What ever happened to Peter Molyneux?

mortiz

mortiz

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Read this article or check out the rpg codex for some choice quotes.

Really, this guy was involved in some great games in the past; Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate, Populas, Magic Carpet. Now he seems to be nothing more than some crazy old dude who needs to be put into a retirement home asap. He's lost the plot.
 
Haha, someone in their forums said it best -

This man is fall-from-grace incarnate. So your enemies beat you and are happy to let you go with scars... that offend your pixel-wife? Right Peter, totally makes sense.
Click to expand...
Seriously, it'd be cool if Fable 2 lived up to the hype even a little, but whenever I listen to Molyneux anymore I can't help but just sit there wondering what the christ he's on about.
 
I still like him.

I love Lionhead Studios

I loved Fable, and cannot wait for Fable 2

I loved Black and White. I think he's mostly right on the money with his statements on the industry.

I too, may be insane.
 
He's really, really good... at stirring up hype.

Still a cool guy though imho.
 
Respect to Molyneux for his past and all the great games he was associated with through Bullfrog. I don't really see anything wrong with what he's saying, except for the part where he says RPGs should be '70%' focussed on combat (and I'd also like to challenge him to give an example of what he thinks is a 'shit' RPG).

But as for reducing the number of buttons used and other quirky stuff like the scarring and procedurally generated music which guides your fighting style, or whatever, this kind of innovation is what games need more of.

Generally I'm against 'dumbing down' in games, but often it can work better than people expect. For instance I grew up on SF2 and its variants; hadokens and super combos consisting of 2 full circles on the d-pad + all 3 punch buttons were my bread and butter. I bet I'm one of the few people on the planet who ever used Sodom's full-d-pad-circle level 3 super combo against anyone in Alpha 2.

I never thought a beat em up could work well by lessening the number of buttons used, and certainly not by removing all the cool d-pad fiddling which sorts the men from the boys. That is, until I played the Naruto (Gekitou Ninja Taisen) series of beat em ups on the Gamecube (Naruto GNT 2 and 4 in particular). The controls are honestly no more complex than Smash Brothers Melee: one strong hit button, one weak hit button, + special moves work by pushing the analogue stick in 1 of 4 directions in combination with either button. Supers/specials are pulled off with one button press. All that info, especially the last part, would have made me want to puke before I played the games. I would have figured that they were beat em ups for skill-less people who didn't want to invest the time into getting good at more complex games. But having played them I rate those beat em ups among the best and most fun ones ever developed. 4-player is awesome fun, and although haters of the anime would no doubt enjoy it less, the games are definitely worth checking out as lessons in accessibility and intuitive gameplay.

Anyway, the point of all this is that you can have games which are accessible to button bashers, yet which still allow the more skilful players to assert their dominance in other ways (eg. timing, strategy) - which is a principle that it sounds like Molyneux is trying to develop his games in accordance with.
 
It'll be interesting to see how they handle the different weapon types in Fable 2.

In Fable, as far as I could tell, it was absolutely pointless using any melee weapon that wasn't a type of sword. All the others did less damage and couldn't "finish off" a stunned enemy lying on the ground.

Ah well, we shall see.

And yes, he does seem to be a little crazy, but he has interesting ideas.
 
Peter Molyneux is still the man. If anything he suffers from over ambition and the constant desire to bring something new and innovative to this hobby - neither of which can ever be a bad thing in my book, even when these ambitions aren't quite realised. While most developers lack the balls to aim high - playing safe for the easy money - Molyneaux laughs in the face of failure! and always tries to make something 'really, really neat'. Let's not forget, he's got there plenty of times in the past.
 
I still remember my utter disappointment at not getting to meet PM when I went for my Bullfrog interview in '96 (or was it '97?). He was in the process of leaving to set up Lionhead and so I got stuck with talking to some lesser-god instead.

Ah, the memories of seeing Dungeon Keeper in progress and thinking 'now that looks like a fun game'. There was also some kind of underwater sub battle game they were working on in the syudio with some cutting edge water graphics, but I never saw that released. Shame, it looked a little like bioshock but in minisubs.

Populous was the reason I bought an Amiga, and I played it for months. Powermonger I also liked, but that's when the Bullfrog game mechanics shifted to the predictable format of a few limited levels on a smallish map. And Since then, every Bullfrog / Lionhead game has been the same. Easy as hell gameplay until the very last level, which is stupidly, impossibly difficult.
That and the sometimes childish, twee graphics and storylines put me off PM games for good. And the cluster**** that was Black and White 2.
 
Dungeon Keeper 2 and Black and White are some of the best games I've played. Peter is the man.
 
1144323326.jpg


GUYZ he's right here
 
He's a smug git. He's on the accessibility bandwagon. I can't believe he did a 10 minute talk on pressing the B button to hit enemies as if it was the greatest invention ever.
 
I like Molyneux's ideas, but it is annoying how he makes wild claims and doesn't live up to them:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYQLR7dE5k4[/YOUTUBE]
 
Come on, lay off the man. Black and White and Fable are two of my favorite recent games. Sure they weren't perfect, but BW was wildly innovative and just epic, and Fable turned out to be one of the best hack and slashes ever (even if this had nothing to do with what it was purporting to be). BW2 would have been amazing too, with just about 6 months more of tender love and care.

We've got enough people churning out endless fps clones... we need guys like him to shake it up. He may not always achieve his lofty heights, but damn it, he tries.
 
Narcolepsy said:
Come on, lay off the man. Black and White and Fable are two of my favorite recent games. Sure they weren't perfect, but BW was wildly innovative and just epic, and Fable turned out to be one of the best hack and slashes ever (even if this had nothing to do with what it was purporting to be). BW2 would have been amazing too, with just about 6 months more of tender love and care.

We've got enough people churning out endless fps clones... we need guys like him to shake it up. He may not always achieve his lofty heights, but damn it, he tries.
Click to expand...
Well said.
 
I liked Fable, but I wasn't overly keen on Black and White 1&2, and I found that The Movies had too much micromanagemnt (C'mon! Dragging a Film Reel from room to room?)
 
Peter is now onto the way of becoming God oh so slowly.
He's learned to keep his mouth shut, but still think of wildly cool ideas :D
 
Crispy said:
I like Molyneux's ideas, but it is annoying how he makes wild claims and doesn't live up to them:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYQLR7dE5k4[/YOUTUBE]
Click to expand...

lol that was great.
 
Very good vid.

I do like Fable: The Lost Chapters (I'm currently replaying it) as it is a good hack n' slash. Though there are things that need to be looked at.

He is a clever chap with some exelent ideas but he does indeed need to keep a little quieter during development to avoid the big let down on release
 
This guy is a pure hype machine that spews out bullshit. I remember him constantly talking about B&W2 which sounded great from his mouth but when I came to play it...such a massive dissapointment. After it came out and everyone realised it was crap, he suddenly went quiet...

meh, hes just a con-artist imo.
 
I think the fact that his best work was with Bullfrog suggests to me that it was the environment and the team there that created those games, not Molyneux himself, as soon as that team disbanded Molyneux just seemingly "lost the magic". So don't say that Molyneux was responsible for some of the greatest PC games ever made, because he wasn't responsible, involved with IS the correct term.

In fact I think the problem now is that Molyneux has TOO MUCH monopoly on the creative aspects of the games Lionhead are pumping out, there's no one there of equal standing that can slap him down when he comes up with rubbish ideas because he's an industry vet that everyone should "respect". Back in Bullfrog he was working with people who'd been in the industry as long as he had.
 
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