The Movies On Air’s Roger also got some interviews with Molyneux and Carter and aired them a few days back. (TMOA is organisation of The Movies-related internet radio shows.) There are some interesting things here; Carter and Molyneux have different opinions on whether or not the Fable engine was used as the basis for the Fable 2 engine (Carter: from scratch, Molyneux: every line altered), a lot of new creatures in Fable 2, how much polish will go into Fable 2 (lots) and how much attention they each pay to the forums. Download the show it was broadcast in here - Dene Carter is at the end of part 2, Molyneux near the beginning of part 3. Possibly most interesting is that recently Lionhead have been pushing The Movies community a lot more in their news updates.

Roger and Dene Carter

Roger ~ Right, this is Roger, reporting on behalf of The Movies On Air radio, and with me I’ve got Dene Carter. Is that right? Yes, that’s it. Hello! Right, I’m gonna ask you a few questions here, about basically, Fable in particular, and seeing what he knows about it, and what he’s prepared to tell us, which is more important. Has the Fable engine been radically changed?

Dene Carter ~ The Fable engine’s been completely rewritten from scratch, absolutely new engine, all the code that we developed in Fable 1 all gone away and completely replaced, so we do something which allows us to keep the Fable feel and density of the foliage and such, but no, this is completely rewritten.

Very exciting indeed. So how’d you see Fable 2’s impact on the Xbox market?

On the Xbox market? Or do you mean Xbox 360 specifically? We’re very much hoping it sells machines to be honest, one of the things we’re very proud of with Fable 1 was we created really beautiful naturalistic environments which didn’t quite look like any other RPG and we think they were highly evocative, very much hoping that with Fable 2 we’ll be able to create something which when people see a tiny little section of a screenshot they’ll be able to say, wow, that must be incredibly beautiful.

In other words, standing out in the same way as the yellow people in the Simpsons?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We like to think that Fable’s been very very stylistically specific and, yeah. Yeah, we’re very proud of it.

I must say with what I’ve seen so far of it, I’d have to agree with it - that it is very individual. Can you tell us about some of the new things that are going to be in Fable 2?

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we’re going to be attempting to do this time is to make you much more emotionally involved in the story. That’s done by a variety of means really. Facial animation, of course, being one of the standard things we’ll be doing, but more importantly for us I think is trying to make sure that our NPCs, our non-playable characters, our villagers, the other people in the world are all reacting much more in a realistic and emotive manner. So these won’t be throwaway characters, who you interact with and then do something horrible to and completely forget about you. You aren’t going to get away with murdering somebody’s family for example and have them slap you on the back and say “Oh, nice to see you there” [in a scottish accent] or anything like that, this time. I mean, these people will genuinely hate you if you screw them over. Alright. It should be quite interesting.

So there’s going to be quite a bit of voice acting, and the Movies community is going to be interested in that, can you tell us a little bit about the voice-acting side of it?

It’s going to be absolutely enormous this time, because of course, as I said, we’re trying put a lot more emotions into things. It’s not just in the case of characters saying stock lines, we’ve got to have lots and lots of variants for all the different voices in the world. It’s a larger world this time as well, so loads loads more variety in terms of sheer volume and the work of creating that is going to be absolutely enormous.

One question which I’m pretty sure is going to be a no, and this is one from my own personal curiosity, will Fable 2 or any other Lionhead games be released on the Nintendo Wii? Oooh, that’s a very interesting one. No comment at the present I’m afraid. Right, okay, yeah, ’cause personally I can see if Fable 2 is the progression I would expect from the original Fable, it is perfectly suited for the Wii. But that’s my personal opinion. And I’m sure I’ll talk more about this on the show and bore everybody to tears with it. And this is one listeners will understand and appreciate, and will totally befuddle you. Coke or Pepsi?

Errm, probably Pepsi. You’re the man! Yeah, because we are Pepsi fans. So picked the right one, yeah! In fact, I’m a recent convert myself, was a coke man when the show first started and I have been converted. So that’s good. That’s right, they’re gonna love you. Have you ever read around the Lionhead forums at all, the community?

I used to a great deal, and, when I sort of have a lighter moment when I’m a little less heavily worked. I tend to have a look and at least try and see what people are saying or doing, it’s always nice to know if people think we’re moving on the right track or not.

Do you recognise any of the names or faces, or do they have to be there a long time for you to recognise them on the forums?

There’s quite a few people I recognise from the very very early days, people who have stuck with us for years and years and years, as I said I’ve been up to my eyeballs recently so I’ve no idea if the old guys have moved on or are doing the same thing or not.

