Well this is coming mere minutes after watching Peter receive his Fellowship award from the Video Game Awards here in merry old England. With some wise words and just a few tears Peter went into detail about why he loves the industry so much and what it means to him to be part of it all; from its ''substance abuse'' induced openings for him back with Populous and then onto the heady heights of the current generation and Fable III.
My first dip into the games of Peter Molyneux were back with Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper II. I borrowed the games from a friend and spent hours playing through and making sure my special dungeon retained its creepiness, looking at the fantasy world from the other side of the conflict. Not only was it one of the first games I played but it was also one of the first games that got me interested in the fantasy worlds I now love to run around in today and that's something I have to thank him for.
Without Peter Molyneux and his recent games in the Fable series, as well as the giant that is Black & White I don't think I would be as avid a gamer as I am now, or indeed as interested in the worlds of fantasy I like to inhabit. His interesting way of blending the good and the bad and greying the line between right and wrong is a fantastic concept that many of us playing roleplay games seem to take for granted now, and even into the third iteration of the Fable franchise he is still doing it, forcing some harsh decisions on us as players.
I want to now look at a game and that's obviously going to be Fable. I remember being in secondary school and opening a magazine to read about the awesome sounding 'Project Ego'. A game where everything you did would effect the world around you and it would be a new take on the roleplaying games I had played before. Sure I had dipped into my Final Fantasy collection many a time, and of course the legend that is Baldurs Gate but this was going to be the first one where the hero could be of my own creation, from his face right down to what boots he wore and why.
Sure when Fable finally came along it wasn't totally as he had described it to the press a few years before but it still broke the mould in a good number of ways. Not only did we have the first morphing of a hero in a roleplaying game but decisions that finally carried weight and made us think about what we were doing. I don't mind telling you now that I stood at that vortex for a good 10 minutes before deciding whether or not I was going to chuck that sword into it. It set into motion for me a whole saga of changes I would move with and spark interests I didn't know I had.
The first of these was starting to want to be involved in the video gaming world and so I went and wrote articles for Britxbox. Then I moved onto managing a forum called fable-2.com, dedicated to the games past and future in the series. Sadly that fell through but I continued anyway and now own this blog here continuing to talk about and discuss a mammoth of a franchise that I just can't get enough of. Fable has and always will be a fantastic series of games to me and I hope to see it continue on for many more iterations in the future.
I guess this brings me to the end of my diatribe on the man himself and his games, and to a small extent me. But I will say one more thing. While I was playing through the latest DLC package with a friend last night and exploring the 'street of the future' on Faraday's Island I looked up at that statue of Faraday with the little robot and it struck me that this is exactly what Peter would have done. The whole story of Faraday and his creation for good, a progressive world where new things were always being created and tested is the world that Peter inhabits. Logan wanting to use his experiments and creations for bad, and sticking to the rigid structures of his rule are the naysayers looking at Faraday and indeed Peter's work and saying it can't be done.
Like my hero, and many others I hope we all stretch out a hand to Peter and encourage him to keep pushing forwards and trying new things.
Molyneux set to up his game from already lofty heights.
Molyneux's Twitter.
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