“And as soon as you see that you think: ‘Oh my God. What a talentless bastard I really am.’”

What’s Molyneux talking about? Well, an interview at CVG showed the Lionhead boss that more than half of the people who played Fable II used and understood less than half the features of the game.

“How can I have made a game in which people actually understood less than half of its mechanics? It’s like making a film that makes people think: ‘It looks quite cool. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but it seems quite cool.’ You know, that’s just wrong,” he went on to say.

Last week at X10, Molyneux said that his announcements for upcoming game Fable III would “piss off” people.

Molyneux has managed to piss zero people off so far.

By accident, the ESRB website revealed that Peter Molyneux’s 1994 title Magic Carpet will be available for the PS3 and PSP as a PSOne classic.

Also revealed was Sorcerer’s Maze from XS games which seems to be a puzzle game.

No official release dates for either game have been announced.

PS3 owners will finally be able to play a Peter Molyneux game! Shame it’s not Fable. :P

Fans of Peter Molyneux knows there’s one thing the man can’t stop doing: over-hyping his own game. But it seems old Mr. Molyneux has had to eat his own words one too many times.

“I definitly have learnt my lesson about over-promising.” he tweeted. “There is a ton of work to do for sure, and the team are working hard. I truly believe”

Though I seem to remember him saying the same thing when Fable 2 was about to roll out.

Last week at X10, Molyneux showed off the new Fable 3, revealing the game would have no HUD and no levelling system. According to Peter this would “piss people off”, which it really didn’t.

Check out the first developer diary here, and the first screenshots from the upcoming game here.

Have you soaked up all the new information about Fable 3 yet? Have you oggled at the screenshots at all? Well don’t rest easy just yet, because there’s more.

Lionhead Studios has released the first Development Diary for Fable III, which skims the surface of the games new mechanics – the lack of a HUD, weapon morphing, the ability to touch characters… and yet another new feature which wasn’t mentioned at X10.

I won’t spoil the surprise. Watch the video to find out.

read this entry »

New screens from X10 regarding Fable and new gameplay, no HUD, and others.

Take a look.

read this entry »

Peter Molyneux is also present at Microsoft’s X10 event today and is showing off Fable 3. What’s in store for the new heroes of Albion? Touching!

But not touching with Natal, which so many seemed to speculate on. According to Molyneux, the “touch” mechanic allows you to bond with other characters by touching them. This will “narrow the emotional boundary”.

read this entry »

Peter Molyneux, whose name I rarely manage to spell correctly the first time I type it out, announced Fable III at gamescom yesterday. The Lionhead Studios chief said a dated mechanic has bogged down the original two titles, and has therefore been removed. Obviously he wouldn’t reveal what that mechanic was, so the internet is free to speculate.

Fable III follows after the last bit of Fable II DLC, which teased a scenario in which the player had become the king (or queen) or Albion. Molyneux said he wanted people to “feel the weight of the crown” and experience what it’s like to be a leader. Players will need to gather followers and do the things rulers do, like taxing.

Lionhead had been teasing a new game in the days leading up to gamescom with splash pages giving us a look into the minds of various revolutionaries. It’ll be interesting to see how they play into the story of Fable III.

A survey held by the Develop Conference has found that Shigeru Miyamoto is regarded as the hero of the game development community. No surprise there, really.

The Develop Conference is an annual event drawing in developers from throughout Europe for what is essentially to devs what E3 is for press – a pile of speeches and information on emerging tools, tech and troubles, as well as some contact making and chin-wagging.

It sounds like a small event, but when you consider that such heavy hitters as Ubisoft, Little Big Planet developers Media Molecule, Crytek UK and Lionhead Studios are making an appearance you realise how much of a big deal this is for the developer community.

read this entry »

You certainly can’t fault Peter Molyneux for his enthusiasm.

“Just about everything you think is the Holy Grail in design, throw it away and start again.” This is what the man himself believes Natal will achieve.

Have a watch.

Peter Molyneux has just announced in a personal message at E3 that he has been promoted to creative director of the European studio branches of Microsoft Games Studios. He will still continue to oversee Lionhead Studios.

Molyneux already assumed the role as far back as March, apparently.

“What you’re not going to see is ten Peter Molyneux games,” he said. “The value of this role is for someone like myself going in and making those little tiny lights of an idea shine as brightly as possible and ensuring everybody within the organization clearly understands why we’re making those titles, the purpose of those titles and their importance to Microsoft overall.”

