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Development Info Peter Molyneux wants you to think about death

Diogo Ribeiro

Erudite
Joined
Jun 23, 2003
Messages
5,706
Location
Lisboa, Portugal
Tags: Lionhead Studios

<a href=http://www.loinhead.net/>Loinhead</a>, a fansite with a terrible pun for a name, scored an interview with Peter Molyneux of <a href=http://www.lionhead.com/>Lionhead Studios</a>. Among other things, the interview discusses some elements for their upcoming Fable 2:<blockquote><b>Peter Molyneux</b:mad:...)what I’m saying is that it’s worthy of, you know - if I could sit down with you now, which I’d love to do, I’d love to show you - in fact, we might do this in the communities, is to, well, considering the idea of publishing to the communities the prototype engines that we used to try and prove it, and those are all in what we call whitebox, so they don’t look particularly nice but they play well, and see what the communities think of all that stuff. But you know, as I said it was a risky thing, there’s more bits of that combat that come together than I am talking about. I’ve talked about proximity-based context-based combat, confined combat, I think I’ve talked about one-button combat and one-blow kills, I haven’t in any way talked about … and this is something that no-one has ever heard, this word, there’s one thing about combat I haven’t spoken about which is a very interesting area - and, one word? - One word. And it’s death. Death. Think about it. Think about death. Think about what computer games do with death. What have they done with death? What does every game do, what does just about every game do with death?
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<b>Interviewer</b>:Try to ignore it, simplify it?
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<b>Peter Molyneux</b>:Well, it’s even worse than that, you die, and you go back in time twenty minutes to do the same thing over again. That’s fine if I’m playing a platformer, not so fine if you’re doing an RPG game. So I haven’t talked about death, there’s another thing which I haven’t talked at all about which is another word that you’re gonna hear me use - which I’m not gonna talk about - it’s another big thing.</blockquote>
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Whatever it is, you can rest assured he will strive for innovation:
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<blockquote><b>Peter Molyneux</b>: Firstly, what’s Lionhead stand for?
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<br>
<b>Interviewer</b>: Innovation.
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<b>Peter Molyneux</b>: Innovation. Innovation, and we more than ever before have said, we must make landmark games, we must make landmark, things that are landmark in the history of gaming, so you know that it’s gonna have innovation in it, and we’re going to strive further than ever.</blockquote>I'm glad he's a shining example of keeping in touch with reality.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com">RPG Watch</A>
 

Oarfish

Prophet
Joined
Sep 3, 2005
Messages
2,511
Let me guess, he's going to streamline out the death, Prey style. Either that or he has found the philosophers stone while visiting the elephant graveyard at the source of the Nile.
 

AZ

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
467
He is raving like a lunatic old man. He has not made a good game since Dungeon Keeper.
 

obediah

Erudite
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
5,051
Two bad my grandpa died, for that last 10 years he was prime Codex interview material.

"Credit Cards!! Back in my day....Who am I?!??!?!"
 

The_Pope

Scholar
Joined
Nov 15, 2005
Messages
844
Innovation means coming up with a mediocre twist on an old idea then fucking it up in PR.
 

Section8

Cipher
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Wow, it's like Molyneux writes something fairly sensible, and then feeds it through a language parser loop including everything from gizoogle to babelfish and then posts the end result. So much jibberjabber around a rare nugget of wisdom that ought to be conventional.
 

aries202

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Joined
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Messages
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Location
Denmark, Europe
I don't get it - I don't get why Molyneux wants to make RPG games more like SIMS games.

And if I hear one more developer say 'innovation' I don't know what I will do... Innovation is a buzz-word nowadays...and everyone apparently wants to innovate...without defining what 'innovation' is.

Usually innovation is just made up to hype some 'new' feature that has very little to do with 'newness' ---- but has everything to do with
taken an old idea and present it into a new context...
 

Monolith

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Mar 7, 2006
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München
I really fear what that stupid fucker will come up with next. And obviously he hasn't played Planescape, Grim Fandango and some rouge-likes. Or doesn't consider them games. Either way, he should come over to the codex. We already had some discussions about death in RPGs.
 

Section8

Cipher
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Messages
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Wardenclyffe
I seemed to have missed that. Care to enlighten?

Basically his line on death always being an instant end of game/reload instance. Sure, it's surrounded by stupid shit, like the expectation that in an RPG of all things you'd spend 20 minutes doing exactly the same thing because you died, but the criticism that most games treat death in exactly the same way when there are so many more interesting methods to explore is valid.
 

galsiah

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hiciacit said:
I seemed to have missed that. Care to enlighten?
Thinking about the pros/cons/mechanics/implications/effects... of PC/NPC death is a good idea. Too often it's included with nothing more than a "You die, you lose, you reload. What else is there?", or excluded with a "Losing and reloading is dull. Everyone will miraculously survive in our game.".

Just raising it as something to think about doesn't provide any amazing/innovative solutions - but it is something to think about. He just manages to sound rather too much like a used-car salesman on LSD in his exposition.
 

