Lionhead is No more

[Jtbrig7390]

Sad to see anyone lose there job but Lionhead hasn't really made a great game.

IMO all 3 fables was decent but the kinect one is shit and legends was going to be shit as well. I hope a decent studio picks up the fable IP.

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Funny thing I notice in this debate: The people that call Fable the best RPG ever, have no interest in the RPGs actually referred to on a broad level as being the best ever. They just wanted a goofy platformy-adventurey game with some stats tied to it.

Say what you want about fable but its as much of a RPG as Dragon Age,Skyrim and so on.

I personally liked the series but I wouldn't call it the best of anything.

[Baconeggcheese]

Funny thing I notice in this debate: The people that call Fable the best RPG ever, have no interest in the RPGs actually referred to on a broad level as being the best ever. They just wanted a goofy platformy-adventurey game with some stats tied to it.

My favorites were always Jrpg's personally. Was never a fan of elder scrolls, friend even bought me skyrim and I couldn't will myself to get very far into it because of the combat system. Nothing wrong with it, just not what I enjoy.

I've found I definitely prefer a mostly linearish experience with a tiny bit of exploration as opposed to the full on complete lack of direction. Different strokes.

[Deleted]

Say what you want about fable but its as much of a RPG as Dragon Age,Skyrim and so on.

So is Kingdoms of Amalur. :P

[Jtbrig7390]

So is Kingdoms of Amalur. :P

Yep it is.

[dope_danny]

Funny thing I notice in this debate: The people that call Fable the best RPG ever, have no interest in the RPGs actually referred to on a broad level as being the best ever. They just wanted a goofy platformy-adventurey game with some stats tied to it.

I liked Fable but its not really an rpg so much as an action game. You are very very rarely conscious of any numbers involved, you just hack at whatevers closest until you get some HERO YOUR WILL ENERGY IS LOW, WATCH THAT message, chug a potion, buff and keep going.

I replayed it recently and theres some fun stuff like the whole balverine and white balverine sections and the lady grey subplot you miss if you skip by the abandoned mansion and i have a lot of nostalgia for it from my teens, but it is in no way an amazing game looking back. Its a solid hack and slash action adventure like maixmo but with a structure borrowed from rpgs but far more casual friendly than any real role playing game.

I still have a soft spot for it, and to a lesser extent 2, but a great rpg? its barely an rpg to begin with. Its short, the story is shallow and incredibly generic like a madlibs heros origin story and some of the control design choices are frankly garbage.

I very rarely say someones enjoyment of something may be tinted by nostalgia, god knows thats usually the last bastion of excuses for fanboys of ips gone to shit, but i would recommend anyone who loved it go back and replay it now. Its tone, artstyle and music is charming, its gameplay, story and attempt at rpg elements? oof not so much.

-i should point out i guess that the distinction for me between rpg and 'casual mainstream hack and slash with numbers" is usually structure.

Take elder scrolls for example, morrowind is a concise story that is set in a sandbox world, but as an rpg it has structure. You do the main quest and it pauses to give you choices like 'go level up for a bit and join a guild' to expand on the world and build your own story. It ties exploring into these guilds and houses that tie back into the main plot and deals with a cohesive whole where you are roleplaying a charcter in a story. You beat it and the world itself changes.
Compare it to the mainstream darling, elder scrolls fan waste of money hyper casual skyrim: it is a sandbox. you are dropped in and given few quests that are not 'go to this location' allowing the player to find all manner of distractions on the way that are in no way connected to the story because the game is a brainless sandbox for you to sit down and graze on for hours. Which sure the lowbrow audience might say "b-but todd says im carving my own story!" and yeah bungie said the same thing about loot in destiny and it was horseshit then as well.
You may should you choose tunnel vision and finish the story, but it ends with a 'but will you be good or bad' faux moral choice teaser which by itself makes no sense and worse when you see the world is completely unchanged and dragons are still attacking every 15 minutes and you just wander off back into the woods to stumble on some other shit to do.
Thats not a story, thats not a role playing game. Thats minecraft with more graphical fidelity and less creativity.