So that means you must be doing a very good job for the company then. I certainly hope so. Do you feel that since the Microsoft buyout and involvement, has it made a lot of difference to how Lionhead operates? In terms of creative freedom - not in the slightest. Microsoft were always immensely good fun to work with, and they’ve remained so. I think it’s nice to have the facilities, if you look around the offices now for example our facilities are really really nice, I think that everybody feels very secure that they’re not, their career progressions and everything else are, all those sort of things are quite hard to handle in a very small company also trying to create great games as well. For now we can kind of forget about all that stuff and just get on with making great games which we’re very grateful for. Yeah, so, there was a lot of discussion amongst the community at the time, it’s the kind of thing I would have expected a lot of people to be negative about in the community but surprisingly they weren’t. Basically what you’ve just said about getting on with it, people said yeah, big company, big money, you can get on and do your job now, be creative and do what you’re good at. Which is designing games. I know this is a really early stage and you may not know the answer to it and if you do you may not even be able to comment on it. But do you know if there’ll be a Fable 3? I couldn’t possibly comment at the moment, but I’m sure you can guess the answer I would like to say. That’s right, yeah, I mean, as you can see there’s a lot of speculation. I’m going to ask you a Movies-related question because it’s related to our community, I know it’s not an area you know a lot about but could you comment on whether there would ever be a possibility of further expansions for The Movies? I can’t comment on that at all, I’m certainly not a member of the team, I think they’d probably kill me if I said anything about it. Okay, that could be interesting but I won’t push you because I don’t want your blood on my hands. I think it covers most of what I can ask today. So I’d like to say thank you very much and thanks for being on the show!

Peter and Roger Molyneux

Roger ~ Right, here we are again at Lionhead Studios. I’m here with Peter Molyneux, and we’re going to be talking a few questions about Lionhead etcetera. The first question I’m sure most people will know. After I’ve received an introduction from him. Hello to you Peter and welcome to the show. Thank you very much, I’m looking forward to the questions actually. The first question I’ll be asking is in relation to The Movies, I’m not sure if you can answer this yet but is there any possibility of a chance that there may, at some stage in the future, be any more expansion packs for The Movies?

Well you’re right to guess that Lionhead’s really focused on doing Fable at the moment, that means we haven’t got enough time for The Movies stuff, but we’re still investigating The Movies stuff, it’s still a fascinating thing, the community is incredibly vibrant around it, there’s still movies being posted, you know, I’m an optimist about these things and I would say, you know, personally I’d love to see it continue, but there’s no immediate plans for it to be so.

Okay, well that is good news anyway, because that’s not a definite no and that we like. Have you ever had much - I know you’ve got an incredibly busy schedule to say the least - but have you had a chance to actually watch any of the movies?

I keep my eye on the Movies community, we all get together here and have a meeting once every two weeks where we just go over what’s happening with Lionhead-related things and quite often we all look at some of the movies being posted and what’s going on in the communities and I can tell you the fascinating thing about The Movies is, it is the most vibrant community, it outshines all the other communities put together actually.

Have you ever had the chance to listen to TMOA radio? I haven’t, I must admit. That’s the busy schedule. Yeah, I know a lot of the other staff have here because I’ve spoken to several other people here today and they’ve said, yes, we’ve heard you on the show. Which is really nice. But I know that a lot of people are very very busy. A few questions about Fable 2 now - has the Fable 2, or should I say Fable engine changed radically?

Every single line of code has been realtered for Fable 2 from the Fable 1 version. Every, absolutely everything’s changed. And that’s not too surprising really, it’s on the 360, it’s a next-generation machine, one of the reasons why, actually one of the very good reasons why you’ve not quite seen quite the same number of pictures and screenshots and videos from Lionhead that you would normally see from games that we do is because we got some real ambitions for the engine, there are these layers of engine tech that need to be built up, and we’re on layer forty out of a hundred or something. So we, you know, got a fair number of layers to go before it really starts shining. And that’s important to us, it’s important that it looks good, you know, a lot of people have turned round in the past and said, well, good graphics don’t make a good game. But I’m, you know, good graphics don’t make a bad game. If you want a really, really good game, if you want a landmark game, then you’ve gotta have great graphics and great graphics tech. They’re working really hard at making it.

This version of Fable itself is gonna be a lot more emotion in it, a lot more story-driven than ever before. Is this the way you see videogames generally moving in the future?

