The official Fable 2 forums are ablaze with angry co-op gamers, as it appears most of us have been misled as to exactly what the cooperative mode entails.  The main gripe people are having is that your Fable 2 character does not transfer over to any form of co-op.  This applies to both the online and the offline mode.  What you do get is to become a henchmen, something we already knew, but we didn't know how literal the term was.  

When Lionhead used the term "henchman" in our interview, they actually meant a henchman character - not a henchmen role.  This mean that character you've worked so hard to customize, including weapons, armor, scars, and other markings all are NOT visible in your friend's game when joining.  On top of this, any items you gain while in a friend's game will not transfer back to your character.  The only thing that transfers is gold, experience and renown.  

Unfortunately that's not the end of the issue list.  Players are complaining about a wonky camera system, especially in couch co-op.   There's also a glitch when joining someone's game while they are in childhood that could affect and corrupt your own save.  So be careful they are past the introduction stage.

At this point we can only hope for a proper co-op patch to allow your character in other player's games, or your friends character in your game.  This seems to happen far to often when a developer gets this close to getting co-op play done right; to only have it missing a key piece of the equation.  

Note to developers - Stripping features out of the co-op experience that you have in single player is never a good thing.

So would you say, at this point, that there is no point picking up a second copy of Fable II to play co-op with the girlfriend? The co-op modes are essentially the same on shared screen and XBL, right? Aside from having to share a screen, obviously.. ?

Yup, that seems to be the case unfortunately.

Huh.. I guess if there's a silver lining here, it's that I've already gone a bit over budget with my games spending. 2 copies of Saints Row 2, fable II CE, and Fallout 3 pre-ordered through amazon. Not to mention Left 4 Dead in a month.

I had a quick glance at the Lionhead forums, (they're not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the Co-Optimus forums) and everyone keeps going on about how Lionhead needs to patch this.

I know nil about game programming, but is it as easy as all that, to just whip up a patch that will "fix" the co-op? If my girl and I could have our own respective heroes, stats, equip et all included, I would more than likely pony up the dough for a second copy (or more likely, make her pay for her own. ). How likely is that to happen?

I may have a curse upon myself. Really! Everytime I am amazed about a co-op game, it turns out to be unfinished and disappointing

Peter Molyneux said he would change the way we play co-op, and that is his answer to that? Limiting the second player to a random henchmen that can´t take the new items to his own game (only stats, gold and exp)??

It makes no sense. Not at ll.

This is extremely disappointing news to me. I can't believe they'd offer coop while dropping the ball on what would make the coop gameplay worthwhile to play (allowing items to be available in both modes for example).

The coop aspect of Fable 2 is why I was interested in this game in the first place. Bummer.

Well, I guess making the second player the main player's bitch is a "new" way of playing co-op...

This will not affect me playing with my kids, say, but who wants to be a henchman, in this capacity, playing online with a friend? One player gets the full single player experience, and the other is just a tag along. Not cool, and yes, I think we were mislead.

Yeah. It seems good old Peter cheated somehow on us again. I like that fella... he seems to be so passionate on what he does! But he alweays says too much and can´t deliver everything he promisses.

It just takes away every reason to play co-op. It would have been better to have a mode where NEITHER player kept what they gathered, and although that's not an exciting prospect by any means, how many people are playing co-op Fable II right now? Considering this new info, probably very few.

It seems that the Seth Luisi Syndrome is contagious...

There is a dev on the official forums that are making fun of people that are complaining about co-op. He is literally mocking of people there.

I can´t believe a dev is doing that. I am going to cancel my login there.

Got a link to that rafoca?

I found it:
http://community.lionhead.com/forums/post/3144263.aspx

What a punk.

reading just a part of that forum hurt my soul


and IQ

Apparently that gentleman doesn't know who pays his salary (gamers). Not a good idea in my opinion to act like that over legitimate concerns related to the coop mode.

Man, a henchman?? How lame is that? Maybe they can patch this... I don't know how that works, but man if they don't fix it, I don't think Pete can ever sell a game again...

I hate to buck the crowd here, but I think people are blowing this waaaaay out of proportion. Yes, it sucks that when we play co-op, we can't use our custom characters, with loot and all, but It's not the end of the world. I picked up my copy today and I'm psyched to play co-op with the girlfriend tonight. Our plan is to have our own respective save games going, and we'll alternate in jumping as a henchman in our respective games. Is this preferable to playing through the campaign with our respective characters? Of course not. What it does do however is allow us to build our own worlds up, families, houses, businesses, etc, and let us show them off to one another. One person I may brutally murder in my game, she may marry in hers, and it'll be neat to see that side by side comparisons.

Part of Fable II's appeal is how your character can build his reputation in the world of Albion for good or evil, and to have to track two distinct, dynamic characters in that world would probably be to taxing for the game. What if I'm off being a noble hero, while my online partner is slaying every townsfolk he runs into? Granted they could have used a similar function as the henchmen in the game, while still allowing you to use your own in-game character, but I think they would be facing the same complaints as now. This way it's cut and dry that the henchman is exactly what it is.

This is a huge step in the right direction, as far as RPG's go. Are there better options out there for the console? None that I know of. Keep in mind that before Saints Row 2, our options for sandbox games co-op were GTAIV, which was a huge letdown for me. I should have been able to at least do social activities with my online partner, like I could with Little Jacob or Roman, and Crackdown, which had NIL for story.

Co-Optimus was founded to give us a voice in the co-op community, and to illustrate how important co-op games are to the gaming community. I'm a HUGE fan of co-op games, and when new releases come out, co-op is a major factor in my decision to buy immediately, or wait to get a sale. Fable II isn't perfect, but it's a leap in the right direction, and instead of everyone jumping all over the flaws, we should be complimenting the huge endeavour Lionhead took on to try to please us.

I respectfully disagree...I feel that it isn't a "leap" in the right direction. I see your point that one person affecting another's "world" can be a detriment, but overall, I don't feel that Lionhead had to fashion the game this way. For a game that imports data from XBLA mini-games, there is no technical reason for the game being shortchanged.

In any case, this thread has gotten skewed slightly...the original post by Bapenguin was not so much to shed light on the game's gimped co-op, but more so on Lionhead's underhanded way of hyping it.

I for one am glad that you're enjoying the game.

I may have misrepresented my point. I don't think they limited to co-op to limit other people affecting game worlds, I think that the technological difficulties are what prohibited them from giving two characters free reign in one game world. I no nothing about programming, but I would imagine it would be difficult to create an environment on a console where two seperate identities can dynamically affect the world (buying shops, getting married, etc).

As for a leap in the right direction, again, I'd have to insist that the other options for on/offline co-op RPG titles is severely limited.Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and D&D heroes come to mind, but neither are of the scope and potential of this title. With the exception of FPS's, I can't think of very many games that DO have full on, campaign Co-op. Fable II is allowing you to bring a person along with you as a sort of 'Co-Pilot" which isn't as good as being a full-fledged character, but you can draw some comparsions to Gears and RB6. In Gears only the person playing Marcus has the opportunity to choose paths, pause the game, etc. In RB6, only the primary character can issue orders to the squad, etc.

Of course Fable II has a long way to come to be a great co-op game, but I still think it's a good start.


As for Lionhead misrepresenting the co-op, did they? I haven't read every article available on Fable II, but I've been pretty up to date with Co-Optimus and a couple other gaming sites. I think it's been at worst ambigious on how the co-op will work, and at best, they've been pretty upfront about calling the co-op character "henchmen". I of course, could stand to be corrected as far as what they've promised, but personally, I didn't expect full-on co-op out of the box.