Fable II Preview

With excitement surrounding the release of Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Fable II hitting fever pitch, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux is much in demand. But the game development legend still found some space in his hectic schedule to spend some quality time with VideoGamer.com, and granted us his most in-depth interview of the year. Here, in the second part of our monster chat, Peter tells us why Fable II's online co-op is only possible on Xbox LIVE, dishes the dirt on the chances of a PC version and lays down the law on DRM. If you missed the first part, don't fret. You can catch up right here.

VideoGamer.com: You're a 360 exclusive developer. Have you ever fancied having a crack at making a game for the PS3?

Peter Molyneux: I um and ah because, OK, it's a quite sophisticated piece of tech. These days I don't get involved so much with shaders and the actual 3D design any more, the actual programming. It looks very complex. I do say, the 360 and the PS3 technically, they seem neck and neck. Sometimes I look at a title on the 360 it looks fantastic, sometimes I look at a title on PS3 and it looks fantastic. I can't see a difference. What I would say, and this is not just me being the good company man, I'd say the thing I love about the 360 more than anything has nothing to do with the hardware, it's all to do with LIVE. LIVE is still underexploited for a game mechanic. Some of the stuff in Fable II we're doing with co-op is only possible because of the way LIVE is structured. I love playing around with that stuff as a designer. Whereas PS3 doesn't seem to be quite so mature on that side. They haven't got quite the same infrastructure and service but, you know, yeah, I'd love to get games on every platform.

VideoGamer.com: At the end of the day it's a much of a muchness. They're both essentially PCs.

Peter Molyneux: It is, except for one thing. The reason I ummed and ahhed is if you said to me oh there's this console coming out and it's got another way of interacting with a game, kind of like what the Wii did with their controller, you said to me someone else is coming out, I would be there as a designer. I think if you just make one change, even a simple change, to what people hold in their hands and how they play the game, that's ten times more significant for me as a designer than giving me five more graphics chips, because it really does mean that we can invent, as designers, stuff you haven't had before. Now that Nintendo has broken away from the conventional controller I think you're going to see this industry start to change what we hold in our hands and the way we interact with games.

VideoGamer.com: On that note, would you like to develop a game for the Wii?

Peter Molyneux: The Wii is an interesting one because it's incredibly underpowered compared to the 360 and the PS3, but it has got this new input device. If you said to me OK, go away and produce a smaller game I'd be there. The idea of squeezing Fable II into the Wii's architecture would be really immensely challenging.

VideoGamer.com: Going back to Fable, there's no PC version of Fable II, but there was a PC version of Fable. Is there a reason why you have decided not to do a PC version this time?

Peter Molyneux: If you recall we didn't release a PC version of Fable immediately. I don't think we even announced it immediately. There's no announcement either positive or negative on a PC version just yet.

VideoGamer.com: So it may be the case that a PC version might turn up later then?

Peter Molyneux: You see you said all the maybes and mights there, I'll leave that with you! But these are the sorts of things as you can imagine I get into an enormous amount of trouble for. I have to be very careful!