In-depth preview of Fable rpg(Xbox)

Adair · January 24th, 2003

ComputerandVideoGames.com posted this preview of the upcoming rpg Fable. I posted the preview because the guest priviledges run out at C&VG so quickly:eyeroll:.

We take an exclusive look at a game of vision, grandeur, beauty, freedom, intensity and passion - prepare to enter the world of Fable

18:26 Fable, a word meaning a story relating to legendary persons and exploits. A word which can be applied to the content of Big Blue Box's forthcoming Xbox epic, and, may well end up referring to the staff of the Lionhead satellite studio.
Indeed, having spent a full day in the company of joint MDs Dene and Simon Carter and the rest of the team, it's impossible not to be deeply impressed by their vaulting ambition and epic scope. For Fable (formerly known as Project Ego) is no ordinary game. Part RPG, part fantasy adventure, part arcade-action, part life-story, Fable is a conscious effort to redefine a genre and set a new benchmark for the way adventure games can be.

Ordinarily, such high-flown concepts would remain unfulfilled, and it pains us to recall how many great ideas have ultimately offered nothing but disappointment, disillusionment and broken dreams.

So what makes Fable different? Why should we buy into the fantastical vision of the Carter brothers, who dare to tread where so very many have stumbled and faltered? History offers several useful pointers, with both brothers and other staff members being ersthwhile employees of Bullfrog, the developer headed by Peter Molyneux, which has spawned some of the most adventurous and successful titles ever.

Ah yes, Mr. Molyneux. Fable's existence is, in no small part, thanks to Molyneux, who aided the Carters in setting up Big Blue Box, making them a satellite studio of his own Lionhead. And in terms of development, he has been heavily involved in advising, suggesting and simply casting a fresh pair of eyes over the progress of Fable.

The original concept for Fable was conceived many years ago: "When I was 12 and Dene was something like 17," Simon tells us. Over the years, the myriad disparate parts have slowly come together, forming a coherent whole, and with the advent of Microsoft's Xbox, the brothers finally had a medium capable of expressing their ultimate vision.

The aim is thus: to create a massive adventure that rewrites the RPG rule book, allows unprecedented freedom and connects with the player in a way gamers have yet to experience. Piece of piss, then?

The basic story revolves around a twelve-year-old boy who returns home to find his father murdered and his mother kidnapped. Faced with unbearable loss he must embark on a mammoth quest to uncover the source of these horrific crimes, and, without realising it at first, ultimately save the world from forces of unthinkable darkness.

The game is styled with a rich, fairytale aesthetic, a conscious move on the developer's part to complement the unique content with unique visuals. "We wanted to avoid the Tolkien stereotype of having Orcs and things," Simon explans. "Nobody's really gone for the whole fairytale/folk tale thing before and it's worked for us."

Indeed, Simon describes it as very 'Brothers Grimm'. "The sort of place you could send Hansel and Gretel and know they wouldn't come back from." "Because nobody likes Hansel and Gretel!" art director Ian Lovett chips in, before cackling maniacally.

The environment that's currently up-and-running - a woodland scene - is rich in foliage and alive with fantastical detail. And through the course of your adventure you'll encounter a haunted wood, marshes, ice, snow, rocks... "It has a very European feel to it," asserts Lovett. "You're not gonna wander through deserts or end up in Morocco."

But BBB has also looked closer to home for inspiration, with the immediate area around the offices offering up more than its fair share of visual ideas. Indeed, as Lovett points out: "The opening scene from Gladiator was filmed down the road in Tilford."

If you've been following the development of Project Ego/Fable, you'll know that one of the big draws of the game is the concept of character development, facilitated both by the freedom of choice available and the lifetime's span of the narrative.

Beginning as a twelve-year-old boy, your hero-in-the-making is very much a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which you must leave your own unique imprint. Every decision and action has an effect on the development of your character, both physically and metaphorically.

Run around lifting heavy objects and become embroiled in fights and you'll develop rippling muscles. Choose the lazy path, avoiding labour-intensive exercises and you'll grow into a scrawny, palsied adult. Sneak through life under cover of darkness and your skin will remain pallid; frolic in the sunshine and you'll make George Hamilton look like a snowman. You even develop an hilariously well realised beer belly, should you choose to follow the path of lager. You get the picture.

And although this is a great achievement technically, (we were shown how all these features can be changed in real time at the push of a button) it's the effect they have on the game that is the really clever bit.

