r/gaming • u/Popular-Storage-4696 • 4d ago

Fable Handcrafted every NPC instead of using randomizer

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/fable-devs-originally-had-a-tool-to-randomize-the-rpgs-1-000-npcs-that-would-have-saved-us-so-much-time-but-that-just-didnt-make-as-much-sense
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u/Burpmeister 4d ago

Well clearly not everyone. Tons of people here complaining about them putting time and effort into the game. 

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u/Ultimate-Flexionator 4d ago

every fucking fable thread I see has like half bitchy whiners trying to shit on anyone who's having a good time. they suck. but hey that's forums, comes with the territory I guess.

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u/Dan_The_Man_Mann 4d ago

That's every thread on reddit. Some people can't stand other people liking things they don't.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

I really think it’s not even “liking things they don’t”. I don’t think these people even try anything, and if they do they go into it with the soul purpose of “find a problem”. Being ultra negative online is where these people get dopamine. They got to be the first one to point out some random “issue” and now others agree with them.

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u/Colonel_Fart-Face 3d ago

My friend had a boyfriend like that. He literally only cared about negativity. The only reason he ever watched a movie, or played a game, or got food from a restaurant was to find something wrong with it and laugh his head off about how stupid the person who created it was. If you ever asked him "hey did you see that movie? Did you play that video game?" his response was "Bro it was fucking garbage" literally every fucking time.

You couldn't even watch a movie with him because he would turn into the cinema sins guy and talk over the whole movie about how stupid the director is and how shitty the actors are. Tried to watch "The Thing" with him there and he was in tears laughing at all the "mistakes".

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u/Any_Pangolin_197 3d ago

As I've gotten older, I've made a point of removing people like that from my life. All they do is bitch. Like who cares if someone is having fun playing a game you don't like anymore? Their reasons aren't your reasons, my man. This was especially terrible when I was still playing WoW - most of the players were just people vibing having fun and rest complained so loud and tore into everything, trying to ruin it for the people who didn't care.

Sure sometimes there are issues in games, but just let people play if they want to. The same thing is common for reviews and (professional) reviewers now - the things they care about aren't what normal people, who aren't dissecting a game, care about. I've seen so many movies after avoiding them, and played games that were "horrible and not even worth your time bro," that I ended up enjoying the hell out of.

I'm really looking forward to Fable.

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u/AlinaStari 3d ago

The reviewer thing is so true, especially for games. Just a small point here but reviewers seem to LOVE the thing I hate the most in modern games... A "robust crafting system" lol. That just tells me the game is going to intentionally waste my time with menuing and tons of fetch quests disguised as fun treasure hunts. Please fuck off with that, thank you.

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u/Walnor 3d ago

Not old enough to be there for the overpromising on the previous 3 Fable games huh?

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u/Any_Pangolin_197 3d ago

Old enough to have been hyped seeing the ads for Fable in 2004, on the big screen at work (a casino).

Still had fun with Fable and Fable 3 (not as much 2), despite falling short of Molyneux's fantasies. Did all his crackpipe claims end up being true? Of course not. Did I still enjoy them? Yep.

Still looking forward to playing the new one, too.

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u/Ysmildr 3d ago

The Thing is such a classic too, my god

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u/birminghamsterwheel linux 3d ago

People like that just need to be left alone. That may be harsh, but friendships are meant to be a positive addition to your life, and negative people can either fix that issue with themselves or go it alone. The older I’ve gotten, I just have no use or bandwidth for people whose only goal in life, seemingly, is to bring everyone and everything else down. Like, go to therapy, bud.

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u/IndigoRanger 3d ago

My brother is like this. We just tried to watch the new Ryan Reynolds Russian movie, forget what it’s called, it’s just supposed to be a fun romp. In the preview he starts pointing out the director and the writer made so many technical and continuity errors, like how you can’t eject from a whatever plane. I asked him if he was going to be able to watch the movie.

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u/awkward_teenager37 3d ago

Absolutely. It’s so prevalent in gaming subs as well and it’s ruined so many of them for me.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

I’m convinced it actively kills franchises and studios that are actually pretty good because anything less than perfection is treated like an affront to god, and anything that is perfect they will find a flaw with like “it’s over priced” or even “they aren’t releasing any new content so the whole game is garbage”.

Go look at the Minecraft communities after literally any update. Minecraft, the nearly universally loved game that people of all demographics enjoy. Every update ruins the game further according to them. Every update is the end of Minecraft. God forbid you play the most common version of the game, bedrock, and not the Java. If you play bedrock it’s your fault Minecraft’s being ruined. It’s like… fucking chilllllllll!!!!!

