Fable 2

[son_of_helvetica]

The majority of those Kotaku comments are infuriating.

They're cunts, the lot of them. I think you have to somehow be "approved" to add comments too, like some kind of elitist treehouse.

[Kryptonian]

What was the gist of the comments?

[Vin]

http://kotaku.com/5023451/did-you-just-get...-in-my-fable-ii

?

Chiefs great, great grandpa?

[Beitel]

The Eurogamer Hands-on makes me seriously interested, even though I thought that the first Fable wasn't all that much. Maybe we'll finally get a game from Molyneux that fulfils his promises.

[danbot]

"Tapping in time with the rhythm of the music also enhances attacks"

[Puck]

I look forward to playing with everyone's pearly orbs.

[Vin]

Just slammed down a pre-order for this little beauty.

And it ties-in with my birthday, to boot. Result.

[RubberJohnny]

This looks really rather nice. An considering it's finished there's no chance of it being massively cut down like the first one. Yay!

[Raff]

Sounds like the grim story-tape voice acting is back. Looks really lovely though, the orb thing is fantastic.

[robdood]

In online co-op, guests will appear in one of several available henchmen models, reflecting the choices the hero has made. In offline, if there's another save on the HD, you get to wear your own clobber.

Can't be your own character in online?

Edit!! Ooooh but this almost makes up for it:

It's all to do with orbs. These look a little like pearls, and move politely about the world of Fable 2 as if minding their own business. And they are minding their own business: every orb you encounter is somebody on your friends list who's independently playing through the game. The orb shows their position, allows you to chat, gift them items, compare stats, and even boot them out of your world. It also allows you to invite them in to join you properly.

[mogawoods]

Oh great. Rolling pop-up confirmed (video here) Remember the way the grass in Oblivion would kind of unroll like a royal carpet across the ground as you moved through the world? And trees would materialise out of nowhere? Ruined Oblivion for me. Fable 2 looks like it does exactly the same thing. Shit.

[Talk Show Host]

Oh great. Rolling pop-up confirmed (video here) Remember the way the grass in Oblivion would kind of unroll like a royal carpet across the ground as you moved through the world? And trees would materialise out of nowhere? Ruined Oblivion for me. Fable 2 looks like it does exactly the same thing. Shit.

What??? Runs off to watch video!

edit:

[anewman]

It looks beautiful. Much more lush than Oblivion.

[mogawoods]

Looks beautiful when you're standing still, yeah.

[robdood]

Oh great. Rolling pop-up confirmed (video here) Remember the way the grass in Oblivion would kind of unroll like a royal carpet across the ground as you moved through the world? And trees would materialise out of nowhere? Ruined Oblivion for me. Fable 2 looks like it does exactly the same thing. Shit.

What??? Runs off to watch video!

edit:

If you guys knew ANYTHING about how games are made in the fucking first place you wouldn't make moronic fucking complaints like this.

Morons.

[deerokus]

Can't see how a game like that can avoid that kind of effect, most games I've seen with large, grassy, streaming environments have that going on.

I may be strange as it doesn't bother me.

Quite looking forward to this, Fable 1 was very good fun despite being so far from the original ambitions. The detail in the world in that video is quite impressive - the city in the video looks great and far more city-like than Oblivion managed.

[The Bag]

Shacknews get into it: 'Fable 2 Preview: Condoms, Combat, Domestic Abuse' - http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=924

[mogawoods]

How can that spoil the game for anyone?

Because a huge part of the joy of playing a gorgeous adventure game like Fable 2 is feeling like you're exploring a solid, cohesive, convincingly real world. When bits of that world start popping in randomly, or appearing abruptly before you as you approach them, you are no longer exploring a new world; you are watching a game trying to stream too much data at once and buckling under the weight of its own overambition. It's like watching a film whose audio is out of sync with its video. Or trying to wank over a picture of Steven Gerrard shirtless with a GETTY IMAGES watermark stamped over his nipples.

[mogawoods]

If you guys knew ANYTHING about how games are made in the fucking first place you would make moronic fucking complaints like this.

Morons.

Come on. 'Only games developers are allowed to criticize promising games'? Listen to yourself.

The overworld in Oblivion was too large for the 360 to render seamlessly. A respectable developer would have recognised this and scaled the game down to accommodate the hardware limitations (see Twilight Princess where the overworld is divided into portions the console can comfortably digest). Fable 2 isn't finished, of course, so it might yet turn out to be perfect.

[JPickford]

The overworld in Oblivion was too large for the 360 to render seamlessly. A respectable developer would have recognised this and scaled the game down to accommodate the hardware limitations

It was an early engine. I'm pretty sure they could improve it massively now. That said, I thought the game worked really well. Better than the broken up Twighlight Princess approach.

I respect Bethesda.

[mogawoods]

I guess it's just a matter of personal preference. I prefer a small world that's actually there in its entirety when you step inside it to a large world that struggles to catch up with you as you move through it.

[robdood]

Guess what spore? Practically no games have the entire world there for you when you step into it. It's all tricks.

But like you said, personal preference, etc.

If some fading-in grass bitmaps are enough to put you off a game though, you don't deserve to be playing games

[R0b]

Guess what spore? Practically no games have the entire world there for you when you step into it. It's all tricks.

The important part is in how effective this trickery is, obviously.

[Smitty]

That footage is exceptionally boring.

[mogawoods]

Guess what spore? Practically no games have the entire world there for you when you step into it. It's all tricks.

Sure, I'd just rather not see visible signs of stuff loading. It's not a trick if you're aware of it. A disc whirring loudly in a drive I can just about tolerate but grass unrolling at my feet? Begone!

Pop up is my absolute, number one, pet hate flaw in gaming. I fucking DETEST it. Forgive my moaning, but really - I can't bear it.

[Kryptonian]

Maybe it will benefit from being installed to the HD?

[MK-1601]

It's interesting that they've taken a different approach to Oblivion's brute force, scaling back scene complexity and detail for the sake of smoothness.

Fading in the grass would perhaps make it less noticable.

[Raide]

There is still plenty of time for the final tweaks for this game. I noticed some minor pop-up and the foliage scaling in as well but that won't detract me from playing Fable 2. People look at such minor negative things to pick holes in.

It's not like the old pop-up days having whole mountains appear when you're 2 foot away form them.

[robdood]

Maybe it will benefit from being installed to the HD?

Things like pop-in/fade on stuff like grass is not usually done because they cant get the data quick enough; it just a single texture repeated over and over. They're usually set like this to keep the framerate high.

[davejm]

I remember being shocked playing Crysis when a couple of rocks popped up in front of me. Kinda ruined the immersion for me. I spent ages fiddling with the graphic options, turning detail right down etc, but unless I was missing something obvious I couldn't see a slider or option that made a difference. I found options for foliage, and terrain draw distance etc, but none for the objects in my immediate surrounding.

It probably wouldn't bother some people though, but it was well annoying for me.

I made a bit of a fuss about aliasing in the Bioshock thread too, cause it was blatantly off-putting to me. I know some people that play PC games with AA turned off because they either can't see a great deal of difference, or they just don't care - but for me it's annoying.

I'd imagine there are things that annoy other people that I'm not bothered about.