Fable: up to release and nostalgia...

The tenth edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is over, Los Angeles had its yearly load of gamers, journies, developers and publishers, nutters, fluffers and everything else that came with the biggest games convention in the world. Lionhead Studios arrived on Saturday and Sunday; we were staying downtown L.A. I slept little, very little and so did everyone else who was there. The longest I've slept that week was most probably on the flight back to the UK. It was my first time - both at E3 and the United States. This is yet another story about it..

B.C. - where cavemen live!

All games that are currently in development were being shown, although B.C. was only to be seen behind closed doors. I attended one presentation that Joe Rider and Alex Cullum were giving in suite number two, and also got a private one back in the hotel room. It's looking like a really cool game and its huge draw distance is just amazing, there are a lot of beautiful environments still to be added. So I doubt we can expect B.C. in 2004, it looks more likely to be somewhere in 2005. The gameplay itself is all about quality – there are literally thousands of things do to in this world, stuff to mess around with and places to explore. BC’s engine is totally fabulous – I can’t wait to see more of this one.

LHtimes: What have you mainly been doing at E3 this year?
Joe Rider: At E3 04, Intrepid was demo-ing BC behind closed doors on the Microsoft stand. The game was not show floor ready (only imminent prerelease titles were show floor this year), although the build was actually playable. We demoed BC to up to 30 print and web media journalists at one time, in a good size room with tiers of seating.

LHtimes: Any surprises, great news, announcements, also about your project B.C.?
Joe Rider: The show went very well for us, we already shown the game the two years previously so it was important that we built on opportunities we had made in the previous shows, this year the focus of the demo was all about the gameplay and in regard to the articles that have appeared to date, our audience took away exactly what we intended.

LHtimes: How did you feel about E3 as a show and your presentations?
Joe Rider: In parallel to our press demos, it was important that we built confidence in our publisher, Microsoft. We have a very tight deadline to finish BC for XBox1 publication and we were successful in demonstrating to Microsoft that we have the capability to get the job done. In regard to the show in general, this year it was slicker and more professional than ever. There was a jewel in each genre, and a lot more interest from external media, such as film and print. There was much less of the booth babe type publicity and a concentration on the products - that for the most part, sold themselves. Lionhead had a great show, the games really stood out from the competition in terms of innovation and creativity – the Movies was particularly well represented. We came feeling really positive and were grateful to have been given the opportunity to show again and experience probably the best E3 to date.

Black&White 2 - Are you a god of peace or a god of war?

Jonty Barnes, Peter Molyneux and Ben Sebire were showing Black&White 2; Jonty and Peter in a suite at Electronic Arts to press and Ben on the booth of Ati. I got a presentation before the show by Jonty. If there is only one thing you can say about Black and White 2 then it's about the beauty of the world and the most amazing lighting and other effects that this game is using. I call it almost photo realistic.

Tim going beserk on Ben...

The detail and quality let alone are making this an incredible game to see and play. I was also very briefly introduced to “Morphing Gameplay”; the game will morph itself into something different, depending completely on how you play; "are you a god of peace or war?" And my god, do you feel like a god this time over the world and its people. The animations of the creatures were almost just unreal. We will release them during the following weeks on www.bwgame.com! Look at the picture that Jonty made of me when I was watching what he was showing me and understanding why it was the coolest. A mountain no longer looks like a pyramid with textures on it; it actually is a mountain. And you're its god.

As always, E3 came with a vast amount of coverages. Here are some selections of interesting articles and coverages of the show; GameSpot which focuses on the creatures in B&W 2, Boomtown wrote a preview after a private demonstration by Peter Molyneux, GameSpy has a typical preview here, with all the information from the presentation they had, including new screenshots.

IGN focuses on everything new they've learned from the presentation, which is quite a lot. Much more interesting then reading the same stuff over and over again. Also Planet Black and White got their hands on the game and bring you a preview and coverage.

