Few in the world of video game promotion can compare with Peter Molyneux, a visionary designer whose knack for making good games is surpassed only by his habit of making even better promises.
That so many of those promises end up more as hype than truth can be disappointing, but there's something to be said for Mr. Molyneux's passion for ideas and game design, something that appeals to the irrational optimist in all of us.
His latest bit of salesmanship comes by way of the upcoming Kinect exclusive, Fable: The Journey, a magic-filled RPG that's unique, how, Mr. Molyneux?
The unique thing about Fable the Journey is that we have chosen, because we as designers and makers of computer games love Kinect…to control the entire experience through Kinect and I think this has made people really confused, “…oh my god they are using Kinect, they can’t possibly do a role playing game!” but no, I love the opportunities that Kinect give us.
On why he loves Kinect and feels limited by traditional control schemes:
More and More I am feeling controlled. I am feeling limited….now we are in a box and we are monkeys singing to a tune and I am just sick of it. I’m sick of it. I want the feeling of discovery the feeling that you get when you first picked up controllers when you first picked up mice. When you thought, “What if I did this?” When was the last time you said that in a game to yourself? “What if I did this?” That’s what I want and that’s what Kinect quite possibly can give us. What we are able to do is celebrate how different you are.
On finding the right balance in a tutorial:
Part of the joy is discovering how to do these things. How to use your body how to use arms and how to use your voice to interact with this experience and I hope that controlling a horse and carriage is obvious enough. That people will use their hands to snap the reigns.
I hate it when games over preach to me. I hate it when they tell me something so obvious. They take a lot of that fun away from it .
Now lets talk about walking, because that’s a big problem. We have solved walking and navigating on foot in the most comfortable way but not quite the most obvious way. The way you walk around is this, if you walk forward you can lean left and right to change your direction. You’ll be very relaxed, I mean you don’t want to spill your beer after all. If you want to walk faster you just lean for forward if you want to walk slower you’ll lean back.
On more animal-related emotion; equines as the new canines:
Suppose if we just say that the that’s horse pulling you along unconditionally loves you, unconditionally loves you as a player and suppose with in the first fifteen minutes of playing that game we make people totally believe that? Then when you drive your horse on, when you crash into things, when you scrape the side of his leg against rocks, when you drive him into thorns and bushes and cause cuts on him it won’t be like a driving game where you just crash into things and then go drive on. I want you to feel that pain, the pain of your mistakes…and if you feel a moment of guilt then I have got an emotion from you and that’s what this is all about. It’s just about getting some emotions from you, about telling a story which means something about giving a game where you discover things. That’s what we’re trying to do.
On using voice recognition software and problems therein:
One of the first and most golden rules that we said about this experience with Fable the Journey with Kinect is You must feel comfortable. You mustn’t feel embarrassed. You mustn’t feel awkward.
What we realized is that 99.9% of people feel utterly embarrassed talking to a television set.
When he had the opportunity to think about voice recognition, to think about the ability for you to talk to characters in the world there’s a few thoughts that came to me. Firstly your going to feel awkward and embarrassed. Secondly your not gonna really be quite sure what to say or how to say it, and thirdly we have all the problems with true voice recognition. All the problems that wonderful technology like Siri still hasn’t solved and you have to solve it not 99% of the time. 100% of the time. With 100% of accents with 100% of human voices with all their emotion and with all their tiredness and all their excitement and until you can do that to a level where I don’t feel awkward….I am not ready to use it. That’s the honest answer.
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I could watch the elegant Mr. Molyneux speak all day long. Here's to hoping his vision for Fable: The Journey is fully realized. The game is slated for a late 2012 release.
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Vintage Peter Molyneux Promotion for Fable: The Journey
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