Now before I start one of my trademarked "How about changing it so these features are added" posts I want to state that I believe the dog feature from Fable II wont be a part of Fable III, and that the land of Albion and it's denizens will be concentrated on instead. Having said that, I've been wrong before, notably when I bought Suikoden 3 (Hey looks like the story's about to really get going and... It's over? An tree was the final boss?), so here we go.

The dog was a wonderful idea in Fable II but it didn't quite live up to it's promise and I've a few ideas on how to make the gameplay feature better should it return in Fable III. These are based on my own observations of dogs in real life as well as how the Fable system works and how dogs in other games have been used.

Collars - Currently the collars only let you name your dog, yet they could do so much more and increase the amount of collar variants available. Let us have an optional breed slot in some collars that allows us to assign a breed to our dog for appearance using expensive breed augments. A messenger pouch could allows us to put some coins and a note in a pouch attached to the dog's collar, then send it home to the family when we've been away a while. A final option for collars could allow equipping one of several dog only augments like man-eater (healed by killing enemies), terror (villagers run screaming from the dog), fluffy (people love the dog) or digger (digs up dig spot treasure and brings it to you).
Skills - The current dog skills are alright, but they could be further split and refined. Finding dig spots should be a seperate skill to finding treasure chests, as should finding silver keys and other items scattered around the landscape. I also would like to see these skills bought with general experience rather than learned from a book. It'd feel more like we were training our dog that way. Add in a learning skill that determines which star level tricks he can learn from books as well.
Commands - Scolding and praising your dog is a nice touch although there's not really any reason to do so. I'd much rather have some expressions that make me feel like the dog is a part of the world. Telling my dog to go home, possibly with a pouch of money to help my family out or pay a neighbour to take care of him, would take him out of the game for a little while and maybe help my family stay together while I'm gone. Maybe I can call on him to do a trick, which randomly performs a learned trick. And finally a couple of expressions telling him to switch modes so he becomes alert for different things, searching for chests or dig spots or just being ready for combat.
Fighting - This is the part that disappointed most people in Fable II. Personally I have no problem with it until you get to the higher levels of dog fighting. Around level four the dog should be able to leap at enemies and disarm them. Come level five the dog should be able to floor a single enemy with a leap and finish him off. Of course, a dog wont be leaping anywhere if it's injured.
Items - I mentioned above that dog augments and breed slots should be available for collars, even giving a few examples. I also mentioned a messenger pouch to use when sending money home to the family. The ball already exists as do dog snacks which heal the mutt slightly. Unfortunately the snacks aren't very useful as you're given an unlimited use healing potion at the beginning of the game. This item should be very expensive, or have say three uses assigned to it before running out. Maybe we could get further potions that increase the dog's stats temporarily. Perhaps setting the dog into a seeking or combat mode will lower it's love for you a little and playing fetch will bring it back up.

All general ideas with no real work to them, but I think they could increase the feeling of a partnership with your dog as well as make him feel uniquely yours. Anyone got anything to add? Perhaps some dog augment designs based around your own eight foot long puppies.

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Fable - The Musical Design Process
"Ladies and gents, we're still alive
By the skin of our teeth - now it's killing time.
Angel in my pocket, d by my side.
We ain't going nowhere 'cause heroes never die."

Great post.

Great post!
Especialy the fighting thing!

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King in many ways

Honestly, i was really excited about the damn dog in Fable II.. but by the second time through the game, it got annoying more than anything..

If they find a way to just get rid of buried crap in general, the dog would be great!

Honestly spending 2-3 hours trying to dig up all the loot in the game, and the best thing you get is something you coulda bought at bowerstone market for 56 gold. Eh.

The treasure chests were absolute crap too. If there was a treasure chest in the middle of no where seemingly hidden, i owuldnt expect to find a pair of villager boots or something in it.

The dog didnt really guide me at all. It was mainly the bread crumb trail. I dont remember a single time when my dog led me to a secret area; all the time I found something like a hidden cave or dive spot, it was because I was trying to find it.

 

Some changes I wanna see in the dog are some of the things you mentioned, but also I really wanna see the dog have a personality on its own.

Why the heck would I want the dog to be a picture perfect little pet. I would like it if my dog got me in trouble by its curiosity or anger. The dog may bite a villager, wether i want him to or not. It's not in my control which i like. In Fable II, the dog wouldnt to anything mischievious. I don't like the fact that in Fable II, you are always in control. I wanna feel a sense of weakness too. I dont like being all powerful; I want to know that i can be attacked easily i nthe middle of no where. Villagers should be able to attack you if they dont like you, but no.. they are all perfect and -willed.

Off topic a bit

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Frown, you mad?

One of the things the GOTY edition added was a bit more personality to the dog. He regularly goes wandering off on his own without treasure to lead him, and I've caught him peeing on villagers stalls more than once, at one point causing the stall owner in Bloodstone to come after me (to be fair I pointed and laughed afterwards). These are things that just didn't happen in my LE version of the game so I don't know if they're new to the GOTY edition or come with the DLC.

