Good Game, but what the hell was Peter Molyneux thinking?

ValentineHeart82

ValentineHeart82

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What was Peter Molyneux thinking when he made it so that you couldn't cast harmful miracle on your own followers?

What the Hell was Peter Molyneux thinking when he decided not to include a Skirmish Mode?

What was Peter Molyneux thinking when he decided to have enemy AI so weak and scripted?

What the Hell was Peter Molyneux thinking when he decided not to include the ability to build new town centers?

What was Peter Molyneux thinking when he decided to get rid of the Sheep/Goat, the Bear, and the Horse?

Black and White 2 is a good game, but it seems to have sacrificed much of what made Black and White so much fun. It doesn't feel like a true sequel, instead it feels like Civ City Rome with a God element thrown in.
 
You just said what was on everyone's mind since '05. I too feel like Molyneux put more time and effort into making Black and White 2 a technological masterpiece rather than an entertainment masterpiece, like he had accomplished with B&W1.

My biggest question is; what was he thinking when he removed Multiplayer?
 
All true. Although, with the miracle thing, you wouldnt want to cast a wind miracle in your town that has a platoon running through it, that'd cause havoc. Same goes with fire, lightning, etc. It was ok with BW1 because there were no platoons :) Also, Molyneux fixes this in BotG.
Even so, i still agree with all the above statements, molyneux messed up, but it was mostly due to him being pushed to the finish, unlike on BW1 where he had the time. :(
 
its a good game, its fun to mod, and its fun to kill people, but its so sad to think what the game could have been like if there was more time to finish it.  :(
 
I just wish they'd open their eyes and give us the modding tools so the talented modders that are still around could rebuild the game.
 
Alkatraz2212 said:
My biggest question is; what was he thinking when he removed Multiplayer?
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He didn't remove it, it just wasn't finished in time for the release. Before it's release there was an article (I forget where  :suspect) I seem to remember that reported the developers playing against each other in the studios. The same goes for the skirmish mode, the weakly scripted opponant AI and the creature interaction.

Remember also that Molyneux was not the only lead designer on the BW2 team; Ron Millar, an RTS developer was the other lead designer  :) Many of the elements that we think don't fit too well with the game are arguably RTS elements, such as miracles not harming your own citizens, the heavily restricted, barely-expanding influence ring, the loooong charge time of the epic wonders and the armies being unable to set fire to your own towns' buildings. I think that with BW2 they were, as has been said, trying to create a technical masterpiece by adding many new features, rather than simply evolving the mechanics of the first BW, adding new features only if they really had to, and advancing the story.
 
Before it's release there was an article (I forget where  ) I seem to remember that reported the developers playing against each other in the studios. The same goes for the skirmish mode, the weakly scripted opponant AI and the creature interaction.
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Several times during developement while testing and playing against each other, they turned a web cam to the screen and left a message on the boards indicating that they had done so. On both occassions someone took screenshots of the game play.
 
in some of the screenies of the game in development, there seems to be alot of pictures with models and buildings not found in the game. so why did they leave them out?
heres an example. whts with the huge tree and the masssive walls??
Black%20And%20White%202%20SS03.jpg

and another. since WHEN was the creature this big?
black-white-2-2.jpg[img]
 
Also, during its development Lionhead initially stacked the new game on top of all the code they wrote for the first, which turned out to be like controlling the seven heads of the Hydra, and hence one year in they ditched it and started from scratch.

Anglo, I think I remember also that Molyneux said that the creatures would be able to be really huge in BW2, but actually when it came down to it, that proved impractical and difficult to balance in a convincing way. In some of the really early screenshots you can even see the old norse wonder and buildings from the original, and the landscape looks to be very much in the vogue of BW original

Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation said one of the best things about Fable II (I think it was that) was that they managed to keep Molyneux' gob shut about things that weren't yet reasonably certain to be in the game  :laugh2 Also Kays; you are truly of the hardcore  :yourock:
 
SkelApe said:
All true. Although, with the miracle thing, you wouldnt want to cast a wind miracle in your town that has a platoon running through it, that'd cause havoc.
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Maybe I WANT to cause Havoc?