LHtimes: How did you feel about E3 2004?
Jonty Barnes: I did not get to see much of the show, but I felt it was a great success for Lionhead. It’s hard to have a feel for E3 this year, as I did not step outside of the ‘B&W2 world’ as I spent the whole time doing demos in the Electronic Arts private meeting rooms. I feel…. exhausted.

LHtimes: What have you mainly been doing at E3 this year?
Jonty Barnes: I spent the whole time demonstrating the game to members of the press from around the world. It was great fun, and really great to show the good work that the team have achieved, instead of the useful focus which is what is still to be done!

LHtimes: Any surprises, great news, announcements, also about your project Black&White 2?
Jonty Barnes: It was rewarding to reveal the morphing gameplay, the way the games focus changes into more of a god game if you are a good god as a player, and more of an RTS game for the player who likes to create armies and go out and conquer. People seemed to get excited about this aspect of B&W2.

LHtimes: Please tell your community a funny anecdote about this year’s E3!
Jonty Barnes: It never ceases to amaze me the humor in the unexpected behavior of the Creature. At the start of the show my Creature was this cool cat, ready to demonstrate to the world his great intelligence and leadership prowess. By the last demo he was an abused wreck, with an enthusiasm to throw chickens like bowling balls at people, and a strange focus of farting on fields…

The Movies - ACTION!

Gary Carr, Peter Molyneux and Adrian Moore showed, together with Activision's people, The Movies on the booth of Activision and at the press conferences. There is not much more I can tell you about The Movies and how fun it is and the many amazing features that are talked about and that are actually in there. Remember The Movies is a game, but apart from that it's also a really cool Movie Making Tool!

The Movies won or was a finalist for the following awards at E3; Gamespot: Best Strategy Game Finalist, Gamespy E3 2004 Awards #14 and IGN: Most Innovative Design on PC, Most Innovative Design Runner Up, Best PC Simulation of the Show Runner Up.

Gary, a man, a legend.

LHtimes: How did you feel about E3 2004? Gary Carr: Completely knackered!! It was probably the best E3 I’ve attended. Lionhead of course had The Movies on show. Apart from the amazing reaction to the game, it was also great to have 3 other LH games fighting for the limelight. For a relatively small UK developer, to have 4 AAA games at E3 was such a buzz!! I also thought the standard of games in general at E3 was much better this year.

LHtimes: What have you mainly been doing at E3 this year? Gary Carr: Man the stand, demo to hundreds of press, industry peeps and punters. We had 4 pods open to the public and I was 1 of the 8 demo crew. LHtimes: Any surprises, great news, announcements, also about your project The Movies? Gary Carr: We won best simulation of E3 by Gamespy (one of the biggest game sites out there). IGN have also given us an award but we don’t know what it is yet. We also have a number of nominations pending. LHtimes: Please tell your community a funny/sad/… anecdote about this year’s E3! Gary Carr: We stayed at the Downtown Standard Hotel during E3...all I can say is that if you do get a chance to attend E3 in the future, make sure you check into the Standard, just to get the full E3 experience!! That place made an old man feel very happy.

 

Fable - for every choice there is...

Peter and The Movies and CNN.

Last but not least; Fable. Firstly let me say the boys from Microsoft Game studios did an amazing job at demoing, it inspired me. Remember it was my first time showing a game on a showfloor, but I really enjoyed it. From day one to day three there had been a queue of people lining up to play it, non stop. Some people didn't want to give the controller back to me; others just stood there and kept watching people play and demo. Fable was also being shown on the Hero Wall on the Xbox booth, next to Doom 3, Jade Empire and Forza. This speaks for itself, I think.

Apart from some minor personal dislikes about certain parts of the game there were mainly positive and surprised reactions. Of course the question to get completely rid of halos and horns was mentioned a lot. The majority of people – who didn’t judge it from a subjective point of view – really liked it for what the demo was. Most of the promises that have been made throughout the years have been met, and that’s an incredible achievement in its own right. No one game can hope for universal appeal – but I am pretty confident the majority of gamers will really love and appreciate this little jewel. Fable is addictive and you get sucked into it straight away.

