Fable

[Apocalypse]

Well, even if it's done better, it's not an innovation.

[Felch]

Yeah, Apoc, the grapes are sour anyways.

[Felch]

Damn, I saw the video, it looks incredible. The boasting system, the reactions of townspeople, everything looks great.

I seriously hope to hell the fundamentals are in order. If they are, this may very well be one of the best RPGs ever. Certainly the best for any console.

[Nostromo]

What's making me suspicious about this game is that I haven't heard a peep about the story. Not a word about the main quest, if there is any... You will have fed ex missions. And you will have to beat the crap out of small time crooks or, alternatively, become a small time crook yourself. But not a word about the main quest... as if it were an afterthought. Maybe it will a RPG about nothing.

[Apocalypse]

Well, I've heard that it will have a main storyline. I pretty sure there was some beef to it. Including having to go to jail for a while (where you'd do a lot of aging and become pale and stuff).

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Including having to go to jail for a while (where you'd do a lot of aging and become pale and stuff).

Again with the gimmicks. That's all they care to talk about. But not a word about the story. Compared to the story, you'll have to admit that your character's appearance is pretty secondary. Makes me wonder.... I'm sure there's a story (I was joking earlier), but either they want to keep it secret, or they're not working that hard on it, or they worked mainly on the bells and whistles up until now.

[Apocalypse]

Yeah, even for console games, most people remember the story best. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears aren't touted for the good gameplay, but for the story.

[Nostromo]

I never played japanese RPG's: they're to cutesy and to linear for my taste. But IMO, the story is an integral part of an RPG's gameplay.

[Apocalypse]

Yeah...again, the graphics of Fable little surprisingly cutesy and animeish.

[Felch]

Story? You want a story read a book. Games should be about what you can do in them. The problem with Final Fantasy is that it's all story, and no playing around. I tried to work my way through FF IX, and I got tired of the twenty minutes breaks where you'd have to deal with cutscenes and endless conversations about some bizzare plot. Games that focus on stories before the all else end up denying you the ability to make choices. You find yourself watching a character worm his way through a plot while you tell him and his buddies what to do during fights and what equipment to wear.

The idea behind real RPGs is that the story is determined by you. Morrowind tried to pull this off, and did an all right job, but certainly wasn't perfect. Games like Planescape do an all right job, but in the long run the story hijacks your ability to do what you want in the game. Both console and PC RPGs lack the ability to just go places that a P&P RPG offers.

My hope, although there's no reason to believe this will be the case, is that Fable will put the story in the back seat. If you want to go ahead and do your own thing, you should be able to.

I can't fathom why you guys keep lambasting gimmicks. Gimmicks are just another word for inventiveness and imagination. Was the cinematography in Citizin Kane a gimmick? Is stram of consciousness literature a gimmick? Were scenarios in Civ 2 a gimmick, and wasn't Babbage's mechanical computer a gimmick? Yes, and that's what made them so cool.

Now, after the game comes out, if it turns out to suck, by all means I'll be with you guys in saying it's a bunch of gimmicks tied together with string. But until you see the game you shouldn't be talking about how lame it is. You might actually want to check out some of the information about it, look at the videos that have been released, and find out what you can.

[Dis]

in this case I have to agree with Felch.

Gameplay is more important than story. It's simple. Either the game is fun to play or its not.

Now where I might disagree is with the gimmick.The gimmicks seem cool, but they don't indicate whether the gameplay is actually fun. So if they fall into place and the game flows smoothly and is fun to play, then it works. I'll play it (when it comes out on PC )

Pretty much the only way to tell is to actually play the game- or a demo.

[Apocalypse]

You could do a lot of what you wanted in Placescape and it had a great story. Same with Fallout.

RPGs need to make people want to do things besides get random item for random person. This was a serious problem in Morrowind in that honestly, there wasn't much point in going some where to get some reward that you didn't need.

And scenarios in Civ 2 were far from a gimmick. They are a major part of the gameplay.

