Fable II Interview

Eurogamer offers a post-mortem Fable II interview, in which they talk to none other than Peter Molyneux.

Eurogamer: Do you feel you served the casual audience more successfully than your core audience?

Peter Molyneux: I don’t think we gave the core audience enough rewards. Combat in Fable, and I’d argue in RPGs, shouldn’t be tedious. It should be part of the relaxation of playing. We achieved that, but we didn’t make you feel cooler and cooler.

We had the currency to do that. We had these mechanics called crescendos which were supposed to build up so that it was only later in the game that you realised, “Wow, I’m really cool,” but we didn’t exploit them well enough. They should have been even more dramatic and widespread.

Eurogamer: Is it hard to sell to the audience the difference between something that’s accessible, and something that’s just too easy?

Peter Molyneux: It’s not the particular challenge that’s easy or hard, it’s the overall experience: how you feel about each of those combat moments. Personally, if you’re defining easy as, “Well, I should have died five times here and had to repeat the same combat over,” I think that’s just tedious.

It’s not about easy and hard, it’s about entertainment and tedium. Each moment in Fable is an experience. Sometimes it’s an experience about feeling like you’re about to fail and just succeeding. That’s the ultimate that we want, rather than the experience of going in, failing, and finally succeeding. I wouldn’t mind that once or twice but not over and over.