Fable II Post-Mortem Interview

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Eurogamer: DLC: We're getting Knothole Island on December 22nd. I'm guessing that's a version of Knothole Glade in Fable I?

Peter Molyneux: It's an island off the coast. It's far bigger than you would expect. It's something you can go to at any point: there's new simulation stuff, new creatures, a completely new dynamic environment in there which we never had time to exploit in Fable I.

You can expect new weapons, new gameplay, quite a few dungeons with a little bit more puzzly elements, because we didn't do that a lot in Fable I, and it fits into the story and to the world perfectly.

What people haven't realised yet is this thing about Theresa: who is she? That line at the end: "Leave the Spire now, it's mine." What's she going to do with that? And how come she ended up with what she wanted, it seems, more than what you wanted?

Eurogamer: Is this a story to be explored in DLC, or something for Fable III?

Peter Molyneux: If you leave it too long then people will forget. You can sustain a mystery for a certain amount of time, and I think people will talk more about the mystery after DLC1, whether we fully explain it or not - but we can't wait for another Fable to explain it.

Eurogamer: You wanted this to be a game where people not only judged the game, but judged Lionhead, and its ability to deliver. How do you feel you did?

Peter Molyneux: There was a lot of very brave things in Fable II. I rate it pretty high, and in the end, there were areas that needed polishing, but I'm immensely, incredibly proud of the team.

For a team like that, working with an idiot like me is tough. They just want me to design a game that's going to be a great experience, and here I am, adding these things that have never been done before, and that makes their life pretty tough, and I think they've done a stellar job.

Eurogamer: Can I tempt you into being old-school Peter Molyneux and telling me something about what's coming next?

Peter Molyneux: I've already got in trouble for this. But there is a sense of excitement around something we've been experimenting with for an awful long time. If we pull this off - and that's a big if, and please don't think this is hype, it's just a designer talking about his job - if we get even close, I think it's going to produce something you have never seen before: concept, play-style, genre, everything.

This is the reason Microsoft wanted us to be first-party, to give us the ability to make a big step. This industry needs big steps. You can feel it in the air right now: there's an uncertainty about these massive blockbuster formulaic games that we continue to make. I partially accuse myself of doing that.

On the other side there's this real disparity between the machines that we've got at the moment; we've got gamers' boxes and casual boxes. There needs to be this revolution.

Eurogamer: It seems you're saying there are a lot of design problems people have now solved. Can you give us a hint about some of the problems to be solved next?

Peter Molyneux: The big problem is the sense of wonder that you and I had when we first played computer games. I can remember that sense of wonder. I can remember going into the arcades and playing Missile Command and Defender, and my heart was full.

That sense of wonder, to a certain extent, has evaporated from the world. We need to convince people that a form of entertainment so magical it takes people's breath away is still there.

You may think this is all arty-farty rubbish. Let's talk about cinema. Until the golden few years when you had Star Wars, and the cinema turned from being a slightly two-dimensional thing to this huge, epic, queues everywhere [business]. Everyone was talking about it. When was the last time we heard about that in the world of cinema?

For years and years, the same television programs came on. Then out of the blue you had Lost and Dexter, and TV was where it was at. That's what computer games need. They need that redefining moment of the experience itself, and I think we are about to do it. I'm not saying "we" as Lionhead, I'm saying us as an industry.

We have to take the big heavy rulebook we've been writing in blood over the last 20 years, and put it into a mincer. Then say, what if we were starting from scratch? What if we were inventing this now, with all the tools we've got, Live, Controllers, the fact that screens are really big now? What if we were going to do that again and what would we end up with? That's what we're trying to do here.