GDC 2010

Fable 3: Bro-hugging Peter Molyneux

Molyneux is a very funny guy, obviously, and I asked if he was responsible for some of the humor in the Fable series. "There were some of the humorous bits with the gameplay where I said, 'If we do this, it will be hilarious.'" But in general he gave props to a writer on all of the Fable games, Mark Hill, who is excellent at writing the humor, perhaps because, like most of the team at Lionhead, he is British.

And that brings up a very interesting tidbit. During his panel, Molyneux mentioned that there is a distinct difference between the American "bro hug" and the British "male embrace." I asked him if he could demonstrate it for me and we stood up to hug each other. "This is the way the Americans do it, and there's a bit of slapping [on the back], but what's going on down here is our groins are quite close. Our testicles are about that far apart. Let's compare that with the British one. To start, we're going like this," he said while leaning forward with his hands out stretched. "Notice that the distance between our testicles is around about five feet. Any closer, and we start to get very nervous, as British people. They hate this body contact thing."

It's odd then that Molyneux would add a feature to Fable 3 that he calls touch. By pressing a button, your character puts out his hand and can interact with other characters in the world. This was demonstrated with your daughter during the panel and it was neat to see you chastise her, and then hug her to soften the blow. You can also use touch on random NPCs like a beggar. "I showed what it felt like to sell someone to a factory," he told me. "This beggar asks you for money, you use touch, you reach out, you hold his hand, he's quite happy. As soon as he gets the idea that something is going wrong, he tries to pull away from you. But you're dragging him to his doom."

Never mind, perhaps that is British after all.