Fable 2 - Preview @ Edge Online

Edge Online staff visited Lionhead's Guildford offices in the UK to look Inside Fable II.  The first page or so is a mea culpa from Dene Carter explaining how they failed with the binary good/evil morality of the first Fable - but although the new version seems more interesting it still looks like a binary thing to me:

So how do you bridge this divorce between a game’s mechanical interactions and its narrative paths? Carter and Molyneux talk about specific incidents, which we’ll avoid for the sake of the experience. But in conceptual terms what you will face in some of Fable II’s most crucial moments is a stark truth: goodness isn’t rewarded. It might be the right thing to do, but it’s often not the sensible thing to do, and your avatar’s entire character, both internally and externally, will be affected in a way that many players will find, at best, disquieting and, at worst, an outrage. And if your choices affect your character’s physical well-being, strength and abilities – and not in the tired old ‘dark path = dark powers’ way – will you be content with just the warm glow of having done something right? “The things that begin to happen to you and your final choice,” begins Louise Copley, Fable II’s executive producer, “they’re hard, hard things – but that’s the path of a hero. Do you want to be one or not?” You can lose almost everything. You can lose your hard-won experience. You can grow old and you can be permanently scarred. You’ll be bullied by other characters, and they won’t hesitate to mock the type of player you are. It’s taken a while to find expression in games, but now being good isn’t about wanting to be good and clicking the right option: it’s about self-sacrifice. “Now it’s hard,” says Carter. “So, you’re good. What if that stops you doing this? Still good? What if we take this, and this, and this from you? Still good?”