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Fable - The Musical Design Process
"Ladies and gents, we're still alive
By the skin of our teeth - now it's killing time.
Angel in my pocket, d by my side.
We ain't going nowhere 'cause heroes never die."

I was disappointed with the dog too... If i am and kill people for fun, i want my fluffy d to bite people when i walk around my towns (i own all of albion on my profile)

I think at 1 star fighter the dog should bite people hands and distract them. Two star he should attack downed enemies. 3 star he should jump up and knock people down, and take out people i knock down. 4 star he should kill the odd person. 5 star he should attack the biggest threat to me

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I remember a time where I was looking foward to interacting with the dog, especially with how I got hyped because PM was getting hyped just talking about it.


and then fable 2 came out...


but to be honest the ONLY thing

the idea for the dog sniffing out was actually a idea, but what we found was really what brought it down.
You got to wonder if it was just teresa messing with you by dropping those things

and in combat it was ... meh... Im trying to take in consideration that "maybe" others wanted to do all the work in battle.

I'd like to see is a dog you could semi-control to be either combat or treasure finding focused.

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Squaids, It's some Serious... stuff.

I vote for an augment that allows the dog to fetch you a beer. You know how much that augment would fetch in a pub?!

Seriously, the augments don't seem like the best thing for a dog, but I do like the idea of the dog doing things you don't want it to do.
If you sleep for seven days, there's a possibility your dog may have ran off! It'd be a quest just like when the children run off to become an adventurer, except it's your dog.
Plus it'd be a break away from having your dog following you everywhere, yipping and yapping when you pass a dig spot you don't want to get.

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Don't take me seriously, unless I'm serious.

Commands and fighting were two things that were already present at some point in Fable 2 but were pulled close to the end because of design choices.  The dog was supposed to learn what you liked him to do and didn't like him to do with the Praise and Punish expressions, but that went away.  My theory about why is that it was too confusing for players.  They didn't really understand how it worked.  Other advanced commands like you're suggesting go against the "no dog button" concept that Peter was pushing early on in development.  I'll explain that a bit more in the next paragraph.  The direct fighting with enemies was finished and implemented early on in production (evident in the dog announcement video) but also went away.  My theory about this is that he was either getting hurt too much making it an inconvenience to keep him healthy, or was perhaps taking a bit too much control away from the player in combat.

I'm somewhat conflicted about dog items.  On the one hand, cosmetic items are supposed to be completely separate from combat so that you don't put up with something ugly so that you can be the best at fighting.  On the other hand, dog combat is very shallow as it stands, even before fighting was removed.  On the third hand, another design choice that was being pushed is the "no dog button" concept that says that he should do everything on his own and you should have no control or influence over his actions, making him a completely separate being.  In this way he becomes a character that emotion can be developed for instead of a utility for the player to keep around and use.

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Do me a favor. Click this every once in a while.

personally, i thought the dog was a cute distraction that i think caused the game to become less serious and made it more interesting.

what i would like is to see the dog introduced more understandably. such as they became a family symbol and thus when you start the game you are shown several dogs by your father and get to choose. there needent be any inprovements or tweeks per dog but just their looks and personality. hyper-active or dopey, attentive or distractive. this makes the dog feel more like you own him.

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"Do you think our lives are an predetermined events, or are they, like, random actions" Random Bowerstone citizen.

(\__/) Look!
(='.'=) Its a
(")_(") Cat!!

just remove the damn dog or give an option so that you dont HAVE to play the game with him, he was shitty, useless and pointless, F1 style of finding things was better

yet again 'thefurie', you amaze me!! damn dude, you have some ideas!! seriously, you should just write up one MASSIVE email and send it in to lionhead!!

everything that you have posted on these forums i have agreed with, and applauded.

i love the messenger pouch and the use of separate modes for the dog to have, e.g. battle and hunting modes, etc. i think that also, to do with the praising the dog emotions, the dog will love and hate you more or less when you do either one, e.g. if you do not praise him enough for the things he does that are (finding treasure, killing an enemy) he will either just not do it anymore, or he will lose a skill point toward that feature.

although the downfall to this is... how do you get him back to his original self... unless the answer is to just train him again... although, that could be tiresome, and is more like a pro-rpg game...

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I loved the dog in fable 2,  but with that being said I do think that it needs to be improved!  The dog should definetly fight better no matter if its a or dog.  Obviously an dog should be more vicious and do some massive damage even attacking unprovoked.  The dog on the other hand should help the master and attack when the master is attacked.  I think the finding dig sites should be toned down and that if you have a treasure hunter dog he should find so really cool rare stuff for you.  I definetly hope that there is a dog in Fable 3 just tweak it some, which I have no doube Lionhead will do because they are awesome and always learn and improve from game to game!

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