Game sequels come with many changes: A new story, new characters, new features and often with improved graphics. In Fable 3, the game's world itself has made a step forward and enters a new century. How has time altered the looks of Albion? Lionhead Lead Artist John McCormack shares some insights into creative influences, industrialization, the new continent Aurora, the game's new features and cows in Fable 3.
Beauty of Games: In an interview about Fable 2, you mentioned movies like The Company of Wolves, Dark Crystal, and Sleepy Hollow as an inspiration. What kind of influences did you use for Fable 3 then?
John McCormack: We tend to stay true to our roots and keep returning to our original influences for inspiration and add on top of that. Along with the old faithful, we were mostly looking at movies and books on the subjects of royalty and revolution for the tone of the game but aesthetically we submerged ourselves in films like ‘Perfume’ and ‘Steamboy’ and British shows like ‘Sharpe’ to get ourselves familiar with the Napoleonic/Industrial/Military/Victorian styles.
The timeline of Albion is progressing and it slowly moves into some kind of Victorian century. Industrialization begins, too. In previous interviews, you mentioned that your philosophy was to create a world based on fairytale, instead of the usual dungeon & dragons/traditional fantasy fare. Did you experience problems doing so with Fable 3?
Admittedly it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to push the ‘fairytale’ side of the artwork into a world that is hurtling forward in time and becoming more contemporary and recognizable with every iteration, but I think we’re still managing it. We’re going under the idea that as the ‘world moves on’, the fairytale creature aspect of Albion is being pushed deeper into the forests and underground and has become, even more than before, something that the people of Albion still don’t really believe in… until someone goes missing.
How have new technologies like machines or engines visually changed the daily life of people in Albion?
They have, in a big way. Life for the rich is fantastic, with the mechanic wonders of the modern age powering their every desire but of course nothing comes for free. The working classes of Fable III are the most oppressed populace of any in the franchise with child labour, impossible working hours and conditions, squalor, prostitution, military rule and no dental.
To create a living, believable world, did you also add more animals to Albion? Or is it still inhabited by lots of humans, chickens and one single dog?
The lack of animals in the Fable franchise is always something that has bothered me and we’ve gone a little way into improving in this area for the latest installment. The problem is trying to convince an entire animation/AI team to spend their resources away from things like combat, cutscenes, expressions, gestures, simulation etc and work on the new badger we’ve just built. As you can imagine, the priority drops somewhat for these things and often don’t make the final cut. In Fable III, so far we’ve built bats, crows, rabbits, ducks, robins, vultures, lizards, rats, butterflies, moths, insect swarms, dogs, fireflies, geese and we even started on a cow… whether or not these will make it into the final game is anyones guess at this point.
Can you tell us something about Aurora, the new continent in Fable 3? It’s said to be a whole new environment and it will also add new races to the world of Fable.
Aurora is an attempt by our art team to expand the visual language of the game. We felt that the world of Fable was due an expansion and the art team was excited by the possibilities of what lay beyond the very british lands we’d explored before. We’d done the tudor buildings and surrounding forest and fields a few times and, although this is something I don’t think we’d ever entirely abandon, we had a desire to test ourselves a little more. Aurora is an arid land that has its own set of secrets, mythologies, religions and culture that the players get to experience as part of the main plot of the game.
Being the king of Albion is one main feature of Fable 3. Will my kingdom visually change with my gaming style? Will a good king have a shiny royal family? Will an evil king have a dark castle, gruesome guards in black armor and torture chambers?
This is the plan. We want the players to feel like their ruling and character has an impact on the surrounding lands as well as their own castle. Your immediate environment will certainly reflect who you are but I think the majority of the work is being put into your actions as a king. One small command to one of your generals and you’ll see region-wide growth or destruction. Its all about the feeling of real power this time around.
So far we have seen angel wings as one example of the new Extreme Morphs. Can you tell us more examples? Where is the difference between these angel wings and the halo, my Fable 2 hero got already? Is it possible to have a Jekyll hero who transforms into his Mr. Hyde version with a press of a button?
We thought we’d take a different approach with the morphing system this time in that we thought that, with our current storyline, that it would be a bit silly for the Hero to be walking around among the public constantly on fire if he is evil or glowing like a god if he’s good. We thought we’d leave that up to the player really. Morphing has always been the only part of the Hero’s physical appearance that the player has never had control of so we’ve made it so that the player can call these ‘Extreme Morphs’ on the press of a button while looking relatively normal in his chosen appearance. There’ll be plenty of variation in what these extremes are but at this period of development, this is an area that we’re still experimenting with and trying to push as far as we can.
While having lots of emotes, many players criticized that interactivity with NPCs wasn’t that deep. How does the new Touch system offer more possibilities? Can I also use it with my coop buddy?
‘Touch’ is all about taking the expression system from the previous Fable games and expanding them to a physical level. You can ‘touch’ anyone in the game including other heroes in either a positive or negative way. You can dance, kiss, hold, hug, drag, carry, headlock, shake, slap, etc pretty much anyone you fancy and the effect adds a real connection and depth to the relationships you make. From and animation perspective its been a real challenge because of the morphing system. Getting an unlimited cast of characters of varying heights and widths to hug and shake hands is a real toughie but I think the guys have really pulled it off.
In Fable 3, you are introducing weapon morphs, too. Will there be just a few standard swords and guns, which will then be morphed by the player? How many variations are possible?
On the surface, the weapon system is very simple as the players weapons simply change over time depending on the actions of the Hero. Under the hood, it’s a very complex system of stat tracking, hierarchical textures, meshes, scaling, tinting, decals and particle effects all combined to try and create as many weapon variations as possible. To be honest, I’ve genuinely no idea how many combinations are actually possible, all I can say is that they all branch from a simple set of opening weapons and that theres a hell of a lot of them.
Using one as an example, could you describe how you design the look of NPCs in Fable 3?
The process of creating someone like Walter (a very major NPC from Fable III), for example, is really about getting fast and focused iteration in the character pipeline from as early as possible. We start with early discussions on the motivations and story arcs for the character before locking down some visual references. Then we move onto an iterative concepting period where our character concept artist would create various images based on a brief made from the previous discussions. This goes back and forth until all parties (design, script, art and animation) are happy with the look and then the final colour concepts (front, side, back and close up) are produced with associated material references. The character is then given a first pass model in XSI and texture in ZBrush and Photoshop and quickly sent to the animators for rigging and ‘block out’ animation sets. This is the point where we see the character in game for the first time and a new set of reviews are carried out. From these reviews the iteration process begins and each department hones down the look and feel of the character until we’re all happy with him. Later down the line there is a third iteration pass when we receive the audio files from the voice recordings as sometimes there can be a little unforeseeable disparity between these and tweaks are made to compensate. After all this is complete, renders are put together for promotional purposes and the character is signed off as complete.
Don't miss to take a look at our Fable 3 gallery.
