Fable 2’s Bread Crumb Trail: Too Much Hand-Holding?

Unified Ammo has kicked up a short article that offers some reasons why Lionhead Studios’ proposed “bread crumb trail” feature in Fable 2 constitutes way too much hand-holding for an RPG.

…in ye olde days circa Ultima V (i.e. 1988), games were objects of investigation, players had to explore and experiment to discover the rules of the virtual world. Indeed, players were allowed to make mistakes, to not achieve something, to get lost, and even die, horribly and repeatedly. Today, heavy focus testing has given us game experiences streamlined to maximise the fun output. Why should a player settle for only getting a portion of the fun when through some subtle signposting and a choreographed sequence the designer can ensure each player gets 100% of their fun allocation.

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Now I haven’t played Fable 2 and neither have the forum posters currently objecting to the bread crumb feature – so I can only speculate on its effectiveness as a navigation tool. Clearly, Peter’s design goal is to make his game more accessible and inviting to the inexperienced gamer. He doesn’t want to scare off novice players who feel intimidated by an open world of exploration or perhaps worse become bored when they get lost on the way to some quest’s specific objective. And in a sense, the trail of bread crumbs is at least, conceptually more immersive than a colour-coded minimap in the corner of the screen; the player is focused on the actual environment rather than a more distanced layer of representation.

But at the same time it is a contrivance that breaks immersion and runs contrary to the game world’s internal logic. Ultimately, it’s a way for the designer to tell the player who strays from the trail: (Stop, you’re doing it wrong!)