EARLY MOLYNEUX EFFECT

The history of PC gaming is richer for the fact that Peter Molyneux is part of it. We’ve previously spoken of his outlandish claims for what Black & White would let the player do, and he later went on to make similar unbackable claims about Fable, and something called Godus that nobody cares about anymore.

Thing is, the Molyneux Effect (in which a developer talks up amazing features that sound impossible to implement, and then when the game comes out, are revealed as having been impossible to implement) was in full force for Syndicate. It’s just that back in 1993, not as many people were exposed to it.

Molyneux talked up the game’s open world, and the way everyone in the world of Syndicate had a CHIP implanted in their heads that controlled their emotions, or something.

The claim was that the emotional state of each NPC would be tracked, and their behaviour would change based on how much you (in the form of four trenchcoated cyborg killers) disturbed, you know, the peace.

Stroll casually into town, everything’s neat as a pin, cars all neatly parked. Start shooting up the joint, blow up a couple of police checkpoints, and civvies would freak.

Molyneux said they’d even run home, get their car keys, jump in their car, and try to bug out. You, of course, being a psychopathic gamer, would blow up the car as it passed.

While this kind of AI ain’t no thing today, back in 1993 the sheer lack of RAM in the average PC made it fantastical. And it was.