Eurogamer Expo Sessions: Peter Molyneux talks Fable III

They do, they do. And it's kind of similar-ish to our timeframe. They started in the Dark Ages, then they did Elizabethan times and that's when Fable II was, and then they moved to the cusp of the industrial revolution with King George, then World War I. That's not a clue to what Fable IV will be, by the way.

Well it's very interesting. Certainly with Fable II, more people who are playing it are not core gamers. Most of the people are core gamers, but there's a lot of partners of core gamers that really enjoy it, and a lot of women who enjoy it absolutely for sure. Some women are fanatical about it. There's this one family in America that lives like Fable people. They dress like Fable people.

Yes. The husband and the wife and the children all dress like people from Albion.

[Laughs] I don't know. They've got a dog. Apparently they got a dog when they played Fable II. I'm just really terrified what's going to happen to them after Fable III. It could go horribly wrong. It could be a really negative press story - it's all lovely and sweet after Fable II but after Fable III I'm not so sure.

I do love doing that, although it does make the PR people very nervous. I love just watching people play. I think that's the best thing I can do - to see whether people are excited or bored, and how quickly they get bored is a really fascinating thing.

You have to look at what people are playing and what they're doing. Even noticing how people are sitting when they're playing is really instructive when you're trying to balance and pace a game.

I want them to be sitting back, I want them to be completely relaxed, but then when I offer a choice, the ideal thing is if they just drop the controller to their lap and just pause for a second, because that means they're not just reacting - "Well obviously I'll choose A or B" - because choices aren't about that, they're about thinking about what something means, because if it whirls round in your head a bit then you're obviously a little bit more emotional.

The way it works is rather like Foursquare, where you can go to a location and you can check in at that location. When you're actually registering in Kingmaker you get put onto the side of the Loyalists or the Rebels, and depending on how many people check into a location, that location then becomes controlled by either the people who support the King or the people who are rebelling against the King. On the day of launch we're going to see who would win the battle and who controls what areas of the UK.

That's a really cool little game, but the other cool thing is that every time you check in you earn Fable gold. So you've got another motivation to do that, so when you come to Fable III you've already got hundreds of gold. If you pre-order Fable III - and this is us being blatant about this - you multiply that gold by two.

Yeah, that's a lovely feature isn't it? We're hoping it's going to be in the final version. I'm afraid you don't get anything for that - that was all the King's gold, which Logan has squandered.

Yep. Exactly. We should have actually shown him spending all the gold you made.

Well we used to go down to the local café at six in the morning and have a really greasy breakfast in the old days when it was very clear cut when you were finally finished, but the finish always drags on a little bit. There's always other languages to do. But we are having a really lovely super-duper launch party, which should come as soon after release as we can do it, so that will be a great celebration. For me personally, not having to fly all around the world would be great.

Yes, that's fantastic.