It’s the yearly X show again when Microsoft shovels coal into the hype train of their yearly line up and you know what that means? More Peter Molyneaux verbal magic! Hurray! When Molyneaux opens his mouth flying unicorns on rainbows ridden by Suicide Girls models spring forth. But when these fantastical creations touch the earth in the form of an actual game release, they transform into Big W catalogue underwear models riding ponies. Still, you know, ‘good’, just not what was promised.

Before he promised that Natal would reverse the aging process, Molyneaux dropped a few choice plums on Fable 3. Read on to learn whats in store.

Or if you can't be arsed reading all of this you can skip to the end and click the link for the Lionhead studio video that showcases a lot of whats new.

Before we dig in through I just want to make it clear that I loved Fable and moreso Fable 2 (despite the fact I’m yet to finish it, shame on me). The game series has been, so far, exemplary. But they’ve never quite reflected the incredible interactive universe that Molyneaux talks about in all the pre release interviews. He really needs to learn to understate, take a note from Rockstar Moly and let the game speak for itself.

As with Fable 2 having a family and your interactions with them is a big part of the game world

So, here’s Moly’s scene setting quote for the beginning of Fable 3.

“You will start out the game as the 18-year-old [child] of your Fable II character,” Molyneux said. “You’ll find that Albion is being ruled by a tyrant. You are going to storm the castle with all of the people who follow you you’re going to take him down and then people are going to come to you and say, ‘You promised you would eradicate slavery.You promised turn factories into orphanages. You promised to stop childhood labour’.

“We are going to make your time as a ruler a little bit tough.”

Whoa, so this is going to be a ruling RPG as opposed to your more familiar, one man (or woman) against the world adventuring RPG? Well it doesn’t sound as simple as that either.

For a start the interface is all gone, instead experience will be demonstrated by the number of followers you have tagging along with you and health will be shown by ‘the environment’, I can only assume this means you’ll have the familiar blurred vision and red hued screen as you take damage. So no counters or bars or numbers on screen, which personally I think is a good thing, we're certainly reaching the level of graphical technology where we don't always need all that information in a game, we can see our status on screen by the physical well being of our avatar.

You can still be a bad guy, even if you're a good dad, and pet owner

In a nut shell the three big things about Fable 3 are touching, weapons and ruling.

Touching basically means interacting with NPC’s in the world of Fable 3, similar to the gestures and expressions of Fable 2. But instead of vulgar thrusting and heroic posing you’ll be shoving, hugging, kissing, kicking and hopefully dry humping your way around the magical land of Albion. A demo by Moly showed your character going to fetch your daughter and take her by the hand to lead her home, at one point he tried to veer into the pub but his daughter pulled back and admonish him, reminding him that her mother had forbidden him from going to the pub.

A beggar might be happy to be led by the hand, until he sees your taking him to the factory to sell into slavery, then that old self preservation thing sets in

Coop was also mentioned and that touch was a part of your interactions with friends. More exciting was the mention that coop allowed players to split up and go on their own adventures unlike the horrible stretchy camera coop mode of Fable 2.

Weapons will now morph and evolve similar to the way a players appearance does depending on the actions you take. You might start of with a regular looking sword but after chopping up a bunch of bandits or Balverine’s it could blaze with holy light and be inscribed with ancient runes, slaughtering a town full of people could transform your sword to a twisted bloody dripping monstrosity, just like you. The video demo had characters sprouting demonic wings while fighting each other.

Expect the more natural corners of Albion to be as beautiful as they were in the last games

Other parts of it though... seems the industrial revolution has reached Albion, expect to see the minstrel traded up for a Charles Dickens analog

As for the ruling a kingdom aspect this takes up the second half of the game. After you beat the bad guy you have to take control of the kingdom and then the game starts getting really tough. It’s up to you to keep those promises you made to the people and try and rule fairly and justly without becoming a tyrant. As an example say you want to abolish slavery, close factories and open orphanages. What happens when the economy goes in the toilet, famine breaks out and the masses are baying for your blood as a result of your good intentions? Gives you a good idea why so many leaders are lunatics or morons, you’d have to be to take the job.

The first of the new developer diaries showcasing a lot of what I've just talked about can be seen over at the official Lionhead Studio site here. Fable 3 will be available for the 360 in November of this year.