice into Fable II. Wrong. He should add yet more choice into Fable III than there was in Fable II. Because that's the whole point of the Fable series. Each Game has yet more customization options than the next. This is what makes Fable II the tied ultimate rpg with Oblivion, and which Peter Molyneux is making a grave mistake by contemplating removing.
Also, if Fable 2 is like a car with 300 buttons on the dashboard, make Fable III be like a car with 500 buttons on the dashboard. The buttons are the things we like: the things we can use to tweak our worlds and gaming experiences just so, that we can make our experiences pretty much perfect.
