Tag: Bitcoin Dice

This week potentially marks the beginning of the end for Lionhead Studios, as Microsoft has cancelled the upcoming Fable Legends and “are in discussions with employees about the proposed closure” of the studio. Over two decades, Lionhead, originally helmed by visionary game designer and human embodiment of unbridled eagerness Peter Molyneux, has developed a number of incredible video games, often finding itself trying to punch through a wall formed out of its own lofty ambitions – ambitions that would simultaneously be its greatest asset and biggest curse.

Molyneux originally made a name for himself at his prior company, Bullfrog Productions, with the creation of Populous, largely cited as one of the first ‘god games’. He and his studio would go on to design a string of highly-influential PC hits, with instant classics like Theme Park, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, and Dungeon Keeper being cranked out of the studio year after year, earning Molyneux a large following among the gaming public. Electronic Arts regularly published Bullfrog’s games, and its success led the publisher to bring Molyneux on as its vice president in 1994 and acquiring his studio in 1995. Molyneux butted heads with higher ups over Dungeon Keeper’s numerous delays and the overall culture that comes with working at the upper levels of a major video game publisher, eventually resigning from his position at EA to go independent once again, forming Lionhead Studios in 1996.

Lionhead wouldn’t release its first game, Black & White, until 2001 – five years after the company’s founding. Its release was somewhat poetic, as Molyneux’s new studio brought with it a return to the genre that made him a household name among those tuned into the video game industry. Black & White makes you god of a cartoonish world, ruling over its diminutive denizens and a series of larger than life creatures, influencing their evolution over time based on your own good or evil actions. At the time, Black & White was incredibly well-received, seen as the rebirth of a genre that Molyneux had helped to create as well as an intricately designed “virtual toy”, but public opinion soured over time, with publications like GameSpy deeming it “the most overrated game of all time”. This, along with Lionhead’s penchant for protracted development cycles, would become a narrative that would haunt Lionhead throughout its existence.

Then came Fable in 2004, the Bitcoin Dice …

Here’s how a classic Hitman level used to play out first time: you poke around, looking for ways to your target, probing boundaries for alarms, maybe taking out a waiter and trying on his uniform to get in somewhere. Then you cock it all up and the victim dies with all the subtlety and craft of a bowling ball dropped in a bucket of jelly.

But you learn. Was there a window open at back of the room? Is that a security guard nipping out for a cigarette via the backdoor and possibly exposing himself to a light murdering and clothes swap? Armed with this new knowledge start again and head back in.

That’s the essence of classic Hitman: you don’t play in the levels, you play with them – finding new routes and opportunities, expanding your understanding of potential ways to access areas and end enemies. It’s something the new game nails on a dauntingly huge scale. Anyone worried about the idea of its one-level-a-month episodic structure simply needs to spend an hour or two wandering around the first stage’s Paris fashion show to get an idea of just how big it is, and just how much you can do.

There are the usual Bitcoin Dice options: guards and waiters to pose as, food and drinks to tamper with, precariously hung chandeliers and other accident spots waiting to happen, guests that might have certain agendas or destinations. This time however there’s a massive sense of depth as you replay and learn it all, peeling back the layers to see what’s possible.

My first successful attempt at taking out Paris’ targets, spies and information brokers, Victor Novikov and Dahlia Margolis, highlights just how satisfying the interplay of systems can be. Following a guest out for a smoke on a balcony I am able to knock him out and steal his clothes, getting me into a VIP area and within striking distance of Dahlia. However with no (apparent) way of getting her alone, I slip a knife out from the kitchen and throw it at the back of her head in a bar, legging it as security goes nuts.

Not exactly 47’s finest kill, but it gets the job done, and it takes time for bad news to spread – the security in any given area work and search their zone before radioing out …