The Escapist - Peter Molyneux

[Tanitha]

Escapist Magazine has a short interview (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/87/3) with Peter Molyneux online. He is one of the few designers who's work I utterly and totally worship. With a list of titles like:


Populous
Syndicate + Syndicate Wars
Black and White
Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper II
and even to a degree Fable


he feels a bit like the Ridley Scott of the gaming world to me. So yes. I love his work. Now you can read his interview if you feel like it. But a small part of me wants him to go design a MMORPG. Preferably set in the Syndicate universe.

[Stigg]

I love this guy. Giving players the ability to change their path in games is huge in a non-mmo is a huge idea, and although he may not have been teh creator of it....he definatly has been perfecting it throughout his career!

B&W was ftw!

[Idol]

Have you seen the Spore videos? I would actually trade both my legs for that game, it looks unbelievably awesome.

Edit: D'oh. Spore is Will Wright. /slap self.

Black and White 1 was a brilliant game. I love games with the whole morality system, although most of them make it easier to be evil. ;(

[Tanitha]

Yes, he speaks highly of Will Wright's games in the interview though. Giants among men, really. Part of what I love is that even his (PM) failures have been incredible games that open the way for future projects.

And yes, I consider Fable to be a failure. It never lived up to the source generated hype and while it was an enjoyable game it always felt too static compared to some of this other titles.

Those of you that played Syndicate though - do you remember how incredible it was to upgrade your Cyborgs, to raid other corporations and to battle your way through those missions? That dark, almost Blade Runner-esque world would translate so fabulously into a MMO I'd ditch World of Warcraft in a minute!

[Ju Smurph]

Syndicate Wars would be better as a single player number 3 type thing.

It was an awesome game. Just getting a little concerned about every franchise ever converting to wow clones.*

The latest of which i hear is Warhammer 40,000 (different to the warhammer MMO), Lego, Firefly (TV Show)...


Note: Not every MMO is a wow clone, just that alot of this franchises are simply cashing in on wow's success.

[xxlebox]

I do think Fable was a great and superb game, in terms of gameplay. What they should've done, is make it larger, give more items, more spells, etc etc. If they added a longer storyline, more quests, it would've been a top 10 game, if not top 3. IMO.

[Tanitha]

Really? I've tried playing it a few times but it never seems to say: "Play me!" the way that some of his other titles did. Perhaps because I tried it on the PC and it definately feels different there to a console title. Hmm. Maybe I should give it another shot.

[xxlebox]

I've played it on xbox only, and I've invested alot of hours of playtime into it already. It just keeps on being fun to develop your character. But as I said, it's too short. Lengthen it, and it'd be 'a shot at the champion title'.

[Gormash]

I can relate Tanitha, Peter is a fantastic designer!
I utterly loved Populous to death when it came out. I played Syndicate till my fingers bled, and B&W would have been perfect had it not been for the micromanagement. I actually enjoyed the Creature Isle expansion more than the main game.

[moopy]

Yes, he speaks highly of Will Wright's games in the interview though. Giants among men, really. Part of what I love is that even his (PM) failures have been incredible games that open the way for future projects.

I dunno, he's becoming the Howard Hughes of gaming. Increasingly self-indulgent, irrelevant, and producing more and more over-hyped, under-delivering and unplayable tripe.

I think Penny-Arcade's editorial summed up how I feel about him better than I could:

"Peter's recent antics have depleted his Good Faith Account. From now on, it's only full playthroughs of retail products - trying to find the point where he stopped caring, so that I may stop caring also."


Those of you that played Syndicate though - do you remember how incredible it was to upgrade your Cyborgs, to raid other corporations and to battle your way through those missions? That dark, almost Blade Runner-esque world would translate so fabulously into a MMO I'd ditch World of Warcraft in a minute!

That was back before he wore his sphincter as a necklace :) I played that game through waaaay too many times. My favorite trick was to do the missions with one agent, armed only with a persuadatron or a time bomb. In fact, most of the missions were more efficiently tackled with a single agent with loads of upgrades, rather than four moderately tweaked agents, once you knew the mechanics... and loads more fun. There were exceptions, you had to take an anti-tank laser to the parade mission, just so you could stand at the end of a line and vaporise 50+ people with a single shot..

Wonderful stuff, moody as hell. Couldn't play it without sticking "06:21:30:11 UP EVIL" by f242 in the CD player though, such a cliche :)

However, I suspect that if he had anything to do with reviving this license (does he even have the rights to do so, given that Lionhead is his own outfit?), he'd ruin it badly, indulging in the self-adoring high concept low execution onanism that his recent titles have been full of. Will Wright he ain't, though he seems desparately to want to be thought of that way.

It would be a shame to ruin the Syndicate games (especially the smashing Amiga orginal, which runs well on UAE :) with a lame rehash. Warren Spector and co ruined one of my other favorite dystopian scifi games with the mess that was Deus Ex 2, maybe they should just leave Syndicate in peace :-/