Peter Molyneux on Video Games in 2016

The 200th issue of Edge promotes a roundtable discussion with several game developers by asking them what the state of the video game industry might be like in 7 years (when the magazine's 300th issue is due). As MTV Multiplayer reports, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux tackles the progress we'll make with the design and direction of narrative video games:
Edge: By 2016 [the year when Edge issue #300 should be published], will we be any closer to that completely immersive narrative experience?

Molyneux: We're starting to realise our uniqueness, and that we've got the ability to do things that no other medium has had before. I think by 2016 we're going to have a truly amazing story, which will be cited as the equivalent of '˜The Godfather' on film. The uniqueness and adaptability of the content, the fact you feel you are the hero character more than you are empathising with the hero these are all things you can see evolving. I look at '˜Grand Theft Auto'˜ and the Niko Bellic character, and I realize that we're really getting a handle on how to characterise somebody.

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If you look at early storytelling in film, it was much less character-driven and much more plot-driven: Harold Lloyd falling off a skyscraper or trying to move a piano. Part of the revolution that Niko Bellic started to unveil and what we're attempting with Fable is to say the characters, especially who you are as a character, matter as much as the plot. Moving forward to 2016, you're going to see new forms of characters that we've never seen before, and those characters totally adapting to what you're like as an individual.