Fable isn't bad but it falls a little too much into the latter. There is a story there, but it feels begrudging. Like you start with a quest to fight hobs with whisper -now forget the plot and wander around doing things to 'build your name' till an arbitrary sequence of events occur to forcibly twist the direction of your playthrough regardless of what choices you make in order to reach the same conclusions only with a binary good or evil choice.

If mass effect 3 gets shit on for that i have no idea why fable doing the exact same is a good rpg for any reason beyond 'i didnt know better at the time'.

[anaxie]

The hyperbolic salt is real.

Fable absolutely would deserve such a remake, game was great. Whether or not it needs it is debatable since the graphics hold up fine. Most of those games you mentioned I had literally 0 interest in.

Legend of the dragoon was probably thee game that got me hooked on RPG's though, was one of the few games that really just clicked with me. I'd buy a console just for that game alone if they decided to make a 2nd or a remaster.

Fable was a marketing lie

The said open world
~ What they really ment was an on rails 3 hour story

The said be anything you want
~ what they really ment was a human male

They said make your choices matter
~ what they really ment was you your appearance changes and not the world

Do anything you want!
~ As long as it's Mage / Warrior / or Rogue with limited abilities

Are you ready for the journey of a lifetime chicken-chaser?

It wasn't a bomb it gets 6/10 from me but it would be hard pressed to ever fit my top 50 RPG list.

[Jtbrig7390]

Fable was a marketing lie

Yes it was.

Anything out of peter molyneux's mouth is a lie. He could say the sun is hot and is somehow lying. Fuck him and anything he works on.

The funny thing is the gaming industry has turned into what he was/is over 10 years ago.

[dope_danny]

Yes it was.

Anything out of peter molyneux's mouth is a lie. He could say the sun is hot and is somehow lying. Fuck him and anything he works on.

The funny thing is the gaming industry has turned into what he was/is over 10 years ago.

Thank god i grew up on Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid. Kojima taught me to trust no dev ever

[Jtbrig7390]

Thank god i grew up on Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid. Kojima taught me to trust no dev ever

Same here.

With that said MGS5 was meh but there is many reasons behind that.

[anaxie]

Same here.

With that said MGS5 was meh but there is many reasons behind that.

Fable 1 launched today it would probably be an instant flop. That said games are insanely oversaturated. FOr every 20 games that release 1-3 are worth an actual look. At least we have CDProjectRED making games to look forward too like Blood and Wine and Cyberpunk2077. Then there is always potential Capcom gets fucking clue and makes resident evil games based on the style of 1/2/3 and not action 3rd person after they see their record bank buster sales RE2: Remake nets them. It's pretty much guaranteed if it's the same quality remake 1 was it's going to be a big deal and a must buy.

[dope_danny]

Then there is always potential Capcom gets fucking clue and makes resident evil games based on the style of 1/2/3 and not action 3rd person after they see their record bank buster sales RE2: Remake nets them. It's pretty much guaranteed if it's the same quality remake 1 was it's going to be a big deal and a must buy.

Capcoms an interesting one like Square Enix. Both were going full Konami, but a few fluke sales like REmake HD and Bravely Default made them think "hey, maybe designing for a western audience actually dilutes what our audience was buying our games for?" and they both got this idea, crazy to companies like EA im sure, that you can shit out your microtransaction filled esports/meathead/mobile whale content AND put out niche products for a guaranteed audience that only went away because they listened to a few people like Inafune who said "make games like america, thats where the money is!".

Its crazy right? almost like diluting all your titles for "WIDER MARKET APPEAL" actually just pushes away the core, and maybe designing multiple smaller budget titles for multiple separate audiences is actually more profitable in the longrun because it means returning consumers? fucking crazy idea right?

