Roger P said:
I admit that I followed the game well in advance of release and that certainly effects my impression of it. However, I didn't hold any of the Project Ego features against the final product. It is worth noting that the game went from a potentially innovative rpg to the childish gimmick-fest it is now, without any warning.
I figured you had followed the project from its inital hype as Project Ego. I didn't, but I do know that pretty much everyone who did is extremely disappointed. I guess that's why I can take it in easier than someone who was, essentially, outright lied to. It does serve as a good lesson for developers not to mention features they haven't added in yet.
I still think calling it a "childish gimmick-fest" is a bit demeaning, but I don't want to argue it... to each his own. To me, it still seems like an innovative and fun RPG that has the potential to become greater. I really haven't had that much pure "fun" in video games in the past couple of years except for Fable.
As for the Monkey Island series, I believe that was a primarily PC series. F:TLC is a console port.
From what I've read, they've re-worked the control scheme and done alot of overhauling to make this seem like a Windows game and not just a port. Of course, whether that works or not remains to be seen... so I'll get back to you in a week on that.
When I compared it to Monkey Island, I was more referring to the goofyness of the game (MI was a point-n-click adventure series). It was a completely different kind of game, probably my favorite PC series of all-time (well... 1, 2, and 3 that is). It had some wild-out of place humor in it. It wasn't your typical pirate game, and Fable isn't your typical fantasy game. I don't see how you could take either of them as being serious. Again, I was more comparing it to the sheer wackiness of the whole thing.
I would like to point out that in no way am I saying that Fable is on the level of humor that Monkey Island presented. The humor in the MI series, in my opinion, cannot be matched.
The controls and style of combat are pure console action. I just don't see how that will translate on the PC. Were the Zelda games ported to PC?
Heh, Nintendo games don't get ported to anything. But I'll say that if Wind Waker was ported to the PC, it would have been a helluva lot easier to access those different items with key commands than using the GC's crappy controller (I hated the game on many levels, but the controls were one of my biggest gripes). That's one reason I'm optimistic about the reworking of the system for Fable. Playing that game on the Xbox seemed a bit convoluted and I never felt comfortable. I can remember thinking that it would be so great just to map these expressions and spells to a keyboard and use a mouse for the menu.