Become a burly, muscle-bound chap and people will quake in your path. Equally, a scrawny, sickly man is likely to provoke derision, with kids pointing at laughing at your hilarious disposition. It's like having your dignity surgically removed. Brilliant.

And the parameters for exploration are seemingly endless, offering up countless unique ways of playing through the game - each, importantly, as valid as the other. Thus, you can be a cowardly villain, murderous beast, noble hero, lazy oaf, or nervous scaredy-cat - amongst others - and still make it through to the end. The replay potential here is obvious.

But Big Blue Box expects you to become quite attached to just the one hero as you guide from age 12 to a maximum of 50 or 60. And even when you finish the game (which should take you between 15-20 hours,) you are free to roam the game world, going back to complete mini-tasks and continuing to grow and interact with a tremendously vital universe.

Such a complex idea requires a structure, of course, and Fable's structure comes in the shape of 'Chapters' which portion out the action. Each chapter helps guide the central narrative along, with freedom in between to explore the myriad side quests and separate elements available.

Your hero's aging occurs in-between chapters. With each 'day' lasting roughly 48 minutes, you won't see the ageing process in real-time. Furthermore, if you fall in love (oh yes!) and decide to have children, the hassle of birth and nappy-changing is happily skipped over, again between chapters.

But how does it play? Well, Big Blue Box describes it as an "arcade RPG." It doesn't want it to be like Final Fantasy , with daft numbers appearing over peoples heads and the like. Indeed, we were greatly surprised to find the combat operates very much like Capcom's Onimusha.

With one button for attack and one button for block, combo attacks are achieved through careful timing, and moves are very reminiscent of the Capcom title, with graceful sword-swishes, killer thrusts into the chest and other swanky moves that wouldn't look out of place in a Jackie Chan flick.

Furthermore, the magic system, which the team is largely keeping under wraps, offers an extra dimension. We were shown one spell, for example, which slowed time down, Matrix-style, allowing you batter sluggish foes.

BBB is currently trying to work out the finer points of this system and would only reveal that: "the use of magic is directly tied into your health levels." Intriguing.

One current area of immense promise is that offered by Xbox Live. "There's been talk of having things available through Xbox Live," Lovett tells us. "And because of the way it's built it's certainly a possibility and something which Microsoft is very keen on. It's all a question of time."

But that's not to say BBB isn't a self-contained unit in itself: "Fable has a proper narrative with a climactic end, then you can carry on." Simon states. It's at this point that downloadable content could be used to add extra quests on so on.

More intriguing is a plan to allow users to save their character data onto a memory card and upload it into a friend's Xbox, with the hero entering the world and becoming a living, breathing element of it. Awesome.

And there's still so much more to say. So much so, that we'll end out in-depth look here, and tempt you back with a detailed look at the characters of the game tomorrow, focussing on how they are designed and how they function in the game, followed by exclusive interviews with the team and still more exclusive shots next week. Enjoy.

Note: Look below for screen shots.

__________________

Last edited by Adair; January 24th, 2003 at 21:35..

Adair · January 24th, 2003

ComputerandVideoGames.com preview of Fable continues with a look at the creatures in this rpg:

Our coverage of Big Blue Box's staggering Xbox adventure continues with a look into the fantastical creations of the art department

18:26 Fable is enough of a technical achievement in its own right to warrant oodles of column inches heaping praise on the evolving vision of the Carter brothers. But regardless of the size of environments, the sheer pressure placed on the number-crunching powers of the Xbox and the revolutionary tools built to create a revolutionary game, all this counts for nought unless the player is able to engage with a living, breathing world.
Thus, Big Blue Box's art department, headed by Ian Lovett, has the particularly onerous task of creating the creatures and characters that populate the ever-changing world of fable, ranging from the smallest of creatures, to the largest of foes, to the deepest of characters.

During our exclusive tour of the developer's offices, we were provided with a thrilling insight into this aspect of development from Lovett and his team.

For a game with a large focus on action in addition to RPG elements, Fable requires its own brand of generic baddie. But quick to deflect suggestions that this lessens the realism of the game, it's quickly pointed out to us that: "Tolkien had his Orcs - creatures that could be summoned in huge numbers where necessary - so we need the same."

The Bandit is one, a humanoid enemy which the team was working on perfecting on the day of our visit. Under the instruction of lead animator Dean Finnigan, we were shown a variety of combat animations for the bandit alongside moves for the hero. This consisted of a combo attack from the hero and the relevant response animation from the enemy.

