With Fable II just around the corner, Lionhead fans can start getting legitimately excited. Fable II really is looking like it will be the sequel everyone was hoping for. From a visual standpoint the Dickensian fantasy art direction is stunning and ably backed by polished animations and the visual evolution of the player, while the gameplay is a tasty melange of combat and role playing, in a world that responds to the player in ways both overt and subtle.

If you haven't been following the coverage closely, consider this a ten point primer for one of the most promising games of the year. If you have, then this should be a good recap.

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Choose Your Path

"For every choice, a different destiny," the E3 2008 trailer tells us, and that's likely to be a fair assessment. While we don't know how much your actions will affect the overall plot, we do know that your choices can have huge ramifications down the line for the way the world appears, what kind of place it becomes and what options you will have. We also know that the game keeps track of the sort of person you are in quite a complex way. Sure, there will be obvious good/evil choices that the player will make, but the system is also a whole lot more subtle than that.

Are you vicious for the sake of being vicious? Do you have wives and children all over Albion? Are you sociable or are you a loner? Are you selfless or selfish? Are you rich or are you poor? Do you work or do you steal? Everything you do in Fable II is interpreted by the game, changing how you look and how people interact with you. It's a complex web, and we're looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

Clearly a goody two-shoes. Whatever that means.
One of the most exciting aspects of choosing your path, however, has been described by Peter Molyneux as the concept of sacrifice. Sure, it's all very well to decide to be good, but true goodness is selfless, and games like this are all about being selfish; acquiring stuff - money, property, weapons, experience, and becoming a hero. Molyneux has said that you'll face decisions in this game that will require a huge sacrifice on the part of the player, and that will have long-term consequences.

One sees the player forced to choose whether it will be himself or an attractive young girl who will be hideously scarred for life. It's easy enough to say that you'll take one for the team, but if this means that everyone in the world - your children included - will recoil in horror at your mangled visage wherever you go, that's a pretty big cross to bear. Can you deal with that? Or will you just let the girl get hurt?

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Man's Best Friend

Canine companions are all the rage in videogames this year, but while Fallout 3's pooch is a one-time deal - if it gets killed that's it - Fable II's dog is with you throughout the game, and boy is it convincing. Molyneux has said that it's ten times smarter than the creature in Black & White, so it will be really interesting to see how it learns and evolves over the course of the game. You can play fetch with it, teach it tricks, reward or punish it, and it will morph in appearance and change in disposition as the player character does. What's the dog's role? Well, aside from companionship, it'll point out things the player is missing (whether that's hidden items, alternate paths and so on), help the player in combat, alert the player to nearby enemies and - from some of the hints we've heard - play a role in the story.

Tiny skinheads run rampant across Albion.

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Follow The Yellow Glow Road

Okay, so the dog will help ensure that the player doesn't miss opportunities off the beaten track, but what about those gamers who just want to power through the story? That's where the Breadcrumb Trail comes in. It's a golden trail that appears to guide the player to the next location to progress the story. Hand-holding? Yes, but you can turn it off if you wish, and the game's smart enough that if you decide to go off and do something else, it won't keep bugging you to get back on the main path.

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It's Good to Play Together

Fable II's co-op play comes in a couple of flavours - couch co-op and online co-op. In couch co-op, a friend can pick up the second controller and hop straight into the game at any time for any length of time. You'll share the screen and go adventuring together. Online co-op is slightly different. As you move throughout the world, you'll see purple orbs that represent other players (from your friend list and possibly based on other criteria such as location) also playing the game. Want one to join you? Simply walk up to it and you can invite them in as a henchman (or give them a gift if you're not in the mood). On the invite screen you're able to determine the terms of the co-op - how much gold and experience points will you share? The other player can - again - play cooperatively for as much or as little time as he likes, then take the spoils back to his own game.

Importantly, the actions of a henchman are persistent, so if you invite a friend in, who then goes and kills all your children, there's no way to bring them back. You can see how the choice to share your world can have a tangible impact upon it.

Co-op is a chance for other players to check out your character and your world, and thanks to the dynamic nature of the game, you'll likely see some big differences from your own. Of course, you don't have to rely on simply stumbling across a friend's orb in the game world - you can also find out where friends are and what they're doing from the map screen and then jump right to them.

Mr Protagonist and his sadly invisible friend.

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Burping to Make Friends and Influence People

Fable II is a game with a heavy focus on interactions with other characters, and to make this seamless and visually interesting, the team has gone with a Sims-style system. Walk up to anyone in the world and you can bring up a radial menu of options to interact with them. This is called the Expression Wheel (replacing the clunky menu system from the first game), and basic options are things like asking who the other character is, being fun, flirty, social, rude or scary.

Many of these then open up into more specific options. If you're flirting, for instance, you may be able to choose between a wolf whistle and trying on a pick-up line. Also like The Sims, you'll see tangible results from your advances or buffoonery, with icons and numbers popping up above the person's head indicating whether you're winning them over or annoying them. You're also able to extend your interactions. Rather than just selecting one option over and over, you can turn that option into a longer action via a basic mini-game; if you get the timing right, you'll get a greater reward.

Social interactions can be crafted to appeal to each individual - you can bring up info about each person in the game to see how they currently feel about you, what they like and dislike, and who they are. Anyone in this world can be won over. You can marry women and men alike, and bring NPCs on adventures. It's powerful stuff, but it will be interesting to see how fun the social aspects will be.