Those who like to be more physical when it comes to choosing their character’s class in role-playing games may be a bit out of their element when it comes to Fable: The Journey. That’s because there apparently will not be any melee weapons for use in close combat action, as the team chose to focus on creating a robust magic system instead. Your arsenal is limited to only magical attacks.
During a recent interview with OXM, Peter Molyneux talked about why this decision was made:
“We could have done melee weapons, but the one thing I hate about melee weapons, and guns as well, is that the human brain is encoded to expect recoil from those things.”
He commented upon the topic further, explaining that the sensation of simulated physical feedback is a necessary thing, saying that “visuals and the sound isn’t enough”. Though it’s this weakness that makes the game’s robust magic system work so well. “The thing about magic is there’s nothing encoded in your mind about how it should feel.”
Being that this is a different type of Fable game (the first one to be fully motion-controlled using Kinect), the emphasis on magic sort of makes sense. Hopefully it’ll deliver a fun experience. What we’ve seen thus far has been quite interesting and this is definitely one to keep your eye on.