As Lovett points out: "Combat is a huge part of the game. But we didn't want to use a traditional Final Fantasy approach, having people with numbers over the head - where's the fun in that? We wanted a proper, full-on fighting experience." As a result Finnigan and his cohorts are spending a great deal of time on making the combat as satisfying as possible.

But aside from humanoids, there are naturally some far more fantastical creations. These include the Earth Troll (see screenshots), which was shown to us by animator Gianni Malpelli. The Earth troll, a fearsome beast, is huge in stature, with the hero only coming up to knee height. What's even more impressive is that the other types of troll (Rock, Ice) are bigger still, with the Ice troll weighing in at a monstrous twice the size of the Earth Troll.

The team isn't just looking at creating creatures which are interesting to look at, though. It also wants them to be able to appear in interesting ways. As a result: "What we don't want to have is a hundred creatures - we'd rather have 10 or 15 really interesting ones," Lovett tells us.

And with the Earth Troll, its back is made up of exactly the same textures of the woodland environment, so when the hero approaches, it will appear like just another hillock until the critical moment. And the same applies for the Rock and Ice varieties.

You will only encounter such epic creatures from time to time of course. But, as Lovett points out: "You don't want to be wandering around an empty world, therefore there are a number of small creatures like scorpions, beetles and hornets, which provide constant threat throughout the world." In this way, they occupy the real-time role random battles would fill in a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy.

Above and beyond the creatures, however, come the heroes that populate the game world. Yes, that's 'heroes' plural.

"In most RPGs you are the centre of the world, but in Fable there are more powerful heroes that stalk the land - this is something you are aware of from the beginning of the game," says artist Angus Syme. He is one of the team members responsible for creating the various 'rival' heroes. "There are nine at the moment," Syme tells us. "three good, three evil and three somewhere in between."

It is the artists' job to come up with not just the designs for these characters but also extensive back-stories that serve to illustrate how they fit into overall narrative. Briar Rose (see screenshots) is a vital character. Your hero meets her as a child as well as in adulthood and the way in which you treat her early on shapes the type of character she will be when you meet her years later.

This is one of the truly groundbreaking features of Fable and one which offers up a dizzying array of possibilities. For example, if you're nice to her, she may become a romantic interest later on. But, as Lovett points out with a rueful smile: "Let's face it - the way most people play, she'll hate your guts!"

The Rival Heroes have other functions, too. By definition, they are rivals for the types of tasks, challenges and quests you may wish to enter into. And the way you treat them can have a serious effect on your chances in certain situations. "Other heroes could be helpful if there's a dangerous area, and if you've been friends they are more inclined to help you out." But if you possess all the social airs and graces of a football hooligan, expect to fight alone.

Briar Rose may not just be a key character in Fable either. Indeed, if Big Blue Box MD Dene Carter has his way, she will be the star in a spin-off all of her own, which would go some way to make up for the fact that you can only be a man in Fable. Something that came down to a matter of time, as it happens.

One of the evil characters we were shown was Jack of Blades, which Syme describes as: "Much older than your hero and the most famous hero in the land. He's the type of character you will hear legends about and who, if you encounter him early on, will kill you in the blink of an eye." This performs the function of reminding players that they aren't automatically the all-conquering hero they might think, and that there is a long journey ahead of them.

One final point to make about the rival heroes is that, spending time in their company can have additional benefits including the ability for your hero to learn and perform their moves - essential for your character's evolution into the ultimate hero.

As for the main guy himself, this presented numerous difficulties for the team. "That's the huge one," Lovett points out. "He's got to look great but also be able to change into anything we want, so he has to have no personality and no expression, but still look cool." But the highly advanced bone system the team has implemented allows for an impressive range of facial expressions which can make any number of impressions on an apparently blank canvas.