I think there could, the question about story and gameplay, the frustrating thing for me is we’ve already said, well, it’s a good game but it’s got a bad story, or it’s a good story but it’s a bad game. What I want is to make a great game and a great story intertwined together. Rather than thinking of the story as being, okay, it’s gonna be in cutscenes. Why shouldn’t it be woven into the game? That’s a bit of a mystery, me saying that. I’d have to show it to you, to give an example, but there is some real tech that we’ve been working on so that I can tell you a story while you’re playing the game, rather than me telling you a story while you’re sitting back and watching some cutscene. And that means that the story can be much more deeper, it can be much more emotional, it can be going on while you are doing things, and that’s giving us opportunities we didn’t anticipate. I mean, I - when I first sort of proposed this as one of the features in Fable 2, it wasn’t one of the big three features, but actually, as it turns out, as we realise what the tech enables us to do, we realise that there’s some things that we’re saying, wow, I haven’t seen that in a game before, and we didn’t realise that. Story is gonna be really important, as it should be. Really, I want people to say when we say, what’s one of the most amazing gaming moments? I want them to think of Fable 2 as one of those. That’s just the ridiculously ambitious person I am.

That sounds great stuff, and very exciting, it’s got my juices flowing, as they say. Is there any new features that we can expect to see in Fable 2 that you can tell us about?

Legally, if you like, probably not, but unofficially, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of work that’s being done on combat, there’s a lot of work being done on the world, and how the world changes, there’s an awful lot of work being done on the story as I’ve already said, there’s a lot of really interesting AI to do with the dog, how he is and what he means to you, how helpful he is to you, all of those things you know I’ve kind of spoken about, there is of course a completely new suite of monsters and things that are going to attack you and bite you; there’s some old favourites in there, we’ve got the balverines there and so are the hobbes, but there’s some creatures you don’t know about.

Good, that sounds good. Have you any idea, do you have any date for when Fable 2 will be released? The nearest year would be good.

Well this is, this is the one question that I get in trouble most about. You’ve walked around the studio now, you’ve seen how much, how many people are involved in planning out how long things are gonna take. What I really want to do with Fable 2, and this is a lesson that I learnt from Black and White and The Movies, I want to finish the game, and then, literally finish it, so you can play it through from start to finish, and then just polish it and polish it and polish it. We’re gonna try and get to that as soon possible, and now for the first time I’ve had the ability to do that. I like that, I can’t tell you what the release date is, ’cause it depends how long the polishing is going to take. Well I like that, that’s good to know because it means the game will be a lot higher quality for a start.

Which leads into another question, directly from that - has the involvement of Microsoft in Lionhead made a lot of difference to the company so far?

Yeah Microsoft has made a difference, and it’s all been good, you know we’re sitting in a, some of the things are obvious, we’re sitting in a really nice office, we’ve got a lovely canteen, chairs are really comfortable, the lighting is right, that’s what they’ve added, but they’ve also said to us very clearly, “Make Fable as good as it can be.” And that’s a fantastic thing. Compared to where we were with Black and White and The Movies, you, we have to get it out otherwise Lionhead doesn’t exist anymore, to be in a place where people say, make it as good as it can be. Obviously that is a value thing, you can’t say okay, in ten years’ time we’ll still be working on it, you gotta be sensible about it, but to have someone turn around and say, are you sure that’s as good as we can be? definitely makes a difference.

This is a question you may not be able to answer, but will any of the Lionhead games be released on the Nintendo Wii in the future? Extremely unlikely I’m afraid. Okay, you can’t say for sure but it’s unlikely. That’s fine. I ask that for my own sake because I’m a big Wii fan. It just, Nintendo, Microsoft is Microsoft and Nintendo is Nintendo, I wouldn’t, it’s possible in the great scale of things but extremely unlikely. Yeah, but it’s a shame anyway, because it would translate, Fable 2 from what I understand would translate perfectly to the Wii, because of the moving of actions, if you’ve got the swords whathaveyou, to actually interact with movement makes a lot of difference. That’s an interesting point, let me ask you a question: okay, you know, with the Wii as you probably know, albeit fantastically innovational in the way that you control the game, is - the way I understand it - not much more powerful than Xbox 1. So would you be happy with Fable 1 - Fable 1 - but with sympathetic control device - or would you prefer Fable 2, with all this innovation? Right, that’s a very good question indeed, I would personally, and I’m probably not the best example in the world, be very happy to have Fable 1 on the Wii. But obviously the further depth of Fable 2, yes, I would rather have that if it came down to the two. The unusual thing about the Wii is that it appeals to an older market I find, it more appeals to people in their forties, fifties, sixties or so, reason which a lot of people have missed is because of the exercise angle, which is why I bought one myself - so I can get there and lose weight! What’s your favourite game on the Wii? To be perfectly honest, the Wii Sports which come bundled with it. I know, Wii Sports is pretty good. Have you played games like Red Steel? I do have Red Steel, I like it very much, I also have Legend of Zelda which I like and it reminds me a little of Fable and that’s why I think it would translate well. The interesting thing about comparing Red Steel with Legend of Zelda is that, I think the swordfighting works really well on Zelda, not sure it works as well on Red Steel. It doesn’t. It’s actually incredibly simple in Zelda, it is and makes you feel cool. I think the Wii is a really interesting machine, I don’t think I could bear - they’re asking me to see in Black and White again, the graphics quality is low, I mean people don’t realise I think you’d never gonna get a Gears of War on Wii, but you know, the controller is exciting. So in other words, if there was a Wii 2 coming out, three or four years down the line, with high-end graphics, it would be a possibility then? Could be. But don’t expect the world to stand still on which controller device it is, that’s all I’d say to you. That you know, I think, everyone looks round at Nintendo and say, “yeah they’ve done a good job there,” but they don’t say “we can’t do it as well.” I expect you’re gonna have versions of different input devices come out very quickly. That’s good, I’m glad to hear that.

