Shack: I agree with a lot of that. I can recall just staring at the mini-map for Final Fantasy VII and playing the game through that, instead of paying attention to what was actually on-screen.

Peter Molyneux: We spend millions and millions of dollars on making these beautiful graphics, and yet our mini-maps have remained exactly the same. It's a bit crazy.

It took a lot though, to actually get people to think in the right way. That was a big thing. Not as big as another thing which [I] had to really push hard on--the idea that there were little to no cutscenes in Fable 2.

Shack: Little to no cutscenes?

Peter Molyneux: The concept of the traditional cutscene--where you play a bit of the game for ten minutes and then there's a cutscene that takes control away from you, and then you play a bit more--is very, very old school.

I think that what we decided to do was to remove almost all of those. Not all of them, there's an intro to the game where a cutscene is a great place for an intro, there's a couple of high-drama moments where you don't want the player to have control.

But pretty much around 99% of the time, the player has control. That means that you, as a player, can move around during cutscenes, you can use all of your expressions.

In fact, you don't even realize that you're in a cutscene. It's just part of playing the game. You can see that in my demo at GDC. When we went to meet my son and my husband, that actually would have been a cutscene in Fable 1. But it wasn't, as you saw. We were still able to emote and still able to do all the expressions and stuff.

The great benefit of that is that, to a certain extend, you can alter the course of what we call an interactive cutscene. Characters will, as they're conversing with you and telling you stuff, they'll be looking at you.

If you happen to do something like point and laugh or draw your sword or gosh knows what else, that will modify their reaction to you, and hence, the dialog in the story they're playing out to you.

That was incredibly tough to get the team to buy into. It's so much more work for them to do. The possibilities of players messing it up is almost infinite.

Shack: Won't the Xbox Live Arcade games that tie-in to Fable 2 unbalance the Fable economy?

Peter Molyneux: It's interesting you say that. There's a very interesting concept which I'll run past you before really answering that question.

If I spent ten minutes playing an Xbox Live Arcade game and it gave me 10 million gold, I could go into the Fable world and buy absolutely everything and I would agree with you.

But let's put this scenario past you. Suppose someone went in and played an Xbox Live Arcade game like Wizard's Tower or Keystone, and they played for ten hours--I'm just using these numbers, there is no science behind these numbers--and they accrued 10,000 gold, which is enough to buy a nice farmhouse for your family.

Do you think it is fair and reasonable that they get that farmhouse or do you think that we should limit it to 1,000, so when they load the game up it says, "Sorry, your 10,000 has been devalued to 1,000"?

I think, personally, if people put in the time and the effort, they should get the money that they've earned and that the game should realize it and should balance itself around the event that's happened.

Now, fortunately with Fable, what we have got is a system where money is detached from being a hero. You can play the whole of this game, Fable, and be poor. Your weapons won't be as sharp, your clothes will be bedraggled, your family will live in a small hovel, but you can finish this game and be poor.

Or you can go through this game and spent a lot longer, and be rich. You'll have the finest, most beautiful looking sword, the finest clothes, and your family will be in the most wonderful location. That is completely up to you, and it is dependent upon how many hours you're willing to put in as a player. The answer really is, if you're willing to put in the time, if you're willing to earn the money, you can be wealthy within the Fable world.

It's not going to throw the balance of the game unduly, because you can't buy magic, for example, with money. You can't buy the skill levels on melee combat and on range combat with money, you have to buy it with experience.

Shack: Have there been any plans for other Xbox Live Arcade games, or even other Xbox 360 games, that would tie into Fable 2 in a similar way?

Peter Molyneux: We're talking about the future of this connection. It's a big thing for me and I want this to be the start. At the moment, there's no announced plans for anything else, but I'm very hopeful that this is the start of games communicating with each other.

I think that certain games, not all games, it could really, really work well in. You can certainly expect more of this stuff from Fable. I think Fable has been designed with the idea that you can have gold be eparated from experience so it doesn't unnaturally unbalance things.

The other title that we're baking here definitely has got this sort of similar idea in mind, that you can do things outside of the core game which add to the core game.

Move on to part two of the interview, which includes Molyneux's thoughts on the PC gaming industry, Grand Theft Auto IV, and how he feels about playing the role of a designer in the public eye.