Here's a link to some concept art

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 1

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 2

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 3

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 4

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 5

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vortal_pic_84525.jpg (58.7 KB, 48 views)

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Adair · January 24th, 2003

pic 6 (last pic I'm posting)

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January 24th, 2003	#1 (permalink)
Adair Ghost Hacker Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 1,830	In-depth preview of Fable rpg(Xbox) ComputerandVideoGames.com posted this preview of the upcoming rpg Fable. I posted the preview because the guest priviledges run out at C&VG so quickly:eyeroll:. We take an exclusive look at a game of vision, grandeur, beauty, freedom, intensity and passion - prepare to enter the world of Fable 18:26 Fable, a word meaning a story relating to legendary persons and exploits. A word which can be applied to the content of Big Blue Box's forthcoming Xbox epic, and, may well end up referring to the staff of the Lionhead satellite studio. Indeed, having spent a full day in the company of joint MDs Dene and Simon Carter and the rest of the team, it's impossible not to be deeply impressed by their vaulting ambition and epic scope. For Fable (formerly known as Project Ego) is no ordinary game. Part RPG, part fantasy adventure, part arcade-action, part life-story, Fable is a conscious effort to redefine a genre and set a new benchmark for the way adventure games can be. Ordinarily, such high-flown concepts would remain unfulfilled, and it pains us to recall how many great ideas have ultimately offered nothing but disappointment, disillusionment and broken dreams. So what makes Fable different? Why should we buy into the fantastical vision of the Carter brothers, who dare to tread where so very many have stumbled and faltered? History offers several useful pointers, with both brothers and other staff members being ersthwhile employees of Bullfrog, the developer headed by Peter Molyneux, which has spawned some of the most adventurous and successful titles ever. Ah yes, Mr. Molyneux. Fable's existence is, in no small part, thanks to Molyneux, who aided the Carters in setting up Big Blue Box, making them a satellite studio of his own Lionhead. And in terms of development, he has been heavily involved in advising, suggesting and simply casting a fresh pair of eyes over the progress of Fable. The original concept for Fable was conceived many years ago: "When I was 12 and Dene was something like 17," Simon tells us. Over the years, the myriad disparate parts have slowly come together, forming a coherent whole, and with the advent of Microsoft's Xbox, the brothers finally had a medium capable of expressing their ultimate vision. The aim is thus: to create a massive adventure that rewrites the RPG rule book, allows unprecedented freedom and connects with the player in a way gamers have yet to experience. Piece of piss, then? The basic story revolves around a twelve-year-old boy who returns home to find his father murdered and his mother kidnapped. Faced with unbearable loss he must embark on a mammoth quest to uncover the source of these horrific crimes, and, without realising it at first, ultimately save the world from forces of unthinkable darkness. The game is styled with a rich, fairytale aesthetic, a conscious move on the developer's part to complement the unique content with unique visuals. "We wanted to avoid the Tolkien stereotype of having Orcs and things," Simon explans. "Nobody's really gone for the whole fairytale/folk tale thing before and it's worked for us." Indeed, Simon describes it as very 'Brothers Grimm'. "The sort of place you could send Hansel and Gretel and know they wouldn't come back from." "Because nobody likes Hansel and Gretel!" art director Ian Lovett chips in, before cackling maniacally. The environment that's currently up-and-running - a woodland scene - is rich in foliage and alive with fantastical detail. And through the course of your adventure you'll encounter a haunted wood, marshes, ice, snow, rocks... "It has a very European feel to it," asserts Lovett. "You're not gonna wander through deserts or end up in Morocco." But BBB has also looked closer to home for inspiration, with the immediate area around the offices offering up more than its fair share of visual ideas. Indeed, as Lovett points out: "The opening scene from Gladiator was filmed down the road in Tilford." If you've been following the development of Project Ego/Fable, you'll know that one of the big draws of the game is the concept of character development, facilitated both by the freedom of choice available and the lifetime's span of the