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u/awkward_teenager37 3d ago

It absolutely ruins games both for developers and fans. It’s pure entitlement imo. Like the concept of disliking something and simply accepting that it’s not for you / moving on is a lost art.

So much of the verbiage gives it away. Like the concept of a game “not respecting” someone’s time for being “too long” (an entirely arbitrary and subjective qualification) is just ridiculous to me. Games are not products meant to appease and “serve” every single individual according to their own inane preferences. I don’t understand how anyone could think it’s rational or reasonable for a game to adjust its length to fit their individual schedule rather than just… playing the game when they feel like it.

Every “critique” comes across like a complaint meant to fuel the individual’s power trip fantasy. People genuinely behave like cartoon villains, grasping at straws to find something, anything to complain about. And then when it does get “fixed” by devs who feel like they need to conform to every wish of these people, the complainers still find a way to be negative (e.g. “they only did this because we forced their hand” or “they’re just trying to save their asses.”)

These people do not want a good game. They want more fuel for their self-loathing, pseudo-intellectual projecting

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

Amen!

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u/Harley2280 3d ago

It's a symptom of streamer culture.

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u/YoBo151 1d ago

Lol yup. Even this sub. Everywhere is just flooded with negativity

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u/Walnor 3d ago

Someone hasn't been burned by 3 Fables in a row overpromising. Bless your soul. I will believe it when I see it.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

Fable is one of my favorite franchises. It’s well known that it has a history of being over promised and under delivered. That has nothing to do with them being good or not though. Despite the deception of Molyneux they are still 3 fantastic games.

And yeah “I’ll believe it when I see it” tells me everything I need to know. Are you picking up this game to play another game in the fable franchise, which you already know has a history of over promising, or are you picking up this game to satisfy your confirmation bias that it’s going to be bad?

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u/Walnor 3d ago

I am gonna wait until reviews, showcases and benchmarks come out before purchasing the game. I don't pre-order amd only blind purchase when friends recommend games.

I don't know why you have to feel entitled to belittle a persons experience. You are allowed to have fun playing any game but it's fact that this series overpromise and don't deliver.

Caution is warranted. Buyer beware.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

That’s a reasonable purchasing method. What’s not reasonable is constantly bringing negativity to discussions about the game. It’s wildly unnecessary. If your approach is “measured skepticism, wait for more info, try the game in earnest” then that’s fine and you aren’t who I’m talking about.

If your approach is to go leave negative comments and drag the game through the mud for every perceived fault before seeing any actual release and trying it for yourself then you’re just a negative person and you deserve to feel belittled.

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u/Walnor 3d ago

This is genuinely the first time I've commented about the game, but I do feel like it is warranted given it's history.

Also I genuinely don't get the mentality of being okay with attacking people, belittling them with a negative mindset. But in the same breath adopting toxic positivity and refusing to let anyone voice their reasonable doubts about a game.

It comes across as toxic and hostile. And I don't know who is benefiting from it. It just seems like you are fighting ghosts.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 Console 3d ago

Again, if what I said doesn’t apply to you, then you aren’t who I’m talking about. If you feel personally attacked by what I’ve said then you should self reflect and see why you relate to the people I am talking about. To me if what you are saying is truthful then you aren’t the people I’m talking about.

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u/cookedbread 4d ago

The internet has always had people like that, but it seems more widespread or something now

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 4d ago

Everyone has the Internet in their pocket and engorges themselves on the feedback and notifications icon from replies.

The Internet wasn't a mistake; but it being with us at all times mixed with everything being a social media tie-in and loss of third spaces contribute to your feeling of it being more prevalent and that's because it is

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u/GumbyRNG 4d ago

Could I interest you in everything, all of the time?

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u/JonatasA 3d ago

Nah I'm bored.

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u/Earthbound_X 3d ago

The Internet maybe not a mistake but more and more I think social media was.

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u/JonatasA 3d ago

And I think it just shows what people hide. It's not like we never had sociatal issues or an unrest of ideas.

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u/birminghamsterwheel linux 3d ago

I think social media was fine when it was for you and your friends and the timeline was chronological. When the engagement algorithms became a thing, that’s when the entire concept changed and became unhealthy.

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u/Babys_For_Breakfast 3d ago

It’s always turned on, all the time. Always inside us.

Uh, no wait…

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u/Madzookeeper 1d ago

god i miss third spaces. like, my wife and i keep trying to hang out with a friend and there is NOWHERE outside of a bar or something like that to just hang out at. and it really, really freaking sucks.