So we get things like Remake 2 on the way, Monster Hunter getting its first proper push in the west its deserved for years and people are too happy with capcom making the things they want to give a shit about B team stuff like "resident evil: umbrella corps" or whatever mobile shit they are pushing out. Meanwhile things from the people who told them to design for the west and abandoned them like mighty number 9 are complete fucking shitshows.

Still at least nobodys in Konamis shoes. Even these Lionhead people will probably be snapped up by Square Enix for work on their eidos titles or something. Konamis trying to get into pachinko just as japans legalising gambling to render pachinko dead just as SNK is getting back OUT of pachinko and into games.

Sometimes karma plays a part in a company chasing money over producing what their audience wants i guess

[Cosmic Janitor]

Funny thing I notice in this debate: The people that call Fable the best RPG ever, have no interest in the RPGs actually referred to on a broad level as being the best ever. They just wanted a goofy platformy-adventurey game with some stats tied to it.

For many people the combat probably just did it. I have a love and hate relationship with many RPGs (even though they are what I primarily play, by a huge margin as well) but the combat can really ruin a game for me, especially when the old D&D cuntery of making mages awful and boring strikes again.. At the time I liked it as well, but I have very little interest of playing it again to be honest, as by today a game like Witcher 3 blows it out of the water in every possible way - unless your pleasure is, as you say correctly, purely derived from being goofy.

[anaxie]

Capcoms an interesting one like Square Enix. Both were going full Konami, but a few fluke sales like REmake HD and Bravely Default made them think "hey, maybe designing for a western audience actually dilutes what our audience was buying our games for?" and they both got this idea, crazy to companies like EA im sure, that you can shit out your microtransaction filled esports/meathead/mobile whale content AND put out niche products for a guaranteed audience that only went away because they listened to a few people like Inafune who said "make games like america, thats where the money is!".

Its crazy right? almost like diluting all your titles for "WIDER MARKET APPEAL" actually just pushes away the core, and maybe designing multiple smaller budget titles for multiple separate audiences is actually more profitable in the longrun because it means returning consumers? fucking crazy idea right?

So we get things like Remake 2 on the way, Monster Hunter getting its first proper push in the west its deserved for years and people are too happy with capcom making the things they want to give a shit about B team stuff like "resident evil: umbrella corps" or whatever mobile shit they are pushing out. Meanwhile things from the people who told them to design for the west and abandoned them like mighty number 9 are complete fucking shitshows.

Still at least nobodys in Konamis shoes. Even these Lionhead people will probably be snapped up by Square Enix for work on their eidos titles or something. Konamis trying to get into pachinko just as japans legalising gambling to render pachinko dead just as SNK is getting back OUT of pachinko and into games.

Sometimes karma plays a part in a company chasing money over producing what their audience wants i guess

Who knows I just want to see some of the old resident evil again and some new stories with the same camera angles pre placed and sparce items ect. HOW MANY GAMES DO THAT? Resident Evil was unique in it's design and it went for Action Shooter #542. Innovation sometimes can be good. But most of the time it's better to keep core concepts of the game in place. Diablo wouldn't be Diablo if it was an over the shoulder game. Max Payne wouldnt be Max payne if it was a first person shooter. The Camera angle backgrounds gave them plenty of freedom to create ambience and have you see what they want you to see.

Anyway ontopic.

Fable had nothing special about it. It was a comic relief limited choice ARPG with a very short and an uninspired story. Save your sister oh and your teacher is the big bad OOHHHHHH!

[Cosmic Janitor]

My favorites were always Jrpg's personally. Was never a fan of elder scrolls, friend even bought me skyrim and I couldn't will myself to get very far into it because of the combat system. Nothing wrong with it, just not what I enjoy.

I've found I definitely prefer a mostly linearish experience with a tiny bit of exploration as opposed to the full on complete lack of direction. Different strokes.