narrative. Beginning as a twelve-year-old boy, your hero-in-the-making is very much a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which you must leave your own unique imprint. Every decision and action has an effect on the development of your character, both physically and metaphorically. Run around lifting heavy objects and become embroiled in fights and you'll develop rippling muscles. Choose the lazy path, avoiding labour-intensive exercises and you'll grow into a scrawny, palsied adult. Sneak through life under cover of darkness and your skin will remain pallid; frolic in the sunshine and you'll make George Hamilton look like a snowman. You even develop an hilariously well realised beer belly, should you choose to follow the path of lager. You get the picture. And although this is a great achievement technically, (we were shown how all these features can be changed in real time at the push of a button) it's the effect they have on the game that is the really clever bit. Become a burly, muscle-bound chap and people will quake in your path. Equally, a scrawny, sickly man is likely to provoke derision, with kids pointing at laughing at your hilarious disposition. It's like having your dignity surgically removed. Brilliant. And the parameters for exploration are seemingly endless, offering up countless unique ways of playing through the game - each, importantly, as valid as the other. Thus, you can be a cowardly villain, murderous beast, noble hero, lazy oaf, or nervous scaredy-cat - amongst others - and still make it through to the end. The replay potential here is obvious. But Big Blue Box expects you to become quite attached to just the one hero as you guide from age 12 to a maximum of 50 or 60. And even when you finish the game (which should take you between 15-20 hours,) you are free to roam the game world, going back to complete mini-tasks and continuing to grow and interact with a tremendously vital universe. Such a complex idea requires a structure, of course, and Fable's structure comes in the shape of 'Chapters' which portion out the action. Each chapter helps guide the central narrative along, with freedom in between to explore the myriad side quests and separate elements available. Your hero's aging occurs in-between chapters. With each 'day' lasting roughly 48 minutes, you won't see the ageing process in real-time. Furthermore, if you fall in love (oh yes!) and decide to have children, the hassle of birth and nappy-changing is happily skipped over, again between chapters. But how does it play? Well, Big Blue Box describes it as an "arcade RPG." It doesn't want it to be like Final Fantasy , with daft numbers appearing over peoples heads and the like. Indeed, we were greatly surprised to find the combat operates very much like Capcom's Onimusha. With one button for attack and one button for block, combo attacks are achieved through careful timing, and moves are very reminiscent of the Capcom title, with graceful sword-swishes, killer thrusts into the chest and other swanky moves that wouldn't look out of place in a Jackie Chan flick. Furthermore, the magic system, which the team is largely keeping under wraps, offers an extra dimension. We were shown one spell, for example, which slowed time down, Matrix-style, allowing you batter sluggish foes. BBB is currently trying to work out the finer points of this system and would only reveal that: "the use of magic is directly tied into your health levels." Intriguing. One current area of immense promise is that offered by Xbox Live. "There's been talk of having things available through Xbox Live," Lovett tells us. "And because of the way it's built it's certainly a possibility and something which Microsoft is very keen on. It's all a question of time." But that's not to say BBB isn't a self-contained unit in itself: "Fable has a proper narrative with a climactic end, then you can carry on." Simon states. It's at this point that downloadable content could be used to add extra quests on so on. More intriguing is a plan to allow users to save their character data onto a memory card and upload it into a friend's Xbox, with the hero entering the world and becoming a living, breathing element of it. Awesome. And there's still so much more to say. So much so, that we'll end out in-depth look here, and tempt you back with a detailed look at the characters of the game tomorrow, focussing on how they are designed and how they function in the game, followed by exclusive interviews with the team and still more exclusive shots next week. Enjoy. Note: Look below for screen shots. __________________ WindowsXP pro \| ASUS A7N8X Nforce2 motherboard \| Athlon XP 1700+(1.46 Ghz) IBM 40GB 7200rpm \| 512Mb DDR PC3000 \| Leadtek geforce4 Ti4400 \| SB live X-gamer 16x DVDrom & 4x4x24x CDrewriter \| Enermax EG465 (430watt power supply) Last edited by Adair; January 24th, 2003 at 21:35..

