Develop: Molyneux takes the stage to demo Fable III

Peter Molyneux took the stage at Develop this afternoon to demonstrate Fable III, and while chatting about the cast, he let slip the game contained more "unannounced Oscar-winning talent" than previously mentioned.

Cleese, Wannamaker, Fry, Hill and Kingsley

The Lionhead boss said during his talk players can expect more than just the previously announced actors for the game and over 47 hours worth of dialogue.

Molyneux refused to provide any hints as to whom these actors were, but with Fable III's October release fast approaching, Lionhead will probably keep its cards close for a bit longer.

Speaking of famous talent though, Molyneux mentioned in his talk that at one point, the player is in a cave with their butler, who is played by John Cleese in the game.  He compared it to the Batcave from the Batman series, and mentioned - very tongue in cheek we might add - players can think of Cleese as Alfred if wished.

Considering the butler will chastise players verbally, this should not be too much of an imaginary stretch, however it sounds as if Cleese will be more akin to Basil from Faulty Towers than the fatherly Alfred.

Becoming King or Queen

In the game, players start out as a revolutionary, who is the son or daughter of the previous Hero from Fable II. While we've been told from the beginning that becoming King or Queen is the premise of the game, Molyneux provided a bit of detail on how to go about it during his Develop talk.

One of the first things players need to do in order to storm the castle and take out the evil King, is gather horses and finish off the quests leading up to your eventual coronation.

Every ten minutes, the player will be reminded by what they see around them, and the consequences of why they need to overthrow the King. Molyneux said this is to help players from getting distracted.

Once you have fulfilled all the prerequisites to overtake the throne, you can wear a chicken suit to your coronation, and then turn into "the type of bastard" who may want to have a reign worse than the King you overthrew.

That's choice at work, right there.

Experience, leveling and combat

With the visual screen replacing the experience bar, players will instead have to focus on the myriad of gates, where once opened, you progress a level until eventually becoming King.

Gaining experience from completing objectives allows the player to spend points on either opening the gates or on chests which contain different abilities. For example, chests can allow players to purchase houses, or give you the ability to use a bastard sword.

Of the three combat systems, spells have changed the most. While there's still no visual presentation on screen, it's all in world. You can hold magic as long as you want, and it's not capped, so you can push the button and build the spell up as long as you want.

Molyneux said you can even "put the coffee cup on button for twelve hours, wake up in the morning and see what happens". Burnt coffee, we reckon.

There are also a new feature called promises, which force the player to take promises from NPCs or in turn make promises on the way to becoming King.

You can, for an example, promise to build a school, promise to provide money to reinstate a library, and all other sorts of things in order to secure supporters during your overthrow of the kingdom.

However, like a real-life politician, once you are crowned King, you can go back on a promise or rub people's faces in it. This will change the game world, depending on what you choose to do.

Hot ladies for the Hero

On a side note, players should be pleased to know the women in Fable III have changed a bit on the looks side compared to the previous game.

According to Molyneux, females will look less like "Russian shot putters", and instead have "curves and soft bits". This made Joe Anderson, who was sitting in on the talk for us, very pleased, apparently.

Molyneux told VG247 during E3, that once again, players will be able to marry and have children, and this time around same-sex relationships in the game will allow the couple to adopt.

Characters must also watch out for those dreaded social diseases as well, which definitely would put a damper on anyone's libido be it real or virtual.

Fable III is out in October for PC and Xbox 360, with an episodic release expected "soon after" the game's release.