I’ve read and heard about Peter Molyneux’s effusive and legendary game demonstrations in the past, but even after watching and listening to these selfsame demonstrations with video and audio, I’ve only ever been half-way to appreciating what makes a ‘Molyneux Demo’ anything special.

But after recently receiving a behind-closed-doors gamescom presentation on Fable III from Peter Molyneux himself, I now fully appreciate what makes his demos so special and memborable: Even if it’s all according to script, and even if it’s artificial at some level, Molyneux speaks with a passion and sincerity that anyone in the games industry would do well to emulate, as he effortlessly enraptures listeners with infectious enthusiasm and a level of powerful, subdued energy that I’ve yet to experience in a developer demonstration.

But that’s enough about him – he’s received enough kind words in this regard in the past, so let’s talk about Fable III, the game Molyneux is currently guiding towards completion and release this October.

Molyneux began the demo by talking about what new additions have been made to Fable 3 over Fable 2, and what of Fable 2’s “schoolboy awful” mistakes have been ironed out.

The first thing that the development team at Lionhead is attempting to do is make the story of Fable III memorable. Molyneux lamented over the fact that hardly any players of Fable 2 (or almost any other game for that matter) simply can’t remember the story of the game, even if they can recall cool events and strings of narrative. According to him, this is the total opposite of other media, like movies, even though a movie may only be two hours, whilst gamers have a dozen hours to absorb any tale told in a game, but it simply doesn’t stick.

The way Lionhead intends to remedy the situation is by splitting Fable III into two acts, the first of which will be the action and adventure oriented portion of the game as players are tasked with overthrowing a despotic king. This is the first half of Fable III, comprising many hours of gameplay and leads to the second half of the game where players are appointed king or queen of the land of Albion after running the tyrannical ruler out of the throne room.

This portion of the game, while still allowing players to go adventuring, will be more focussed on the running of the kingdom, and the slow dawning of realisation that ruling a territory isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, as you’ll be faced with difficult decisions in order to keep citizens happy…

… or maybe it is everything you would expect, and you decide to be just as tyrannical of a ruler as the previous lout who worn the crown, ignoring citizens and killing anyone who stands against you. It’s all up to you.

Molyneux also effused his opinions on the use of 2D full-screen menus in games, and questions their importance in streamlining one’s gameplay experience. At this time, we got a look at ‘The Sanctuary’ in Fable III, a series of rooms (accessed at any time during the game with the press of a button) that house your collection of weapons, armour, clothing, accessories and more. While you may think that navigating a 3D space in order to kit up in your favoured equipment would be slower, Molyneux assured us that according to their tests, deciding which sword or helmet to wear in 3D while running around the various rooms is in fact faster than any 2D menu that they’ve implemented.

This is surprising.

During a mission, Molyneux demonstrated the way that weapons visually (and statistically) change and morph with extended use. Fable III has three buttons for the game’s main combat options, namely melee attacks (swords, hammers etc.), projectile attacks (guns), and magic. Each button instantly executes a specific skill with your equipped weapon or magic ability, and the way you use these buttons will morph your weapons.

Mashing buttons, hitting the buttons in a rhythm to attack enemies or holding and charging attacks, and the frequency and combination in which you use the weapons and these button presses, will all determine how a specific weapon will appear and behave over time, resulting in completely unique weaponry as players essentially ‘craft’ their own implements of cruelty.

The subject of ‘death’ is also being handled differently in Fable III. During the demonstration, we saw the protagonist get killed by a band of thuggish enemies and slump to the ground, only to get back up a few seconds later, ready to get back into the fight. While there was no apparent consequence for dying (with the removal of experience point, items or gold, for example), Molyneux told us that dying in Fable III has quite a dramatic result later down the road.

In Fable III, you’re able to accrue ‘followers’ based on your actions in the game. If you do something heroic, for example, you may gain a follower who will join you during your adventures. If you perform an action that a current follower doesn’t like, however, that AI character will stop being your follower. Dying during combat could be one such action, and if you aren’t careful and are constantly dying (even though you get right back up), you’ll lose a steady stream of followers who will be necessary for progressing later on in the story.

At some unspecified point in Fable III (Molyneux was relatively tight-lipped), you’ll gain access to a physical, portentous path, or road, with an ominous outline of ‘something’ in the distance ahead. On this road, there are gates that require followers to pass through. If you don’t have followers, you can’t pass through the gates to progress down the road towards what lies ahead.

In-between each gate sits a treasure chest containing the properties necessary to change the game experience and customise it the way you wish, with a basic example being changing the focus from action and adventure to town management and decorating. Depending on how much time you spend solving side-quests and exploring the land of Albion for adventures that lie outside of the game’s main campaign, more treasure chests may appear in-between these progress gates, allowing you to further customise your experience with the game.

This feature of Fable III is still wrapped in mystery and it’s slightly unclear as to how it will distinctly change the game, but Molyneux says that more will be revealed at a later time, and that this sytem will fix something he calls ‘the truth about levelling’ in role-playing games, which describes the situation where players improve and level up their character in-game, only to have the enemies in the world ‘level up’ with you, so you never really feel the full effect of your progress by dominating weaker enemies, or getting into trouble with bosses later on.

With that last morsel of information dished out, we were unfortunately out of time for further questions and had to remain content with some exciting Fable III features and mysteries spinning in our minds.

El33tonline also got a chance to play a few missions in Fable III, and we’ll be bringing you our impressions of the game soon.

While you wait, why not peruse El33tonline’s previous coverage of Fable III for screenshots, videos and information from the game. Also look forward to Fable III’s release on October 26th in the US and October 29th in Europe and the UK (we’re still waiting for a new and official release date for the PC version…).