GamesCom 2009 – Microsoft

Holy Crap – I go to sleep for a few short hours and somehow I missed a ton of news from the Microsoft Press Conference at GamesCom.

Here’s a rundown of what I found out:

– Peter Molyneux kickstarted the MS conference talking about his mission, From there he talked about something new for Fable 2 called Fable Episodic. They’ll be splitting Fable 2 into 5 chapters and releasing them online – 1st chapter will be free beginning this September. (I’ll have to look a little more into this one. Stay Tuned for that)

– He went on to reveal that Fable 3 is coming down the pipe – They really want to give the gamer something new and have even made some big changes in the mechanics. Molyneux says that there is something funtamentally wrong with Fable but will not yet divuldge what that is.

– Says that in Fable you were one of many hereos, Fable 2 you were the only hero bringing together other heroes – We must take a big step with Fable 3 – it’s all about power.

– The user will be an iconic leader who has the power to eradicate poverty, or be the greedy tyrant and keep all the money for him/herself – We’ll be starting off as the son or daughter from the Fable 2 save and Albion will be ruled by a tyrant and our job is to gain support to start a revolution

– The 1st half of the game is the journey to become a great ruler – from the sounds of everything there is a global economy that will add a level of strategy to the game (not sure if I’m all that down with this but I’m interested)

– We’ll see some recurring characters from Fable 2 and not just Albion

– Seems that Lionhead has been experimenting with a few new mechanics; Staging, Judgements (judge people and allow them to defend that judgement) and Touch – Expressive and Dynamic.

– An example of Judgements is a girl who is caught stealing food. The Chef tells his side of the story and you can either immediately pass judgement or investigate further by asking the girl why she stole, she tells you it’s because her family is starving – Kind of a new way to get new quests

– An Example of touch is “When you first meet someone, you can either shake their hand or refuse. Later on, that handshake could become a hug, then an embrace, and then a full, passionate song.”

– Fable 3 hits in 2010 – but not too early in 2010

– Lionhead is still working very hard on Milo and Kate

– GDC he promises to reveal more….

That is all.

I find it to be very interesting that all they did for the MS show was talk about Fable 3 which is still pretty cool sounding and I am excited for the game but is that really all MS has to offer? What do you folks think? I’ll start poking around for the teaser trailer and some images.