Sunday, August 15, 2004
Emergentcy
Do me a personal favor, and go read all 12 pages of the newest Fable preview over at IGN. It makes me, really, really excited to play the game. In fact, after reading the preview and watching the preview dvd I got for pre-ordering it, I'd say that it's not only my most anticipated game this year outside of Halo 2, but one of my most anticipated games ever. Mixing the open-endedness of GTA with the apparent new high standards of Western RPGs makes me want to have Peter Molyneux's urethral baby.
This whole idea of "emergent gameplay" really does it for me, and I think that Fable will be the benchmark for a whole new wave of titles taking advantage of this concept, even if their genre is completely different. The basic idea of it (emergent gameplay) is to give players certain things that they can do and gameplay actions which they can perform, whereby something will end up happening that the developers didn't specifically intend for. I forget where I read it, but in an interview with Peter Molyneux he gave this example: He was watching a tester play, and they decided to make their character marry the mayor's daughter in one of the towns. Soon after, they lured the mayor/now father-in-law into the woods and killed him. Molyneux was surprised by this action, until the tester told him that it was so he could inherit all of the mayor's property. And sure enough, it worked, due to the various property and relationship rules in the game. Neat, eh?
Just imagine an even more open-ended GTA, where you could forge relationships with various crime syndicates, and your actions would have real consequences, not just a couple of cop cars. Imagine executing the mob boss' daughter as she leaves a club (not part of a mission, you just happen to spot her), only to have his cronies after you an hour later? With AI continually advancing, and many games being much larger in scope and dynamic, I can easily see this happening more often in this generation before long, and eventually being prevalent within certain genres in the next.
Anyhow, back to Fable. It just sounds amazing top to bottom, and I really don't think it will disappoint. It's the reason I bought an X-Box. I don't want to talk about the game details too much here, because I really want people to read the preview I linked to above, but I'm confident it will make you as excited as I am. And even though it doesn't even talk about graphics until the last page (which is awesome), here's a gorgeous screenshot that I just couldn't pass up. It seems to sum up my feelings about the game pretty well:
This whole idea of "emergent gameplay" really does it for me, and I think that Fable will be the benchmark for a whole new wave of titles taking advantage of this concept, even if their genre is completely different. The basic idea of it (emergent gameplay) is to give players certain things that they can do and gameplay actions which they can perform, whereby something will end up happening that the developers didn't specifically intend for. I forget where I read it, but in an interview with Peter Molyneux he gave this example: He was watching a tester play, and they decided to make their character marry the mayor's daughter in one of the towns. Soon after, they lured the mayor/now father-in-law into the woods and killed him. Molyneux was surprised by this action, until the tester told him that it was so he could inherit all of the mayor's property. And sure enough, it worked, due to the various property and relationship rules in the game. Neat, eh?
Just imagine an even more open-ended GTA, where you could forge relationships with various crime syndicates, and your actions would have real consequences, not just a couple of cop cars. Imagine executing the mob boss' daughter as she leaves a club (not part of a mission, you just happen to spot her), only to have his cronies after you an hour later? With AI continually advancing, and many games being much larger in scope and dynamic, I can easily see this happening more often in this generation before long, and eventually being prevalent within certain genres in the next.
Anyhow, back to Fable. It just sounds amazing top to bottom, and I really don't think it will disappoint. It's the reason I bought an X-Box. I don't want to talk about the game details too much here, because I really want people to read the preview I linked to above, but I'm confident it will make you as excited as I am. And even though it doesn't even talk about graphics until the last page (which is awesome), here's a gorgeous screenshot that I just couldn't pass up. It seems to sum up my feelings about the game pretty well:
// posted by Nick @ 3:00 PM 
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