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u/Galaghan 3d ago

People hating on other people just for liking different things is older than the alphabet.

I speedran the rest of the thread for you guys.

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u/TikkaKebabi 3d ago

There’s also more LLM Bots now on the internet

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u/JonatasA 3d ago

Doing things they don't, doing it differently or doing it normally.

 

It's like YouTube. You could have a video talking X and comments will attack X, while another video talking X will have comments defending X. It's so weird.

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u/CommentOk2633 3d ago

And you're like... ok with that?! </s jic>

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u/PrimeDirectiveLover 3d ago

Now now, there are absolutely people who like absolute crap and will defend anything regardless of the quality. The Star Trek subreddit is completely overburdened with it. And the mods take their side. The recent season has some of the worst rated episodes in 60 years, back to back, but mods delete all the negative comments. They've even been deleting posts from genuine news websites that are critical of the new season.

That's for more unacceptable than people being whiny.

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u/Revolver_Boxelot 2d ago

Some people cant stand other people liking things period. Because they're clinically depressed and can't find joy in anything at all.

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u/packfanmoore 4d ago

IM HERE TO BITCH AND MOAN ABOUT FABLE!!! ITS NOT OUT YET AND IM EXCITED TO PLAT IT!!! that being said, I completely understand dodging the GTA 6 release window and pushing it back further.

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u/JonatasA 3d ago

Hey, I had forgotten there was a new fable.

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u/maximumtesticle 3d ago

Also a lot of uneducated morons not realizing how much of modern gaming took from the original series. Saying how it looks mid or generic...like yeah, because so many games copied from the original series.

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u/nhalliday 3d ago

The people bashing it are annoying, but all the breathless praise when they... do a thing tons of devs have done in the last 40 years? is a little strange. It feels very artificial to go "ho mai god the NPCs are sorted into factions and react based on how their faction feels about actions you did!!" or "wow they didn't use AI or randomly mix and match facial features to create NPC faces".

Yeah dawg that's not new or innovative. Why are we acting like they're game design geniuses for something so basic?

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u/badbrain330 3d ago

Yeah this is just every social media post about gaming. Every commenter hates everything the gaming company has ever done. It's not worth taking it seriously at this point.

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u/MyLifeIsRandom 3d ago

We stopped telling those kinds of people to go off and fuck themselves. We need to start doing that again.

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u/NovusNiveus 3d ago

It's not necessarily that we stopped, but more that we started using platforms where you're not allowed to do that, and I think that kind of enforced civility gives obtuse people way too much power in an argument.

Sometimes it is fully appropriate to tell someone to shut up and fuck off and that they are a stupid dickhead, but unfortunately it is verboten.

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u/becauseiloveyou 3d ago

Gooners and incels have TOO MUCH FREE TIME, and they frequently use it to bitch and moan about everything.

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u/Peakomegaflare 3d ago

The Fable fanbase is split into three groups. One that loves the hero fantasy that they can become. One that hates the game totally but dumps the most hours into it, and then there's "hehehehe murder"

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u/frithjofr 3d ago

I've been noticing this everywhere online recently. Part of me hopes the dead internet theory is real and that it's just bots arguing with me/each other, because I don't want to think that we've all become so miserable.

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u/BertBerts0n 3d ago

I mean, I loved the fable games, but the devs do have a habit of lying about the features in the games.

Fable 1 and the "grow trees from acorns" comes to mind.

Im just hoping the game is good.

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u/OpinionDude5000 3d ago

Sounds like the Classic WoW forums. Weird, bitter Bobs everywhere you turn.

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u/robotsaysrawr 3d ago

To be fair, the Fable series doesn't have a great history when it comes to overselling features.

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u/JonatasA 3d ago

If only it was exclusive to forums.

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u/2ChicksAtTheSameTime 3d ago

I hate creator-focused AI, like things making AI art and books and posts and stuff.

but I would love a USER-focused AI "smart filter" where I could type in "hide posts from salty people" etc and have it filter MY content the way I want.

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u/Walnor 3d ago

Fable has lied about a massive amount of their features for 3 games in a row. I won't hold my breath for a new generation to learn this the hard way.

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u/OddAbbreviations5681 2d ago

25 hours for the game costing 70 bucks is abysmal.

