The dog is brilliant
Seriously. After a few minutes you'll wonder how you ever managed without him. Far from being a mere living weapon, the dog is actually a brilliant resolution to a great many of the problems that traditionally plague the RPG. On top of being a loyal combat aid, he'll sniff out buried treasure, negating the need for any of the treasure hunting through random digging found in Zelda games. He'll cut down trial-and-error wandering in towns by running over to places and people of interest and barking. He'll warn you of impending danger with a growl, helping you avoid those annoying random deaths. And if you get lost or stuck in a dungeon, just listen out for a distant bark. The chances are he'll have sniffed out the exit and will be summoning you over.
And miraculously, he never, ever gets annoying. There's no "Hey! Hey! Listen! Hey! Listen!" here. If you're busy, your dog will just go about his business, happily exploring and sniffing his way around. He'll always come back to you eventually, and you can round him up easily if he wanders off, but not once while we were playing did his presence become intrusive or a hinderance of any kind. And as doubtful as we were, we found ourselves becoming so attached to the little fella that when a mission boss injured him at one point, we surprised ourselves by feeling something similar to how we did when Sephiroth killed Aeris. All that, and we're cat people too. Amazing.
The reputation system really, really seems to work
We went into Fable 2 waiting to be convinced on this one. In theory it was the thing that would really make the game stand apart, but we had to see it in action before we were convinced. We really shouldn't have worried though. The depth with which your actions dictate NPCs' opinions of you is bewildering. There must be enough algorithms going on behind the scenes in Fable 2 to sink a battleship.
Take for example, our experiences in the city of Bowerstone. Having already established ourselves as a pretty badass hero thanks to the liberation of a couple of slaves and the brutal and completely optional murder of their former owner (He offered us a bribe to leave them with him. We felt insulted), one or two fearful citizens aside we were pretty much flavour of the month.
Just for fun, we started flirting with a rather large old lady. Clearly enjoying the attention of a strapping young hero, she reacted well. Not as well as the younger woman we'd chatted up earlier on - No generic NPCs here. They all have their own backgrounds and criteria for reacting to you - but she seemed happy enough. Eventually we left her to it and thought no more of her.
However, a few minutes later when we were exploring the town walls looking for treasure, we noticed a familiar figure taking a walk further along the otherwise empty battlements. Yes, it was her. While not wanting to take the relationship any further, it seemed she'd 'coincidentally' wandered our way a few minutes after our meeting, and for the next half hour or so, while never approaching us, she was always somewhere nearby in the crowd, unconsciously attracted to her faux beau.
And a much more blatant example came a little while later. Returning to our seat after talking to Peter Molyneux for a while, we found that some European journos had stolen our console and had destroyed our hero's reputation by running around massacring Bowerstone's townspeople. The knaves! Where once the crowd had flocked to us, now they ducked away and morbidly asked us what it felt like to murder a man. The sense of connection to the game world this created was incredible, and we couldn't help but be blown away at how much more alive it felt than any other game we can remember playing, GTA IV included.
As we've mentioned above, we also interviewed developer and Lionhead honcho Peter Molyneux on the day of our Fable 2 playtest. Look out for the full write-up on GamesRadar over the next couple of days.
