Now that Oblivion has been and gone, I'm eagerly anitcipating my next serial game obsession: Fable 2. I bought the first one, and, whilst far from loving it as much as I did Morrowind, I spent many a Saturday morning and evening playing through it and thoroughly enjoying both its witty humour and exciting gameplay...However, there were things that were lacking.

The brains behind Fable (and Lionhead Studios), Peter Molyneux can certainly talk the talk. He is probably the most ambitious and involved creator in the games industry...but it's not seldom when his ambition gets the better of him.

Prior to its released, he was hailing Fable as having revolutionary features. He claimed that you could plant an acorn, and come back to it in months time to see it as a fully grown tree; essentially, he was promising dynamic environments on last-gen machines. People believed him, but not even the power of the original Xbox could cope, and the team called the idea off. There were plenty of other things he promised that he couldn't deliver...perhaps until now.

His intentions for Fable 2 are just as enormous. He has promised that an acorn will grow into a tree (apparently he recieved a death threat because this was not in the original Fable, something I find incomprehensible) along with many other extremely exciting features. He says he is bored of games that don't allow you to have an effect on the environment. He says that everything will be 'ownable' in Fable 2, from a house to an entire city. He has made claims such as the following, extremely ambitious statement:

"The first time you encounter the camp, you might think that any decision you make on how to interact with it is insignificant, but ... the effects of even your seemingly trivial actions will be felt for decades. If you choose to trade with the camp, for example, you might find that it has developed into a small settlement when you're in the area again 10 years later. After another decade, that small settlement .... [could] ultimately become a thriving town or city. If you decided to loot the camp and kill its inhabitants, on the other hand, the land it occupied would be reclaimed by nature, and 10 years later you'd never even know it was there. Molyneux calls this technology "dynamic regions," and it's one of several features in the game that he seems genuinely excited to talk about. "

Those are very strong words indeed, and if Lionhead is able to deliver on absolutely stunning features such as the afore-mentioned 'dynamic regions', I could see Fable 2 ushering in a new era of gaming, since nothing like this has really been done before.

Whilst none of the other features that have been announced so far are quite as startling as this, they would still appear to be quite appealing. Among them is the ability to have children with a wives of your choosing, who will love you unconditionally, looking up to you and the way you live...Meaning if you're evil, they may well aspire to be the same. A nice little quote to go with this:

"Molyneux said that one of the most magical moments of his career was when he recently saw the Fable 2 family features in action. Returning home from a lengthy quest, Molyneux found that his baby son had grown up in his absence and, as he approached the house, the boy swung the doors open and ran toward him with his arms outstretched."

Nice.

Among the other features is the combat, which he has hinted will revolve no more around hack-and-slash, but a better, possibly 'one-button' system. Very interesting.

Finally, there is one feature which he is 'most excited' about, but it would appear he is not yet ready to share it with us. However, in a recent GS article, he stated that "Early next year, Lionhead intends to show off one of Fable 2's new features by letting someone outside the development studio try it out for the first time", again, what the feature is is still under wraps; all he said was that is was "both new and important".

I'm certainly looking forward to Fable 2, and will be even more if it turns out Molyneux lives up to the things he is saying...but he's let his mouth get the better of him before...There really is only one question...Can he walk the walk?