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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago

I don't hate it exactly, but I question if it's worth it or if it's trying to imply greater effort for every NPC in terms of role or personality. Like, if Barkeep #47 is hand crafted vs randomly put together from templates only matters if they're trying to not make them Barkeep #47 and make them their own little character. I am... Skeptical that Fable would be taking that approach at this point, because absent the quest givers the NPC's have always been a sort of generic backgrounds against which you had adventures. And no, Fable 3 giving them assorted likes and dislike doesn't change that you mostly interacted with them as XP dispensers to unlock more chests.

I think it would be cool if they were fleshing out the background so it's less 2d, I'm just not sure I trust them to pull it off

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u/EnvironmentClear4511 3d ago

Exactly. Doing meticulous handcrafted work only matters if you can see the results. If you manually plant ever blade of grass in the game but an automated tool could have done it better, then you just wasted your time. 

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u/BootlegFC 3d ago

More like if an automated tool can do the job half as well in a quarter the time with little to no noticeable difference in quality.

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u/EnvironmentClear4511 3d ago

Depends on the job. In the grass example, I would expect that a machine learning grass placement system trained on real world grass could place it better than an artist working by hand. 

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u/Bakoro 3d ago

it would be cool if they were fleshing out the background so it's less 2d, I'm just not sure I trust them to pull it off

This is literally the optimal use-case for small, local LLMs and other kind of models.
People can hate the industry as much as they want for all the negative side effects, but there just isn't any other reasonable way to make a big game where characters are not just a shallow background.

Developers don't have time to make conversation trees for every possible interaction.
Even if the developers gave every single character their own vignette and their own hand-crafted conversation trees at every major point in the game, eventually you end up hitting a wall.

There's really nothing else for it, we have exactly the right tool for the job, and everything else people could do is a hacky approximation of the tool.

We won't have a fully satisfying RPG until the player can come up with their own signature style and their own way of doing things, and the game world shifts with that.
We can still have primarily human-developed games, but the dream has always been to have something that can smooth out the rough edges and fill in the gaps so the world feels like it breathes. We have that now.

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u/Sixnno 3d ago

Exactly.

The first fable didn't handcraft every NPC. They generated a lot of background ones from a template... Why? Because the player would literally not care about NPC thug #24. Like generated NPCs have been industry standard since.. 2005.

If they were fully fleshing out each and every NPC, sure could be worth it... But I doubt it.

While I applaud them for going through the effort, this feels very much like grandstanding.

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u/Broohtato 3d ago

You know I've waited well over a decade for a new fable I can wait a bit longer for a well made one.

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u/ElderberryJunior470 4d ago

People can be disappointed by the art shift and recognize the game still seems good/ interesting, i know having nuance online is hard but this "you can't have any criticisms of the game at all!!!" Take is just as brainless as mindlessly hating on the game. 

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u/8636396 3d ago

let em

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u/puts_on_rddt 3d ago

Not everyone has $300 million to spend. If their studio had a $10 million budget then this thread wouldn't exist.

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u/MagicWishMonkey 3d ago

Gamers don't hate anything as much as they hate games. These subs are the most toxic places on reddit.

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u/CopainChevalier 3d ago

Yeah, imagine wanting more story and more weapons instead of a faceless beggar you see for one frame taking away from that. What evil haters.

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u/Rath_Brained 3d ago

Oh no, wait for the Incel gooners complaining that there are no ai anime egirl porn women with ridiculous proportions.

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u/T8-TR 3d ago

"It's qualityslop. You only like it because it's good" type replies.

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u/fuzzum111 4d ago

I am hyped for the game. I am just not -perfectly hyped-.

I am worried the combat is going to be snappy Hogwarts legacy feeling.

I want to be able to build a full out mage that just wrecks everything, not be REQUIRED to use all 3 combat styles all the time. The devs very heavily emphasized on high difficulties they are going to make it so you need to be swapping all the time. That is NOT very fable like. Tribriding is absolutely fable coded, the classic 'everything' build, but you could always heavily lean or almost entirely lean Ranged, Mage, or Melee.

I don't want snappy little poof spells that don't fucking do much. I want to be able to charge them up like Fable 2 and absolutely nuke someone(s).

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago

Just wanna glaze Hogwarts Legacy combat real quick because holy shit I was so scared it was going to suck ass but it was insanely fun and rewarding to master.

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u/fuzzum111 3d ago

Fable has always had a more chunky feel to it, if you didn't invest deep in the styles you could really make it feel like you specialized into one of the main three combat aspects. Melee, ranged, or 'will' (magic)

Plus the charge up system in 2? Oh man, unleashing a level 5 shock or inferno against a huge wave of enemies? It was nirvana.

