fable-2 posts

Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux used to be a PC game developer with titles like Dungeon Keeper, Black and White and others under his command. Now he's moved away from PC gaming with Xbox/Xbox 360 titles like Fable and Fable II. Yet in a recent speech he named five games he felt were "revolutionary" and lo and behold two of them are PC exclusives.

According to That Video Game Blog, Molyneux made the comments during the annual BAFTA Video Games Lecture. One PC exclusive revolutionary game was Dune 2, considered to be the first ever RTS game. The other PC game exclusive is World of Warcraft which he said had a ""carrot dangling" design that made the player want to continue to play and level up. Now if we can just get Molyneux to be interested in PC games again.

Our audience loves demos for games. They get excited when they learn that a demo of their upcoming favorite game is going to be released and are disappointed and even angry when it's announced a demo for an upcoming title won't be released.

But don't tell that to Lionhead Studios founder and game design legend Peter Molyneux. In a new interview with Edge, he states, "Now, I hate demos. I think demos are the death knell of experiences." He feels that previous demos for his own games "completely ruined the game, given too much to the player, or they've confused people." His preferred method is to "give away the very first 45 minutes of the game, completely free."

And in fact that is exactly what he is doing on the Xbox 360 console as their most recently game, the RPG Fable II, is being re-released as a series of downloadable episodes with the first one being released this week for free. Certainly other PC games have offered gamers to play the first few levels for free but should that be the only method for giving a taste of the final version?

There have been rumors for months that Lionhead Studios was planning to release a PC port of their acclaimed Xbox 360 fantasy RPG Fable II. The original Fable did indeed get a PC version about a year after the original Xbox version came out.

But it looks like a PC version for Fable II is still just a rumor for now. According to a post on the game's official message board by Lionhead's community manager "Woody", "We're not working on a PC version of Fable II... If this changes we'll make sure you know about it on our website(s)" While that statement doesn't rule out such a port in the future it does seem to say that it's not currently in active development.

[Via Shacknews]

2008 was a great year for PC gamers but it might have been a better year if some of the best console games of last year had also been ported over to the PC. We know, we know...some console ports are better than others but still there's a lot of potential in having many of 2008's best games come to our side of the fence.

2009 will see console titles like Mirror's Edge, Saints Row 2 and Burnout Paradise come to the PC but what if other such game also made the jump. Big Download has our picks for console exclusives that should be considered for the PC such as Gears of War 2 and many others.

Click on the image above to continue reading 2008 console games that should be PC games.

The folks at UK based Splash Damage continue to expand their team members. The Enemy Territory: Quake Wars creators have brought in new members from Ubisoft, BioWare and other developers this year. Today they have just announced they have hired Richard Ham from Lionhead to become their new creative director.

Ham was previously the lead designer at Lionhead for their just completed Xbox 360 RPG Fable 2. His previous credits include leading development of the Syphon Filter series for the original Playstation series along with games like The Movies and Fable: The Lost Chapters. Splash Damage is currently working on an unnamed multi-platform game for publisher Bethesda Softworks.

It's Thanksgiving so what the heck? Time for another rumor story. This one comes from IGN who state that a German gaming web site have posted up claims that Fable II, the Xbox 360 "exclusive" fantasy RPG from developer Lionhead Studios, will be coming to the PC platform as soon as February 2009.

This isn't a huge stretch to imagine since the original Fable debuted on the original Xbox console and then was released on the PC with new content a year later. Fable II has gotten solid reviews since its October release and more importantly massive sales. It was the best selling console title in the US for the month of October according to the NPD Group. So far the game's publisher Microsoft has been mum on any plans of a PC version.

This is an argument that has raged since the invention of the pulp novel. Which is better, Science Fiction, or Fantasy? And by better, I mean which provides a more engaging experience? Normally, this is purely a matter of personal taste, and to a lesser extent, the actual quality of the story being told. When were talking about video games, however, a new element is introduced: mechanics.

Which genre affords better game mechanics? Is it more fun to sling spells around, or raise hell with heavy machinery? Would you rather be a wizard or an alien? Do you feel more immersion when playing in a universe where magic works, or do you have to have rational physics to believe in a given reality? Let's take a look and see what the real differences are, if any.