Will Lionhead Change The RPG?

IncGamers is offering up an editorial that poses the question “Will Lionhead change the RPG?”, based on Peter Molyneux’s claim that they’ll be replacing “one of the central tenets of RPG gaming” in Fable III. Cue the speculation:

The most likely candidate for the .ame changer’, if you’ll permit me to speculate wildly, is communication and the way we interact with NPCs. The days of text blocks and dialogue may just be numbered if what we saw at E3 last year is any indication of what’s to come. Molyneux’s Project Natal demonstration featuring Milo and Kate, smoke and mirrors or not, showed that he is committed to playing with the established notion of interactivity in games, at one point passing a note through the screen to Milo. With this in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that the (long established) mechanic he will apparently replace concerns communication. After all, playing a role where your character has no voice, or is voiced by someone else, is undoubtedly a barrier to immersion and a game in which we speak directly to NPCs will not just be a passing novelty, it will likely be a revelation. Of course, Molyneux could be talking about something completely different or, equally, it could be that PR Tourette’s kicking in again.