fable posts

There are star-studded voice acting casts, and then there's the cast of Fable 3. This developer diary goes in-depth into the process of recording dialogue, and in the process showcases some very well-known names attached to Lionhead's newest project. Our favorites of the list are three of the funniest comedic actors around: John Cleese, Simon Pegg, and Stephen Fry. Stephen Fry is a returning actor, as he is once again voicing Reaver (a character from the second game), but the other two are new to the series. In general, this diary is a good introduction to the cast of characters and actors behind the story in Fable 3, and that's always fine by us.

Last Friday, we gave our picks for the best PC games of the last decade. But where there's a ying, there's also a yang. While there were plenty of PC game titles that met or even surpassed expectations, there were also games that, while not necessarily all bad, simply didn't live up to the hype.

Big Download has picked 10 PC games that were released in the last decade that, for a variety of reasons, ended up being massive disappointments. They serve as lessons that even the most talented game developers can sometimes create flawed games.

Editor's Note: Steven Wong contributed greatly to this article

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 Most Disappointing PC Games of The Decade (2000-2009).

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]

Identity is a fluid concept, particularly in today's Internet Age. When your self is displayed by an avatar whose image is infinitely mutable, the potential for mischief is great -- as is the potential for true representation. Some people use their avatars as masks to hide behind, while others see them as a means to finally show the world what their real selves are like.

In games, however, there is often a more limited set of choices available to the player. Massively multiplayer online games offer a wide range of options, and non-MMOs usually have far fewer. When you're playing a first-person shooter, for example, regardless of the ostensible story, you are the gun, not an actual character with a personality. The question is, then, does it matter if you don't get to play as yourself? How important is the concept of identity in a game?

Ahh, the tyranny of the blank page. For a writer, there is nothing more daunting than staring at an empty space with a deadline looming. Yet that's what wordsmiths do every day -- dig deep to find the content, the signal amidst the noise. However, it's one thing to sit and write a novel, where it's just the writer and the story, with the audience taking a static, non-participatory role. When one writes for a video game, the audience becomes an active part of the experience, and the writer must take that into account.

Yet often, the player merely sits through the story portion of a game, frequently told through cutscenes. Even those games which tout branching storylines with multiple endings do little more than offer closed choices, offering only the illusion of audience control. Are there any real choices to be had to affect a game's plot? Do narratives merely interrupt gameplay? What exactly is the role of story in video games?