Pretty much this. For me it was always the opposite, I never found my love drop drop-down box spam and grindy turn-based fights, others love that.

[dope_danny]

Who knows I just want to see some of the old resident evil again and some new stories with the same camera angles pre placed and sparce items ect. HOW MANY GAMES DO THAT? Resident Evil was unique in it's design and it went for Action Shooter #542. Innovation sometimes can be good. But most of the time it's better to keep core concepts of the game in place. Diablo wouldn't be Diablo if it was an over the shoulder game. Max Payne wouldnt be Max payne if it was a first person shooter. The Camera angle backgrounds gave them plenty of freedom to create ambience and have you see what they want you to see.

The sad thing is younger gamers -and at this point younger devs i suppose- assume TANK CONTROLS=BAD not understanding that the tank controls allows a constant movement of character in the same direction across camera changes. Devs like Climax made Silent Hill Homecoming giving free movement AND fixed cameras and every switch or doorway had your character stop and spin in another direction like some bad saturn game like 'the crow'.

I think people have forgotten survival horror was a product of ingenuity and working around limitations eg: silent hills fog is actually a ridiculously small draw distance to allow for extremely detail locations on the PS1. When the challenges went away and folks stopped making their own engines there was no creativity, no drive, so horror went to shit.

Say what you like about how it ended but the last example of this was probably dead space 1 because it was a complete gamble designed around ideas, not "well make money by making a horror game!"

[Baconeggcheese]

Pretty much this. For me it was always the opposite, I never found my love drop drop-down box spam and grindy turn-based fights, others love that.

I actually love ARPG'S just as much, just not elder scrolls combat. I'm currently making my way through dark souls 3 and having lots of fun, the combat in the elder scrolls games just wasn't my style.

If they took a solid ARPG'S combat and put it into elder scrolls, I'd probably enjoy it quite a bit.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I actually love ARPG'S just as much, just not elder scrolls combat. I'm currently making my way through dark souls 3 and having lots of fun, the combat in the elder scrolls games just wasn't my style.

If they took a solid ARPG'S combat and put it into elder scrolls, I'd probably enjoy it quite a bit.

Darksouls combat has always been too slow for me and too limited in what you can do. My biggest pet peeve with RPGs is when mages get limited to a handful of spells, despite having supposedly mastered the arcane. I can't stand that..
Edit: I also prefer a living world with social "quest/puzzles" over a mostly dead one with only monsters.

[Baconeggcheese]

Fable was a marketing lie

I didn't keep up with marketing back then, so I could really give a shit about that. What I care about was what the game was.

IIRC I played it at a friends house back when it originally came out and had a blast and bought it for myself. Enjoyed the crap out of it for what it was not even mildly concerned about anything else. Was absolutely a solid game that would deserve a remaster if that was ever on the table.

[dope_danny]

I didn't keep up with marketing back then, so I could really give a shit about that. What I care about was what the game was.

IIRC I played it at a friends house back when it originally came out and had a blast and bought it for myself. Enjoyed the crap out of it for what it was not even mildly concerned about anything else. Was absolutely a solid game that would deserve a remaster if that was ever on the table.

Oh the marketing was fucking bonkers.

"You will plant an acorn and in real time that trees going to grow!" ~Peter Molyneux, silvertongued master of lies from the fourth seat of Pandemonium.

[Baconeggcheese]

Darksouls combat has always been too slow for me and too limited in what you can do. My biggest pet peeve with RPGs is when mages get limited to a handful of spells, despite having supposedly mastered the arcane. I can't stand that..

Yeah I don't see dark souls as a game for casters even though it exists in there.

Slows an odd word I've yet to see someone use to describe dark souls combat and definitely not what I would use. Especially when we're talking about elder scrolls, I know in skyrim its not exactly uncommon to pop out a menu to swap items or what have you during combat and the combat itself isn't exactly fast and action packed.