At long last I've transcribed my GDC interview with Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead Studios and chief architect of the Xbox 360 fall exclusive "Fable 2."
I teased a video excerpt earlier this week. Now you can read my conversation with him about:
- What people ask him about at GDC.
- What the most ambitious element of "Fable 2" is.
- How you can steal his wife in his game.
- How to punish your "Fable 2" family with an apple pie.
- Why you might want to live in a town called Bloodstone.
- What lessoned he learned not to repeat from "BioShock."
- How he left me completely perplexed at the end of our interview.
And more! Read on. It's Molyneux, so, you will be both informed and entertained...
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THERE ARE "PORTAL" SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS MASSIVE POST
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and I just wrapped a three-round Vs. Mode on the surprise hit of the season, "Portal."
What did the game do right? What can other teams learn from it? Why does N'Gai think that some of the things I most highly praise about the game should not be imitated by other developers?
If you've played through the game, fear not any spoilers, and read the whole exchange that follows. And should I warn you that there's lots of talk about the true meaning of story and character in video games? Come on in. It's fun stuff. Seriously.
Excerpts:
Croal: You still haven't managed to convince me that there's a story in "Portal." The only thing that we know is true is what Chell we did--GLaDOS, after all, is far too unreliable to trust anything she says--so if that amounts to "Portal" having a story, what then of "Tetris," "Bejeweled" and "Lumines"? As for the cake being real, that certainly wasn't Chell's our POV. Who are you going to trust--GLaDOS or your lying eyes?
Totilo: I couldn't cast I/Chell in a movie, that's for sure. But I can tell you some things: she's a she; she's a test subject; she's willing to follow orders only to a point; she doesn't get tired when she runs; she has 20/20 vision; she cared about a companion cube; she was willing to kill her boss/captor. Were these all traits programmed into her by Valve? Were some of these brought into the equation by me? Well, sort of. Did I really bring my concern for the companion cube to the game myself? Or did Valve cull that out of me, essentially grafting certain actions and reactions onto me, puppeteer-ing me? Where exactly, in the spectrum between "Chell"-ness and Stephen-ness, is the character I control defined? And if it's somewhere in the middle, is that not possibly a proof of how a character in a video game is defined differently than one written about in a page or displayed on a TV screen?
Read on for the rest...
(These exchanges are mirrored on N'Gai's "Level Up" bog.)
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