How to Fix Fable 2's Online Coop

I grabbed Fable 2 the other day in much anticipation. So far, it has been a great game, but I have a new personal policy about games without coop; DO NOT BUY. RPGs without coop have long since plagued my gaming experience.

Take Bethesda's Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, for example. That game was loads of fun, and my character was awesome... But in the end, who did I have to share that with? I couldn't show him off, I couldn't share the world with anyone, not even one single player. Sure, games have their limitations and I can understand why Oblivion wouldn't suddenly grant me coop when all the other games in the series were epic singleplayer adventures.

Now let's look at a game like Diablo 2. 8 players in a large world. By all means, there isn't nearly as much data going around as a large, interactive 3D world, but it's been more than 8 years since that game, and the third installment of the series will have coop as well. You'd think by now some developers could figure out how to make a decent coop experience.

So let me get the core of my complaint; Fable 2's online coop. I can understand local, 2 player coop. It makes sense to have each player share the screen, force player 2 to use a preset character, and be tethered together by an invisible leash with a ridiculously short length.

But what of Xbox LIVE Coop?

I can't bring my own character into my friend's game. I have to use some silly, preset, nameless "Henchman" who tags along. The only thing he can do is fight, in which all his money and EXP go to your character. So, in coop you get to progress your character, but you don't get to actually USE your character. I do not see what's stopping them from allowing us to bring our character into the host players world, fighting with his magic and weapons, and of course, being able to actual shop, sell, and customize things while in a friend's game. It would also be nice to see two dogs interact with each other. Was it just too much work and they wanted to focus on... The lonely singleplayer experience? There's all this speculation that it's to keep the world YOUR world. Look, if I'm worried about my friend coming in to my Good Guy world and killing all the town guards, I won't play with that person. Or better yet, why not just have the guards kill my friend? I won't get in their way. I don't see where our characters equal the same person.

We should be two seperate heros traveling in the same world.


Second ailment; we don't each have our own camera. We are forced to share one poorly designed, bipolar camera that seems to either: A) Not let you move it, or B) Not move until you move it manually. You can see where the confusion comes in. I spend more time in coop battling the camera than I do actual enemies. When on local, I understand, but on Xbox LIVE, why can't we have our own camera? When in singleplayer, the camera works beautifully!

If each person had the singleplayer camera to themselves, the coop experience would be vastly improved. This alone would make me at least somewhat enjoy playing as a nameless Henchman.


Third issue: The invisible tether. The two players can not be a certain distance apart from one another, which is fine. I understand that they're trying to keep the players together for various reasons, the prime two most likely being the fact that you don't want one player wandering off camera and they need to keep the data to a minimum. (That is to say, two players far apart are each seeing more, therefore more data has to pass across the network) The problem with the first prime reason is that this would hardly be a problem if the camera didn't fail so miserably! The second one makes sense. By all means, leash us together, but give us our own camera so when I'm running into an invisible wall I can make sense of what's going on...



Keep in mind, this is all coming from a guy who loves Coop in every single game. I generally avoid games that don't have a coop experience that is literally the Singleplayer + Friends. (Think: Halo/Gears of War Coop) Developers, stop dwarfing your Coop experience! Some of the best times had in games are the singleplayer, and some of those moments have been greatly enhanced when I can do it with a friend. Why can't I always share it with friends? And I am positive most people think the same. Games are just plain more fun when you can play it with friends. Fable 2 brings us a very dwarfed coop mode.

Lionhead was certainly on target, but they are using the wrong ammunition.