Harrison: Non-gamers see controllers as live guns

[Borkachev]

@ T013--see i think that they have gotten to complicated---look and the SNES controler...Only four buttons on front to use, two shoulders, and a direction pad....ahh simple yet effective

Effective for the day. Modern games couldn't be played on the old controllers.

and until the wii mote came along Dev's in general seemed to be trying to fit as many button combos and options on as possibly

That's just not true. Button layouts have been basically standardized for the last three generations: four shoulder buttons, four face buttons, two analog sticks, a D-pad, and 1-3 assorted system buttons. We've reached a good place where every finger has its purpose and no more buttons are really needed.

We don't use half the buttons on the 360 controller,” admitted Molyneux, "simply because the whole dream I've got is that someone will sit down to play Fable 2 who has never played a game before and they can play with someone who's played games the whole of their lives.

That was a worthy goal for Black & White. For Fable, not so much. I always thought these one-button combat systems were awfully dull, and it sounds like Fable 2's combat is going to be even simpler than Fable 1's. Like I said somewhere else: imagine a game with the freedom and RPG elements of Fable and the combat of God of War. Would that not be an instant classic? As it is, Molyneux is teetering on the possibility of making yet another game with great ideas that's just not very fun to play.

Making simple control schemes does not improve games in any way, it just makes them appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is exactly what shameless commercialists want. They are trying to appeal to the most people, when they should be trying to appeal to the best people.

Resist the dumbening!

Right on. Not that I don't think there's a place for this -- the Wii is that place. But the Wii is an alternate path for the industry, not an ideal to be pursued by everyone. Someone else (i.e. Sony and Microsoft) needs to stay the course, because by taking out control options you're inevitably going to lose gameplay options. There's just no way around it.

And if you don't mind, some of us still like a little complexity.