Leipzig: Molyneux aims for one shot kills

Lionhead's Peter Molyneux has called for a rethink in the way combat is handled during his opening keynote to the Leipzig Games Convention.

Despite beavering away on Fable 2 for Microsoft, following Lionhead's recent acquisition by the Redmond giant, Molyneux was at pains to point out that his speech apparently did not refer to anything we'd see in the eagerly awaited 360 RPG, but was more a general muse on the way developers and designers think about the traditional combat model.

Calling for combat to become 'dramatic, varied and innovative' Molynuex said that gaming could learn a lot from movies and went on to show some scenes from Kill Bill, where Uma Thurman slaughters the 88's in a welter of spectacular one-shot violence. Molyneux said he believed one sword blow should be enough to kill in a game and he thought that if designers adopted a 'one-hit one-kill' system it would intensify the combat and the drama to unprecedented heights.

Molyneux also pondered the fact that he reckoned 80 per cent of gamers only ever really used one button at a time, suggesting that new developments in game context sensitivity would mean that a single button press could be assigned to many actions. Molyneux also went on to possibly commit gaming swordfighting heresy by asking 'do we need a block button anyway?' although he admitted that wasn't a very popular view amongst his Lionhead colleagues.

Elsewhere in a highly amusing speech, Molyneux took time out to give himself a gentle poke in the ribs over the original Fable, desribing it as a 'bit repetitive' and also admitted that he didn't have the energy or indeed inclanation to wave around a Wii controller for hours on end.