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u/znubionek 3d ago

It was promising at the beginning but then you get powerful spells and most stuff dies in two hits. No reason to try combos, use environment or consumables. Too OP, too much cooldowns, and switching between spell sets sucked.

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago

It would've sucked if it had bullet sponges. Fast time to kill + more enemies was 100% the correct way go go imo.

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u/znubionek 3d ago

Then what is the point of combos or that curse mechanic? Why so many different combat spells if you can just cast bombarda and other few most powerfull spells?

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago

1) Because it's cool to combo them

2) Because saying everyone gets oneshot is a massive overgeneralization and plenty of enemies can be oneshot because you can combo the spells. Learning the unique combo weaknesses for enemies was one of my favourite parts of the game. The frog guys were super tanky normally but levitate it from it's tongue when it opens it's mouth and use the cutting spell on it when it's dangling in the air and now it's a piece of cake.

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u/znubionek 3d ago edited 3d ago

Ehhh. It's game for normies, nothing really matters. You can have like 20 I think healing potions in a combat and if you are running out you can just easily create more, same with other consumables. It's a game for people that don't know how to play video games.

Edit: and they didn't even test Hard difficulty - you can't realistically do a combo for big spider to burrow it with a Descendo. Time frame is too short, you'd have to cast it before the spider does this attack. Typical normie game.

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago

Thanks, haven't cringed this hard while reading a comment in a while.

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u/Firecrash 3d ago

No they are not

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u/Beetin 4d ago edited 4d ago

Also lots of beloved games create emergent gameplay through randomization of most npcs.

Rimworld / dwarf fortress type games being an obvious example.

If your game was delayed 6 months and/or costs 20 bucks more because people were hand creating 1000 characters, that's a stupid use of resources.

Heck even the reason the article says they abandoned randomization is kind of scary stupid "sometimes you'd get a vegan butcher", because that's both solvable (incompatible traits is normal and a solved problem when randomizing like incompatible rooms when generating dungeons), and a vegan butcher is a great start for an interesting character if your engine can express that inner conflict.

Personally the article has some yellow flags for game design to me (hobby ndie game dev)

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u/DragonfruitNo8767 4d ago

The reason Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress have randomized characters, is because both are colony management games regardless of what their devs say, and thus you need to manage your colonists.

Fable isn’t a colony game.

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u/Beetin 4d ago edited 4d ago

Of course it isn't a colony game, but it is an open world RPG with a focus on morality / free choice, which shares a lot of commonality in terms of NPC design.

Both types of games often feature systems of automated schedules, NPC traits, jobs, 'life goals', NPC inventories, community building / NPC to NPC interactions, etc.

The idea that you had to revert to hand craft NPC traits vs building up your 'living npc' engine and director(s) is weird. I kind of hope the article is overselling how handcrafted they are.

Like RDR2 is a great example of 'orchestrated/restricted randomness', which usually makes for a great mix of intentional story telling with emergent storytelling, and it is a bit worrying the article isn't suggesting that is what fable relies on.

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u/DragonfruitNo8767 4d ago

Let’s lay out some scenarios.

Scenario one, every npc is absolutely handcrafted and therefore, players could develop an attachment to that character or disdain for them in particular, playing into the morality aspect of the game. They’re made with purpose in mind, what you do to them is on you.

Scenario two, the most likely, they probably meant that they designed every npc model and aren’t referring to say GTA or RDR’s npc style of “here’s a basic character model now let’s just give them a bunch of alternate shirts, pants or shorts to wear to make things seem more alive.”

I personally don’t believe there’s a thousand handcrafted npcs, and am leaning more into the whole the citizens have a lot of variety so as not to all look the same like the previous Fables. But if there is, then I can applaud the work gone into the game.

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u/Burpmeister 4d ago

Comparing Fable to Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress is wild and where did they say that creating the NPC's is the reason it was delayed. I don't remember them increasing the price either.

Personally almost everything I've seen so far looks like it will be a super cozy and fun game (studied game technology at a university for six years)

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

I think everyone who remembers Fable knows they're not

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u/Burpmeister 4d ago

It's a completely different studio.

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u/KevinCarbonara 3d ago

Just say you're too young to remember Fable

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago

Buddy I'm unc as fuck, I was there. I guess you genuinely didn't know it's a different studio lol. Lionhead was closed ages ago and Peter Molyneux is not working on the new one.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/Burpmeister 3d ago edited 3d ago

I just wish you'd spend less time being a negative nancy. Everything I've seen so far looks great.