Molyneux's Shenmue

Post by **Delphine** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 11:48 am

Or Fable For Girls. Hey, Harvest Moon does it.

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 2:00 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:
asides from fucking with people, the first couple of hours or so aren't exciting or engrossing. In fact, the story is fucking retarded so far, and combat is pretty much just hack-and-slash.
So, in a nutshell, it's Shenmue without the aesthetic sense?

Not really. I'm having more fun with it now, my character's kicking more ass and there's more to do.

And I got married and had sex. I'm going to divorce her or kill her or something and then see about getting married to this one bitch named Lady Grey, or maybe to one of the dudes in town that have a thing for me and see what all that's about... (buttsex!)

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 2:11 pm

Mary Lady Grey. If you can get laid by her, it's a badge of prestige. Oh, and you get a nice dowry, free silver keys, and the best katana in the game, all inside her house. And you don't even have to buy her a ring.

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 3:34 pm

I heard there was a huge part with the Females characters in the game, but it would have taken way to long to finish. The females could get pregnant and stuff so it wasn't as simple as just adding more skins and a second voice actor.

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 6:13 pm

Baba O'Reily wrote:Mary Lady Grey. If you can get laid by her, it's a badge of prestige. Oh, and you get a nice dowry, free silver keys, and the best katana in the game, all inside her house. And you don't even have to buy her a ring.

I need to find out how to meet Lady Grey first. Do you do a quest and meet her that way or what?

And btw, the game is really taking off for me. I'm having a pretty good time. It's disappointing, not really what I imagined, but still fun.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 6:37 pm

You can't really meet her until after... Um, let me check...
I know you can't tie the knot until after you find the archaeologist.

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:40 pm

Okay, I just got that mission.

I'm going to start beating my wife or something to get divorced.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:48 pm

I'm going to start beating my wife or something to get divorced.

According to a FAQ, these are the ways you can leave your lover:

1) You just slip out the back, Jack
2) Make a new plan, Stan
3) You don’t need to be coy, Roy
4) Hop on the bus, Gus
5) Just drop off the key, Lee
6) Say you need space, Ace.
7) Hit on your daughter, Woody.
8) Stab her to death, OJ
9) Tell her you're gay, Ray.
10) Break her heart, Bart.
11) Kick her in the can, Stan
12) Crossdress

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:56 pm

Yeah. Sad thing is that the dress was the most powerful piece of equipment I had for a while, so I'd have to change into just pants whenever I went into town...

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:57 pm

I forgot that I had a dress.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 9:04 pm

You know, I was joking. I wasn't aware that you could even crossdress.

Never seen Ryu do THAT . . . although the idea of a martial artist in a dress kicking the ass of 40 armed thugs is highly appealing.

I smell the plot of Jackie Chan's next movie.

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:07 pm

G'damn, I have a dress, too. WOO!

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:59 pm

13 hours, beaten it, did pretty much anything I want to do.

Yeah, it's a great rental, and I guess a buy when it goes Platinum Hits, but I wouldn't recommend buying this at full price :\.

chriscaffee · Post by **chriscaffee** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:11 pm

Fable is only a thirteen hour game. Wow. Scratch that off the list of potential buys.

Neo Yi · Post by **Neo Yi** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:26 pm

You know, I was joking. I wasn't aware that you could even crossdress.

Never seen Ryu do THAT . . . although the idea of a martial artist in a dress kicking the ass of 40 armed thugs is highly appealing.

I smell the plot of Jackie Chan's next movie.

Hell, I would pay to see that, I'm a Jackie Chan fan.
~Neo

Post by **Segaholic2** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:50 pm

13 hours?? That's it??

BlazeHedgehog · Post by **BlazeHedgehog** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:21 pm

Metal Gear Solid was 7 hours. :P

You gotta think; Fable isn't a game that forces you to follow the plot. You can probably dick around and take subquests and do whatever and stretch the playtime out as far as you want.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:25 pm

BS, I could beat MGS faster than that.

But only 13 hours for the main quest? I thought it was longer than that, and then even longer if you dick around.

plasticwingsband · Post by **plasticwingsband** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:38 pm

Looks like Molyneux has pulled a fast one over the collective gaming masses. "Ultimate, do-whatever-you-want, never-ending, completely interactive RPG"... ha! Good one, Pete.

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:56 pm

I heard its a ten hour story with maybe another ten with all the quests. Also there is no reason to play through it again because you can guess the second ending, also you can just pay a certain amount of cash to realign your evil/goodness.

Compared to the 30/40 story with a 50/60 hours with quests and all this other crap the game really looks like shit. I bet it'd be cool if it didn't have 5 years of hype to live up too. Which begs the question how does a game that takes 5 years to develop only take 20 hours to beat?

Post by **G.Silver** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:43 am

Why is a movie that takes 3+ years to film over in 90 minutes?

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:45 am

The last quest availible that I didn't do was the Bounty Hunter quest, I don't know how many were after that.

The gayest thing though has to be that I was talking with someone while I was finishing the game, and looking at the timestamps it seems that the fucking ending credits take about fifteen goddamn minutes to roll, and they don't let you save until they are done. I didn't know this until I had beaten the boss and hit Y to just skip the credits, and noticed that at no point did it save. It's not a big problem though, because the end boss is easy as hell. The whole game is easy, I didn't die once nor used any number of the the "Scape Doll-esque" item they give you.

And yeah, it's pretty much shelved. I got the ultimate sword, and have nothing else to do, really. I had fun, not 50 bucks worth of fun, but fun anyway. Rent it if you're curious.

So, the Xbox's RPG stable is really coming together, isn't it? Ahahaha... I'm buying a PS2.

BlazeHedgehog · Post by **BlazeHedgehog** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:48 am

I think that can be answered when it comes to looking at the original plan for Fable; tons of stuff was cut out. The island was originally over five times the size it currently is, you could kill children, your character was supposed to dynamically age, get scars from fatal woulds (which would gradually heal over time), and you could design how he looked, all sorts of really awesome stuff.

And then, they began cutting. Cutting for content, cutting for time, cutting for complexity.

The developers were quoted as saying "every time we got bored walking to the next town, we'd make the island smaller".

Killing children was cut out because that would've garnered the game an Adult Only rating, which ment profit-death as 95% of all places that sell games would not carry Fable with that rating.

Dynamic Aging and Scarring was removed along with customizable character creation because it was deemed too complex: the amount of resources and time they'd have to dedicate to get everything to look right and work right would be too much.

Apparently tons of weapons and items were also removed. As the island got smaller, I'm betting certain subquests that took place at key locations were axed as well.

And above all, Fable's multiplayer mode (perhaps one of it's most anticipated features) was removed as they simply didn't have the time or budget to implement it.

Basically, Fable was an ambitious game that was a little too ambitious. Quite a bit of development time was spent on features and things that in the end were cut, for one reason or another.

It went from being the revolutionary action-RPG Microsoft marketed it as (even up until it's release) to a generic hack-and-slash.

Ash Holt · Post by **Ash Holt** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:53 am

Yeah, it started "Morrowind + Shenmue + The Sims" and ended "Zelda knock-off + The Sims for GameBoy Advance."

If it was longer, the combat system was less hack-and-slash, and they didn't hype it so much I would have found it to be a lot more fun. But there's still hope for it. It's coming out for PC sometime, and some creative mods could bring it close to what it wanted to be I figure. Not like I'm buying it again, though. Jesus.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:22 am

I beat it. I feel grossly unrewarded.
However, this means I now have time to go back to KOTOR.