360 Red Ringed AGAIN!!

[PaulECoyote]

For the announced stuff, I worked on Fable II, Fable III and Milo doing central technology stuff.  My gravestone in Fable II was being eaten by coyotes (Wile E Coyote reference) and in III my stone was about working for the people upstairs (the Milo team).

I hope you enjoyed them! Lots of long hours went into them.  :)

That's very very cool, Paul.  I was a huge fan of the original Fable and really liked Fable 2 as well.  Did you ever work closely with Peter Molyneux or was he more of the public face of the company?  He is always very interesting to listen to when he is out promoting his games.  Do you know if Milo is ever going to see the light of day in any form or is the poor kid relegated to life as a tech demo?  Looking forward to starting Fable 3, if I can ever get out of Skyrim. 

I had to start that game over since I lost my save and I am now focusing mostly on one handed melee, block, archery, and sneak, with a dab of Restoration magic, Blacksmithing and Enchanting.  I'm actually enjoying it more as a stealth/melee character than the almost pure magic I did on my first play.

Kind'a thread jacking here I guess, but I'll go with it if no one else minds :)

NDAs prevent me from talking much about Milo or anything that Lionhead hasn't said.  The project exists in a source repository somewhere and some of the innovations and work fed back in to the Kinect sdk developers use.  The videos shown of Milo were using the actual Milo game engine.  There were things scripted especially for demonstration etc of course but yeah... that raw technology exists... that engine really is that beautiful.  Was totally from scratch too, not related to the Fable engine or any other.  It is the most beautiful game engine I have ever seen and I'm proud to have helped out in the little ways I did for that project.  Screen shots + vid:  http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=26563830

I've not got Skyrim yet, been working on a side game project at home and not been gaming so much :(

If and when you get to Fable III take time to do the side missions... it won't force you and you can churn though the main quest pretty quick.  Inviting another hero in or visiting them can provide huge benefits for leveling you up.  I think the end of the game is a bit of a mistake... when you start making ruling decisions go do as much as possible.

I'd say Fable II is harder than III - but the Fable II engine went through some major work so it looks a lot prettier for III.  If you've ever played a space trading game like Elite, Frontier, Privateer, X-Beyond the Frontier etc - you can effect the economy of towns by putting prices up, down, killing shop keepers etc.  So you can make gold that way if so inclined, though in Fable III being a landlord is def the way to earn some big bucks.

The simulation is pretty detailed, heck when you aren't very well known (before people flock around you adoring you or running away) you can follow NPCs picking up crates from stores, going home after working, cooking a meal etc.  There are all kinds of details in the games I don't think most players notice... because you know hacking away at things and casting spells is fun.

I hear that Sky Rim has interesting simulation too.  Sounds like a game I could easily sink a lot of time in to... so avoiding it until I'm further on with my own little thing.

[Jobydrone]

Sweet, you should keep us posted with the progress on your personal game, I'd love to hear more when you're ready to talk about it!  There's very exciting opportunities for independent game developers these days, especially ones with talent and smarts!  Seems like Jonathan Blow could write his own ticket at this point if he wanted to, for example.

What you said about Fable 3 is pretty much what kept me away from it when it first came out...the end where it turnes into a city building sim was really panned and I didn't have alot of interest in it even as much as I enjoyed the more traditional hack and slash and spell slinging of the second game.  I got it now though, and I'm looking forward to playing it.  The thing I loved most about Fable 1 and 2 was the gorgeous color palate. Similar to the World of Warcraft engine, everything is so bright and beautiful, especially compared to other RPGs of the era like Oblivion, Fallout, Skyrim, etc.  It makes playing and spending long periods of time in those imaginary worlds so much mroe pleasant end enjoyable.  The upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur strikes me the same way, really  looking forward to that game too.

Not sure what you heard about Skyrim but there's not really any sim elements that I've run into yet.  Pretty straight up RPG, questing, leveling, and looting going on.  But so addictive!