Fable III does not come with a health bar, and experience isn’t reaped from combat. Followers in Albion are your hero’s source of power.
Health will still be present in the game but hidden much like it is in modern first-person shooters, which means the screen will go different colours. This works nicely with Fable’s HUD which is minimalist. Okay so that we can survive - it’s nothing really new.
No experience… really? In an RPG? Yes. ”It’s an RPG without a health bar or experience,” said Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux during his X10 presentation, reports Eurogamer.
”Because we put the levelling up into the world, with followers, you don’t need experience.” The more followers you gather on the way to becoming King or Queen of Albion, the more your hero can do. Why change the system?
”The absolute main reason is that most people didn’t really understand it,” he explained. ”When you asked people how to get red experience, they’d say, ‘I don’t know, sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s red, sometimes it’s blue’.”
The experience orb colours corresponded to the different types of attack; melee, ranged, will (magic) and general. They also matched the buttons on the Xbox 360 controller.
Molyneux says he felt experience was no longer relevant to what Fable is. ”Why do you just get experience for combat? It seemed wrong. This game is expressions and getting married and doing things in the world that should be as significant as fighting.”
”So as soon as we said the word followers… just saying the word followers, what people think of you, meant more to the entirety of the game.”
”Experience seemed 1990s, it seemed old school.” The same thing applied to the health bar, with the studio seeing no need for it.
”We haven’t removed the health bar, we’ve just copied other games. First-person shooters, the health bar’s in the world. When your health gets low the corners of the screen go red, sometimes it goes black and white - that’s a health bar man, it’s just the same as a little bar, it’s just that people see it,” continued Molyneux.
”As soon as you say those things you think, Jesus, why was I so stupid beforehand,” he said. ”It just seems like these are legacy things.” Feeling p*ssed off yet?
”If I remove experience and health bars, and I put levelling up from a 2D interface to a 3D interface, some people are going to get really upset, but that’s not a reason not to do it, man. It’s actually a reason to do it.”
It’s still got the heart of an RPG. ”I still love the idea of levelling up… I love seeing myself and my hero grow and get more powerful. That to me is what role-playing is all about. I love the idea of being able to choose, that’s another thing about an RPG.”
Weapons in Fable III will morph into more powerful versions as you increase in power, and there’ll be more on that soon. It’s due out this Holiday exclusively on Xbox 360.