Ladonna

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
10,995
So, he plans to do something 'Innovative' in regards to death?

Thats nice. Real nice. Maybe one day he will actually move beyond the planning and actually do something with all these wonderful plans.

You never know...
 

Texas Red

Whiner
Joined
Sep 9, 2006
Messages
7,044
Ladonna said:
So, he plans to do something 'Innovative' in regards to death?

Thats nice. Real nice. Maybe one day he will actually move beyond the planning and actually do something with all these wonderful plans.

You never know...

He was very innovative in regards of trying to do the betterest RPG without any dialogs.
 

hiciacit

Liturgist
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Aug 25, 2005
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I've been there
Section8 said:
Basically his line on death always being an instant end of game/reload instance. Sure, it's surrounded by stupid shit, like the expectation that in an RPG of all things you'd spend 20 minutes doing exactly the same thing because you died, but the criticism that most games treat death in exactly the same way when there are so many more interesting methods to explore is valid.

galsiah said:
Thinking about the pros/cons/mechanics/implications/effects... of PC/NPC death is a good idea. Too often it's included with nothing more than a "You die, you lose, you reload. What else is there?", or excluded with a "Losing and reloading is dull. Everyone will miraculously survive in our game.".

Just raising it as something to think about doesn't provide any amazing/innovative solutions - but it is something to think about. He just manages to sound rather too much like a used-car salesman on LSD in his exposition.


Ah yes, I just didn't see it as a 'rare nugget of wisdom', because quite frankly, I don't really care. I mean, it's a game...sometimes you loose, that's part of the fun (i.e. trying not to loose). And whenever people tend to start thinking about this kind of stuff, you end up with riculous "Losing and reloading is dull. Everyone will miraculously survive in our game." a la NWN2 or that incredably lame thing that they in Prey, for instance. For all I care, there is nothing wrong with having to reload once in a while because you had your ass handed to you.

A little advice for Mr. Molyneux: there are more urgent things to attend to. Like taking your medication on time.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Monolith said:
I really fear what that stupid fucker will come up with next. And obviously he hasn't played Planescape, Grim Fandango and some rouge-likes. Or doesn't consider them games. Either way, he should come over to the codex. We already had some discussions about death in RPGs.

He should play Torment, a good example of how death can be handled.
 

galsiah

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Dec 12, 2005
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Montreal
hiciacit said:
I mean, it's a game...sometimes you lose, that's part of the fun...
Sure - it can be fun, or it can be annoying/frustrating/dull. It depends on context. Sometimes the obvious option is the best, but it's important to realize that it's not the only option.

For example, some other possibilities:
PS:T style "death" (or similar).
Death as a journey to some other "plane".
A game context where death never occurs - e.g. some inherently non-violent scenario.
A party-based game without any one major character, with new characters always available.
A party-based game where heroic deaths and meaningful sacrifice enhance the fame/honour/respect/trust... of the group, with beneficial consequences.
A party-based game set over hundreds of years, where individual death is inevitable, and the manner of death is all that varies.
A game where the player regularly switches character, to see the world and act from different perspectives. The death of any one character isn't a loss, since the player only shares the goals of an individual while he's playing that character.
etc.
etc.

Of course these aren't necessarily better than the obvious "Die = Lose+Reload", but they are options. Not to see/consider them is unnecessarily restrictive. To see them as some amazing leap forward is also daft - they're simply options.
New options are great, so long as they aren't chosen over old methods simply for novelty's sake.
 

Mayday

Augur
Joined
Feb 14, 2007
Messages
1,000
Location
Poland
Hey guys: check this out, galsiah's idea gone wild.

You start the game in a world on the brink of a cataclysm and your PC starts to work on stopping it from happening. Then the PC dies, because, well, that happens. So you reroll a character but instead of starting the game from the beginning, you find your previous PC's journal and are given the option to continue his work.

This eliminates three problems:
-the unrealism of going through a very difficult story without any deaths
-the unrealism of having a superpowerful PC
-the bore after you've maxed out your stats (your new chars constantly train, besides, training in such a game would be less meaningful, you'd have to choose more appropriate PCs instead).
 

aries202

Erudite
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Messages
1,066
Location
Denmark, Europe
Torment really did have an innovate (god, how I hate that word, but anyway...) way of dealing with the main character's death in the game. Dying would benefit you sometimes...as you would remember... (i think one of your stats or abilities raised a bit everytime you died??)

A new game, either the broken hourglass or another game transports you to a different realm when the main character (you) die. Also very innovative.... but maybe not a as marketable...
 

jiujitsu

Cipher
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
1,444
Project: Eternity
"Fable 2 will have this this and this."

"Thank you for buying Fable 2."

"Now, there's something you should know... It doesn't have any of the things I said it would... we didn't have time or budget or the desire to implement them. Sorry, it won't happen again." :cool:
 

Donkey

Novice
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
5
I want to think about Peter Molyneuxs death...
 

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