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Fable: The Journey, the Kinect-only adventure set in Albion, will not feature melee combat due to the fact that Kinect doesn’t allow for recoil.
“The thing about magic is there’s nothing encoded in your mind about how it should feel. So no guns, and no swords,” Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux told OXM.
“We could have done melee weapons, but the one thing I hate about melee weapons, and guns as well, is that the human brain is encoded to expect recoil from those things.
“Whenever I swing a sword and I hit something on screen, the visuals and the sound isn’t enough. We could have done what Zelda did well on Twilight Princess, where it doesn’t really matter what you do, what happens on-screen is the best thing. But I wanted people to feel powerful, to feel power, and that’s all about you.”
Fable: The Journey allows players to shape magic plasma balls with their hands, using gestures to change the size of the projectile. The bigger you make it, the wider the area of effect, whereas the smaller it is, the more stopping power it’ll have. The quicker you throw the imaginary ball, the quicker it’ll find its way to your enemies.
Despite the fact that Kinect won’t accommodate for melee combat, Molyneux will be happy that there’s no controller getting in the way of things. The Lionhead founder recently said that he hates what controllers do to magic, so it’ll be interesting to see how gamers react to the Kinect-only combat system seen in The Journey.
Fable: The Journey is due for release in 2012.
