A “big” announcement is coming for Fable 2, according to this post on the game’s blog.

“Normally, we don’t like to tease too much,” reads the post. “You know, all this hype being generated by teasing the announcement that there will be an announcement in X-number of days. Who cares? But in this day and age where a gazillion titles are asking for your attention, I felt it might be the right thing to do on the blog.

“We’ve got some good news for all Fable II fans next week, dare I even say it’s quite a big announcement? Yes of course I dare say it’s a big announcement regarding Fable II, next week!”

That will be one hell of a “big” announcement. I hope it’s a downloadable expansion or chapters of some sort.

The third episode in Lionhead Studio’s video diary is now available for download from here (direct), the official website and from Xbox Live Marketplace. Unfortunately, I don’t have a streaming version of it here.

The video takes a look at the studio’s 10th anniversary bash and the technology team behind Fable 2, who explain what it is to be a “geek”. They also show off the tools and technology behind the coming game.

To celebrate the studio’s tenth anniversary, as well as the development of Fable 2, Lionhead has released episode two of its video diary, highlighting the upcoming game’s one-button combat system.

The video diary also talks about the development team’s comical anecdotes about their real-life combat encounters with the sword-master they had hired to demonstrate “real sword-fighting.” They also show a friendly football match between Lionhead and Rare, another fellow UK developer.

You can view the video on the studio’s website; it is also embedded below:

Remember Fable 2? You know, the game which will offer “unconditional love”? Yea, the one by the Black & White dude - Peter Molyneaux. Well, the game’s physics will be handled by Havok, as the company announced that Lionhead Studios has licensed Havok Complete, the company’s physics and animation solution, for use in the far-off game.

“Using Havok’s technology means that we don’t have to worry about finding an efficient way to do all the complex physics calculations ourselves that are required to create a huge, vibrant, real time and persistent virtual world such as the one we’re creating for Fable 2,” said Molyneaux. “By using Havok, we bypass a lot of the heavy physics maths and concentrate our teams more on the creative and innovative elements of the game.”

No release date for Fable 2 is known yet, but the game is not expected until late 2008.

A new Fable 2 update is up on the Lionhead website, this time offering word on the world in the game and how they are developing it to be truly “next-gen”. Here’s a bit:

Dene Carter created 2D sketches of most of the areas that are used in Fable 2. Charlton then went off, using the Fable: The Lost Chapters engine, to turn those sketches into a “real” world in which you could walk around. The aim of this process was to get a complete feel of what it will eventually look like, while the technical guys were working on the tools and the brand new Fable 2 engine itself. It took Charlton about 2 - 3 days to create every area this way. The team could then walk around in the world and review each area and make the required changes instead of working with an engine that isn’t finished yet or designing all the levels on paper without a real feel of the final result. This “template world” allowed the design team to get a really good feel for the game and improve all areas even before being able to test them in the Fable 2 engine. Once all of this was done and the programmers and coders finished their initial work everything was transferred to the new Fable 2 engine, including the height fields which are so all-important. Don’t ask me why they’re that important, as I’m not completely familiar with all this vocabulary but Charlton mentioned it on more then just once occasion.

This time around the world will be “much bigger and better;” however it seems that it will still be on-the-rails as its predecessor. Going off-topic, the update also mentioned that the design document for Fable 2 currently stands at 1,364 pages or around 550,000 words. Now, that’s BIG!

I should also mention that a new piece of low-res concept art is also attached with the update (mirrored here).

This year’s E3 saw a short, but sweet teaser trailer for Fable 2 on Xbox 360; no details were revealed, but a few new tidbits are now available through an update by Sam on Lionhead’s website.

The developer has apparently submitted a “milestone” build to Microsoft; it was well-received, though the author mentions modestly that they haven’t done “too badly.” It seems that the studio is avoiding the mistakes it made with the first Fable - talking too much about it - and has decided not to divulge any details, though the post mentions a motion capture session, among other things.

However, Sam does report that the final storyline has been set in stone and that they are hard at work on implementing it in the game. The story, as stated, will be mature and darker from the original Fable; it will be set 500 years after the original and will have some “rather cool” twists to it.

The studio will submit another milestone build next month, so another update can be expected then.