[Felch]

And what's to say that how your character develops in Fable isn't integral to the gameplay? In fact, by everything I've read, it is. The real innovation in Fable, if everything turns out as promised, is that the gimmicks will matter in the game. According to the descriptions and the video I saw, how your character acts in relation to the people around him will impact the game world in a realistic way.

The boasting system is one "gimmick" I think is really neat. Before performing quests, your character is able to make boasts - things like doing the quest without taking damage, without armor, without weapons, or in the example shown in the video, without losing any of the merchants you're supposed to be escorting. The boasts aren't necessary, but they give your character the ability to earn greater renown throughout the game world, and a higher reward for the quest. Other heroes travelling the world though may make boasts that you're unwilling to make. In that case they will be more admired than you, although the reverse can also be true.

Fallout (I only played the second) was cool because the story was there, but it wasn't determining where you went. Certain isolated areas were locked away at the start, but by and large you could travel anywhere and completely ignore the story if you chose to. In fact a lot of the quests had pretty much nothing to do with the story and tended to be either exterminations or varients on the fed-ex quests that you so despise. Planescape I never got to finish because I was playing my friend's copy, and one of his discs was scratched.

I have faith that this game won't be a complete piece of crap. I wonder why so many of you are so damn hard-bitten and cynical about games. If it's not perfect, it's not perfect. It's made by people, so it naturally won't be perfect. But it does sound interesting, and it does sound like a step in the right direction for console RPGs. I wish you guys could for once just see it as that. A heroic effort, that hasn't been released yet (and therefore can't be judged on things like gameplay and story), and seems so far to be full of really good ideas about how an RPG should work.

[Felch]

Here's a screen shot - taken from one of the videos - of the boasting circle.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Felch
Story? You want a story read a book. Games should be about what you can do in them. The problem with Final Fantasy is that it's all story, and no playing around. I tried to work my way through FF IX, and I got tired of the twenty minutes breaks where you'd have to deal with cutscenes and endless conversations about some bizzare plot. Games that focus on stories before the all else end up denying you the ability to make choices. You find yourself watching a character worm his way through a plot while you tell him and his buddies what to do during fights and what equipment to wear.

That's why I don't like japanese RPG's: they're too linear.

The idea behind real RPGs is that the story is determined by you. Morrowind tried to pull this off, and did an all right job, but certainly wasn't perfect. Games like Planescape do an all right job, but in the long run the story hijacks your ability to do what you want in the game. Both console and PC RPGs lack the ability to just go places that a P&P RPG offers.

All these games have a story. Some games have highly scripted, linear, barely interactive stories (Final Fantasy), others have more or less open-ended stories (Morrowind, KOTOR). And I totally agree with you: open-ended stories are better.

I can't fathom why you guys keep lambasting gimmicks. Gimmicks are just another word for inventiveness and imagination. Was the cinematography in Citizin Kane a gimmick? Is stram of consciousness literature a gimmick? Were scenarios in Civ 2 a gimmick, and wasn't Babbage's mechanical computer a gimmick? Yes, and that's what made them so cool.

Gimmick: a trick or device, esp. to attract attention, or publicity. The things you mentionned are clearly not gimmicks, they are innovations. For instance, Molyneux puts a lot of emphasis on the changes in your character's appearance: scars, color of skin, muscles... It's an interesting touch, but it's a gimmick nonetheless.

Now, after the game comes out, if it turns out to suck, by all means I'll be with you guys in saying it's a bunch of gimmicks tied together with string. But until you see the game you shouldn't be talking about how lame it is. You might actually want to check out some of the information about it, look at the videos that have been released, and find out what you can.

I was excited for a while, then I read some examples of gameplay, some examples of missions you have to complete. One was a fed ex mission. The other one was spying on a cheating husband. And another one was taking care of crooks. I don't know about you, but I expected something a little more epic... I'll wait and see. If it gets good reviews, i'll rent it, and if I like it, I'll buy it.