January 24th, 2003	#2 (permalink)
Adair Ghost Hacker Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 1,830	Fable preview part2: Creature Feature ComputerandVideoGames.com preview of Fable continues with a look at the creatures in this rpg: Our coverage of Big Blue Box's staggering Xbox adventure continues with a look into the fantastical creations of the art department 18:26 Fable is enough of a technical achievement in its own right to warrant oodles of column inches heaping praise on the evolving vision of the Carter brothers. But regardless of the size of environments, the sheer pressure placed on the number-crunching powers of the Xbox and the revolutionary tools built to create a revolutionary game, all this counts for nought unless the player is able to engage with a living, breathing world. Thus, Big Blue Box's art department, headed by Ian Lovett, has the particularly onerous task of creating the creatures and characters that populate the ever-changing world of fable, ranging from the smallest of creatures, to the largest of foes, to the deepest of characters. During our exclusive tour of the developer's offices, we were provided with a thrilling insight into this aspect of development from Lovett and his team. For a game with a large focus on action in addition to RPG elements, Fable requires its own brand of generic baddie. But quick to deflect suggestions that this lessens the realism of the game, it's quickly pointed out to us that: "Tolkien had his Orcs - creatures that could be summoned in huge numbers where necessary - so we need the same." The Bandit is one, a humanoid enemy which the team was working on perfecting on the day of our visit. Under the instruction of lead animator Dean Finnigan, we were shown a variety of combat animations for the bandit alongside moves for the hero. This consisted of a combo attack from the hero and the relevant response animation from the enemy. As Lovett points out: "Combat is a huge part of the game. But we didn't want to use a traditional Final Fantasy approach, having people with numbers over the head - where's the fun in that? We wanted a proper, full-on fighting experience." As a result Finnigan and his cohorts are spending a great deal of time on making the combat as satisfying as possible. But aside from humanoids, there are naturally some far more fantastical creations. These include the Earth Troll (see screenshots), which was shown to us by animator Gianni Malpelli. The Earth troll, a fearsome beast, is huge in stature, with the hero only coming up to knee height. What's even more impressive is that the other types of troll (Rock, Ice) are bigger still, with the Ice troll weighing in at a monstrous twice the size of the Earth Troll. The team isn't just looking at creating creatures which are interesting to look at, though. It also wants them to be able to appear in interesting ways. As a result: "What we don't want to have is a hundred creatures - we'd rather have 10 or 15 really interesting ones," Lovett tells us. And with the Earth Troll, its back is made up of exactly the same textures of the woodland environment, so when the hero approaches, it will appear like just another hillock until the critical moment. And the same applies for the Rock and Ice varieties. You will only encounter such epic creatures from time to time of course. But, as Lovett points out: "You don't want to be wandering around an empty world, therefore there are a number of small creatures like scorpions, beetles and hornets, which provide constant threat throughout the world." In this way, they occupy the real-time role random battles would fill in a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy. Above and beyond the creatures, however, come the heroes that populate the game world. Yes, that's 'heroes' plural. "In most RPGs you are the centre of the world, but in Fable there are more powerful heroes that stalk the land - this is something you are aware of from the beginning of the game," says artist Angus Syme. He is one of the team members responsible for creating the various 'rival' heroes. "There are nine at the moment," Syme tells us. "three good, three evil and three somewhere in between." It is the artists' job to come up with not just the designs for these characters but also extensive back-stories that serve to illustrate how they fit into overall narrative. Briar Rose (see screenshots) is a vital character. Your hero meets her as a child as well as in adulthood and the way in which you treat her early on shapes the type of character she will be when you meet her years later. This is one of the truly groundbreaking features of Fable and one which offers up a dizzying array of possibilities. For example, if you're nice to her, she may become a romantic interest later on. But, as Lovett points out with a rueful smile: "Let's face it - the way most people play, she'll hate your guts!" The Rival Heroes have other functions, too. By definition, they are rivals for the types of tasks, challenges and quests you may wish to enter into. And the way you treat them can have a serious effect on your chances in certain situations. "Other heroes could be helpful if there's a dangerous area, and if you've been friends they are more inclined to help you out." But if you possess all the social airs and graces of a football hooligan, expect to fight alone. Briar Rose may not just be a key character in Fable either. Indeed, if Big Blue Box MD Dene Carter has his way, she will be the star in a spin-off all of her own, which would go some way to make up for the fact that you can only be a man in Fable. Something that came down to a matter of time, as it happens. One of the evil characters we were shown was Jack of Blades, which Syme describes as: "Much older than your hero and the most famous hero in the land. He's the type of character you will hear legends about and who, if you encounter him early on, will kill you in the blink of an eye." This performs the function of reminding players that they aren't automatically the all-conquering hero they might think, and that there is a long journey ahead of them. One final point to make about the rival heroes is that, spending time in their company can have additional benefits including the ability for your hero to learn and perform their moves - essential for your character's evolution into the ultimate hero. As for the main guy himself, this presented numerous difficulties for the team. "That's the huge one," Lovett points out. "He's got to look great but also be able to change into anything we want, so he has to have no personality and no expression, but still look cool." But the highly advanced bone system the team has implemented allows for an impressive range of facial expressions which can make any number of impressions on an apparently blank canvas. Here's a link to some concept art __________________ WindowsXP pro \| ASUS A7N8X Nforce2 motherboard \| Athlon XP 1700+(1.46 Ghz) IBM 40GB 7200rpm \| 512Mb DDR PC3000 \| Leadtek geforce4 Ti4400 \| SB live X-gamer 16x DVDrom & 4x4x24x CDrewriter \| Enermax EG465 (430watt power supply)

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