Peter Molyneux’s time at E3 this year was mainly taken by The Movies and Black&White 2, since Fable was available on the showfloor and therefore required little of his time. The game speaks for itself!

Fable was big at E3!

I would also like to ask anyone who played Fable at E3 to send me their personal feedback; what did and didn’t you like about it? This information will be given to the team and could be used to make last minute changes to the game providing they are not too difficult to implement!

With the public appearance of Fable a lot of new information became available for the different communities out there; it would take too long to cover every issue that was raised to talk but there are two queries that came up frequently that I would like to mention.

First, gaining experience is done in two ways. When you kill an opponent, green orbs will be dropped to the floor. By holding the right trigger on your game pad, these orbs will be sucked up by your hero, or you just run to them to pick them up. The second way to gain experience in a certain skill, spell or whatever is by using it. Fighting a lot with heavy weapons will give you more muscles and strength. Using a lot of magic will give you more Will Power and such. This is very important, as it means your character still develops completely accordingly to the way you play. This is a promise that was made a few years ago by the team.

There weren't many boothbabes this year - but this girl drew my attention for some reason.

There are several reasons for the experience orbs. It may seem a bit strange but it's in the game and makes it fun; so you have to become good at getting all the experience orbs, it's not just a matter of killing an opponent, in order to get the maximum experience out of it you also need to make sure you get all the orbs. If you really dislike this feature there is still the R-trigger to hold. You can also leave the experience orbs and get your combat multiplier up first, before absorbing them, that way they will give you more experience as you go at it, but if you get hit, your multiplier will go down and so will the experience gained from the orbs. It makes the combat experience much more reliant on skill.

This is what Dene Carter, Designer on Fable has to say about the issue; “Actually, we provided both methods of empowering your character simultaneously. You can earn 'generic' experience, and then there's the experience you earn from 'just doing it' - using magic, combat and skill. The reason we did it this way was because (actually having the game here and playing it rather than sitting with it in our heads and merely imagining it) we found that if we didn't balance out the experience in some way, people got locked into playing one character type or another within an hour of play; if you started concentrating on swords the world began changing (e.g. the invisible creature-birthing bits you guys will never see!) and before you knew it, using your sad-assed unpracticed spells got you killed.

We thought this sucked.

So we balanced it so that you get bigger rewards for concentrating on one skill or another, but it doesn't make the game lock you into one path forever.

The end.”

The second thing I would like to mention is the supposed downscale of Fable. Some people are saying the visual quality of the game isn’t as good as it used to be, as seen in the early screenshots. Believe me people; Fable has so much detail in it, including all the lighting and shadows, it’s certainly something that hasn’t been seen before in any Xbox game to date. Apart from very lush and beautiful out- and indoor locations, there is also a huge simulation of the whole world and all its inhabitants and the frame rate is stable, running in at least 30 fps. Everyone who has seen Fable running at E3 confirmed it looks amazing – but there is only so much a screenshot can show. Some lucky folks got to get their hands on Fable at E3 - could I ask one favour please don’t reveal too much about the story as this could spoil the surprise for the majority of people who weren’t as (un)lucky as you !!

Holly, Sam and E3!

Aaaah, Holly...

I gave some interviews for television and the most interesting one must have been with a Swedish programme; while a certain girl called Holly who was hugging me, I tried to answer the questions asked by the journalist. Eventually I ended up answering with “Blablablablabla” as this girl kept on stroking my face. And other parts of my body! Quite a surreal experience!

E3 2004 in my opinion was a great show, and I am sure many people will have felt the same way. I didn’t get a chance to check any other games out, but then again I was there for Fable and Lionhead Studios…

Sam, Community Pet Lionhead Studios