“All I’m going to be doing is making sure those lights are as bright as possible. People at Rare and other European studios are super, super bright and creative people and I’ll learn as much about design from them as they would from me.”

Congrats, Peter. It couldn’t have gone to a better man.

Can Microsoft add a motion controller to the Xbox? They seem to think that they can. And they are, in camera form.

“For far too many people, the controller is a barrier preventing people from enjoying the game,” said Don Mattrick from Microsoft. “Can we make you the controller: Yes we can.”

A trailer then popped up, showing us various gameplay modes that featured no controller at all. A kid was playing a kung-fu game by acting out in front of the TV. A family was playing a racing game together, moving their limbs and bodies to interact with the game.

The camera, Project Natal, will feature “Full motion body capture” according to Don Mattrick, as well as being able to scan your own items, like skateboards, and put them into the game. There’s also facial and voice recognition.

“When it launches, it will work with every Xbox 360 sold, and ever Xbox 360 we will sell in the future, including future Xbox models.”

According to Kudo Tsunoda, the creative director of Project Natal, the camera will recognise player’s faces and sign them into Xbox Live. Natal will also allow your movements to be mimicked by your own Avatar.

Tsunoda promises that, “This is a full-body experience, not something you can just do on the couch by waggling your hand!”

New games and features exclusive for Project Natal is Ricochet, a 3D, full-body version of Breakout. A young girl on stage smacks balls into a wall of blocks, destroying them. Another feature, Paint Party, allows a player to fling paint against a virtual canvas. Speaking the name of a colour brings a bucket of said colour into the Avatar’s hand. Blue, green, brown and light brown are all summoned by a simple voice command.

Next, Peter Molyneux walks out on stage! He agrees with the principle behind Natal. The controller is the biggest barrier, and Project Natal is going to change how we game. Lionhead have been playing around with Project Natal for a few months, creating a character named Milo.

Milo can recognise your face, as well as recognising the tone of someone’s voice. He’s a fully interactive virtual human. A player, Claire, interacts with Milo, connecting with him and acting out various scenarios with him. A hand up to the TV swishes water around in a pond. Every hand movement is being recognised.

Claire draws a picture for Milo and holds it up to the Natal camera. It is instantly recognised and appears in Milo’s hand. Molyneux believes this is a real character, someone who knows you personally.

“This is a landmark in computer entertainment.”

If this works, nothing is going to stop Microsoft.

Microsoft will be the first of the big three to flaunt their wears at this year’s E3. What surprises can we expect to see from the Xbox 360 producers at this year’s conference?

Apparently, we should expect a “special last-minute surprise” at the beginning of Microsoft’s conference today. The conference has been pushed forward five minutes to make space for this announcement. What it is? We have no idea, but it will be something big.

We already know that there are huge rumours of a motion controller of some sort, ones which constantly refuse to die, so expect to hear something announced.

The Zune HD has already been announced, and will definitely appear today.

Last by not least, Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios will be revealing something new at the event. Anything by the man tends to be a pretty big deal.

- Much more besides, which we can frankly only guess at!

Lionhead boss and all-round gaming legend Peter Molyneux recently went on record to say that vide games will produce a story “equivalent” to Godfather’s quality by 2016. He’s since changed that claim, and now believes they will surpass it.

“I think I was wrong about that Godfather line… I think we can surpass where the Godfather is,” he told VG247 Molyneux recently.

“Here’s the thing about games: you’re involved in them. And part of the stories that we tell, if we tell them in the right way, and we give you access to the right tools as you’re playing, you will feel engaged and involved in them in a way that you cannot feel engaged and involved with any film, or even book.”

Make of that what you will.

In an interview with MTV, Peter Molyneux admits that Fable 1’s death mechanic was bad, which was kept in the back of the developers’ minds while working on Fable 2:

“We started with saying that ‘The way death worked in “Fable I” was just so tedious,’” said the Lionhead boss, talking of the process of constructing Fable II’s dying set-up.

“There are certain games that, as a game player — not as a designer but purely as a game player — I found very, very frustrating, which ended up as barriers for me going any further in the game. ‘Grand Theft Auto‘ was one of those games. I just found it super-frustrating to have to restart the game.”

The thing is, I never really died in Fable 1. Whenever I did, one of the many Ressurection phials I had acquired kicked in and knitted me right back.

Lionhead’s confirmed that more DLC for Fable 2 is on the way, though no details have surfaced yet.

“The team here in Guildford is working on some new content right now,” according to the company’s blog. “”More information will be shared in the coming weeks.”

I can’t wait to see in what ways Molyneux means this will change how we game.