Fable II Interview

T3 Magazine interviews Peter Molyneux about Fable II, asking for even more details on the newly released title. I found this question of particular interest:

T3: So in what other ways does it differ to hardcore RPGs such as Oblivion?

Peter Molyneux: Well, Oblivion was a fantastic achievement. But for me, that was a true ‘blood and guts’ RPG. There was an initial dungeon that you went through that was fantastic – but then you came out into that open world, and I just thought: “What the hell do you do now? Where do you go? Who am I? What do I stand for? Who am I against?” And there was this huge, vast rolling story. And to finish Oblivion would take sixty or seventy hours.

Now for me, as a designer, if I hear ‘sixty or seventy hours’, then in my mind that is the equivalent of giving me a book that is twenty thousand pages long. And if I said to you, here’s a fantastic book, go and read that… Are you likely to finish a twenty thousand page book? No.

So in Fable 2, the story lasts thirteen to fourteen hours and by the end of that story what you are like, what you look like and how the world treats you is completely up to you. If you want to be evil or good or kind or cruel, then that’s totally up to you. With Oblivion it was basically all about me killing things.

Calling Oblivion being labeled a hardcore RPG makes my brain itch, but I find Molyneux equating 60-70 hours with twenty thousand pages interesting. Dude must be a fast reader.