SkelApe said:
Same goes with fire, lightning, etc. It was ok with BW1 because there were no platoons :)
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Sometimes I want to torch my own platoons when I'm playing evil!

SkelApe said:
Also, Molyneux fixes this in BotG.
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That he does, which brings me to another gripe. Why does PM always make things like this expansion exclusive? I and to have Expert Miracle Mode in the normal Black and White campaing damn it! Yes I'm well aware of how much the normal campaing sucks, but there are more lands for sandbox building. For that matter I wanted a creature that could eat out of fields without hurling in Black and White, that's a bug fix correcting a scripting error, but it can only be accessed in Creature Island. That totally sucks.
 
anglosaxon said:
why do you think they dont want to share them?
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Because they haven't. Why haven't they? Well that we don't know, maybe they're afraid we'll make a game that's 10 times better than for no pay and make them look like total idiots?
 
They should have included the option of creating different types of platoons such as spearmen, swordmen, or flailmen, etc. The idea of changing your villagers into your soldiers is a good concept though. It prevents you from building huge armies with cheats, so kudos to that. :laugh2
 
Were the features, or lack thereof, PM's decisions, or is what we see the result of EA having their hands in the creation? I seem to recall another franchise recently acquired by EA that they manage to ruin...
 
To be fair, PM and Lionhead have been pretty consistent in their delivery of their games, i.e. both have been rushed to the finish.  B&W1 just turned out to be a more finished game than B&W2 :( .

What few seem to realise now is that B&W1 was rushed out early too - in part because they were running out of money and in part beacuse they had woefully underestimated the amount of time it would take to implement certain things, e.g. land scripts.

I believe they also had intended the creatures to be more varied and not just copies of each other, e.g. Ape/Gorilla/Mandrill, Horse/Zebra, Tiger/Leopard/Lion as well as providing more lands.

There was plenty of griping about missed opportunities on B&W1 back in the day too.  Which may go some of the way in explaining why B&W2 got a harsher reaction - many (myself included) expected B&W2 to correct the flaws of the original.  Fine, they could take the game in a slightly different direction (RTS), so long as they got the core of the game right.  Alas, it was not to be :no :cry .

To his credit, Peter Molyneux was quite frank about what happened in an interview he did a while after B&W2 died down...

Like El_Aleco said, they had to trash alot of their initial year's work to start from scratch.  Add to this, at the time, Lionhead was in the middle of some kind of movement from being a private company to some other corporate structure that would provide more funding.  At the last hurdle, it all fell apart and Liondhead found itself once again short on cash ( :banghead ) and once again they were forced to cut short development to get the game out there and get some money in to pay all the employees.

  • They had intended to improve the interaction with the creature
  • Like B&W1, they also intended to have a good few more lands
  • As well documented here, multiplayer was also on the cards
  • We never got any real word on whether Skirmish was on the cards or not (someone correct me on this if I'm wrong)

Putting all this aside a moment, I still question whether the heavy RTS direction was the right way to go.  It just didn't appeal to me too much.  To me, it just didn't seem to gel too much with what B&W was(the way it was implemented at least).  As they never got to put some good polish on the game before releasing it, I guess we'll never know for sure.
 
mcfrosty3000 said:
...It prevents you from building huge armies with cheats, so kudos to that.
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NO KUDOS TO THAT.

anyway, the enemy just spawns armies out of nowhere.
 
I think the game would be even better if had skirmish game, more interaction with the creature, more lands, more kinds of tribes,  fun quests as in the bw1 and allies ( such as Khazar ). Nonetheless it´s a fun game. But I like BW1 more.
 
For me, waiting for the game to come out was better and brought me more heart pounding moments than actually playing it. There was just something missing.
 
Yep. :)

You wait some five years for it and then complete it in the matter of a few evenings. :rolleyes
 
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