Fable 2 Features Revealed

Seems the time has come again: Peter Molyneux has opened his abnormally thought-filled mind to explain and show his ideas for Fable 2. The announcement was made on February 22nd during GDC 2008, and seems to improve my main complaint with the original game, namely that there are now more than 2 choices: being an angel or being the spawn of Superman 64.

Many of the new features include instilling more compassion for the world around you, such as a family, and rewards for being especially good. Combat will be more MMO-like, implementing single-button fighting and switching weapons on the fly. However, the more gracefully you fight, the more experience is gained. Also, there will be co-op with another human player, with shared experience points. A switch prevents the co-op partner from killing certain things, such as friendly NPCs.

The demo showcased the replacement of the mini-map with a breadcrumb trail, a somewhat questionable decision. It also showed that the player can kill their co-op partner, an unintended feature in the game. There is still same-sex marriage, as in the original, but now protection is optional and same-sex couples may have surrogate parents to have babies. If Molyneux can keep all (or at least most) of his promises, Fable 2 could become a pretty good game.

[via Joystiq]

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Still Alive Coming to Rock Band

In a perfect fusion of nerdiness and nerdiness cloaked by rock music, Valve has announced the future inclusion of Portal's ending song, "Still Alive," as downloadable content for Rock Band. The announcement was made during Valve's GDC party, when Harmonix staff took the stage alongside Still Alive's original performer Jonathan Coulton to play the song in Rock Band.

For the record, Coulton scored a 95% on vocals. Let's hope that the Rock Band track features GLaDOS' singing, or Coulton might need a little (i.e. 5%) touching up on his singing.
[via Joystiq]

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Gears 2 in November, Ninja Gaiden 2 on June 3

In a double dose of release date news, the Game Developer's Conference has brought us two announcements sure to please fans of bloody dismemberment Gears of War and Ninja Gaiden.

At the Microsoft keynote today, Epic Games' CliffyB announced that Microsoft Games Studios and Epic are (unsurprisingly) working on a sequel to the popular Gears of War Xbox 360 game. According to a chinsaw-weilding CliffyB, the game will release November 2008 on the Xbox 360. (Trailer and CliffyB announcement video embedded below) Additionally, Tomonobu Itagaki, also speaking at the Microsoft keynote, revealed a June 3 North American release (and an early June worldwide release) for the Xbox 360-exclusive Ninja Gaiden 2.

[via Joystiq: Gears, Ninja Gaiden]

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