Here’s one question which will interest our listeners and be a total mystery to you, but - Coke or Pepsi? Err, it’s Pepsi actually. I really have, I, Coke is, it’s a little bit too sharp, I much prefer Pepsi. Diet or Zero, I’m gonna go for Diet, Zero, despite that they say, it’s not the same. Well that’s good to hear, because we’re big fans of Pepsi on the show, so you win points for that. Well, obviously, you don’t get enough time, but do you get to look around the Lionhead community forums at all, and do you feel you know any of the names on there?

I do, I do look round there, I have posted very very occasionally, the only trouble, and I do have a pseudonym, which I do use occasionally, when I do see a posting which I think, “I’ve got to say something about this,” but I do find that if I use my own name then people start reading so much into it there’s been a few times where, you know, it’s really scared me, ’cause I don’t want, quite often it’ll be late at night and I’m sitting alone, I’ll just think, ah, I’ll have a look at what’s going on in the communities, and then the times over the years I have posted I’ve not really given it a thought and people talk about it too much. I have got a pseudonym that I use occasionally. Glad to hear that, ’cause I’d rather deal with somebody who posted - anonymously - rather than people read into it. Because I know that in the Movies community, there are several people in there who are probably fairly well known in real life, and I would much rather deal with them under their Movies community name rather than who they were in reality. The other thing is, I mean, I - I do, I look on there, I listen, a lot of Fable 2’s design, more than you perhaps think, it’s not possible to say anything, has been really inspired by the communities and what they’ve talked about, and that’s not, what do you like about Fable 2 and what don’t you liked about Fable 2, it’s just looking at what people talk about, and it’s a fantastic source of inspiration, and you lot do make me feel, you know, you keep me honest. What I found was, if you go back a few years, is going on and saying, oh, that’s a good point, it gets overanalysed, that, but I do post a bit. I noticed that - well, many of us noticed that - with the release of Stunts and Effects for The Movies, because there were so many things in there which were discussed in the forums and you put them in the expansion pack. I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the community. That’s very kind of you, thank you very much. Yeah, we do listen, as you’re gonna find, I may even do a interview saying, right at the end of Fable 2, when I can actually reveal all the features, say, well you know, the root of this feature and this feature and this feature came from this post and this post and this post. Wow, wonderful stuff. One more thing: it’s not as quite as black and white as you may think. It’s not people saying, I’ve had a brilliant idea! Or I’ve hated this about Fable 1. What I find is fascinating when people discuss things, and they, you know, when a thread goes in a different direction and you think, wow, people are really finding this fascinating, this thread is really going much further than I thought it would, and that’s when you realise it’s bigger, perhaps there’s something there that’s not quite as obvious.

One final question, because I believe we’re running out of time. Have you been surprised by how much the Movies community has expanded and really become to, become a life of its own?

Of course it’s surprising, it’s fourteen, fifteen, sixteen months after release of the game? And you know, there’s still, people posting, movies online, lots of people discussing it, lots of talk about “I’m gonna do this tour,” and “I’m gonna do that tour” and “I wish I had this” and “I wish I had that” and that’s a fantastic thing, you know, a fantastic and amazing thing to happen. And you know, it makes me proud, definitely.

Well thank you very much for talking to us today. Not at all, really enjoyed it.