Lucky for us, we’re not about breaking news. As always with The Average Gamer, we focus on whether or not games are fun to play and E3 was no exception. Here’s what happened:

In all seriousness, we worked our asses off over those 4 days. We’ve a ton of great features coming for you over the next few weeks, including:

• An interview with senior producer of F1 2011, Paul Jeal
• Hands-on with Batman: Arkham City
• A preview of Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
• Hands-on with Wipeout 2048 on the PS Vita and a chat with the developers
• A beautiful video of me on Dance Central 2 and an interview with senior designer Matt Boch
• Preview impressions of Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Hands-on with Uncharted: Golden Abyss on the PS Vita
• A detailed preview of Ubisoft’s Rocksmith
• Hands-on with the Wii-U
• A preview of Hulk Hogan’s Main Event (yes, you can do the Leg Drop of Doom)
• A preview of The Darkness II
• Hands-on with SSX
• Hands-on with Rage

But today… I’m working on my tan. See you tomorrow!

Just so you know where I’m coming from, this is what I said about the game previously, based on the two-and-a-half minute demo during Microsoft’s E3 2011 press conference.

“Virtual fucking horseriding? Are you kidding me?”
“Oh, there are some spells. Woo! Hope it comes across as more urgent in gameplay battle coz that was kinda… dull.”
“Would be great fun but for the fact that it’s on rails. I don’t think you can even aim.”

This evening we were privy to a Q&A with Peter Molyneux wherein he explained to us what Fable: The Journey is really about. It’s as far from being on rails as a game could possibly be. The watchword for Lionhead when building this game is “freedom” with the press conference demo intentionally restricted to rails in order to show off the spellcasting and combat system. As Molyneux told us today “You’re free to navigate and move round however you like. Free to take different pathways, free to go off-road. This is your main form of navigation; you’re free to stop wherever you like and make camp. In camp, you can get off your horse and carriage – groom and feed your horse.” The thing to remember is that Fable: The Journey isn’t designed to be traversed on foot. If you go too far from your wagon “terrible things will start happening”, rather like leaving your female friend in ICO.

Yes, you do have to mimic using the reins to drive your horse but not for long. If you speak while commanding your horse, his ears will prick up. He’s listening. Repeat the same words with the same command a few times and soon enough your horse will respond to your voice. You won’t even need the reins. For someone like me who taught her Nintendog to sit back and raise his right paw in response to “Heil Hitler”, that’s pretty bloody exciting.

“We’re trying to make this horse feel real, feel alive. We’ve done this before with the creature in Black and White and the dog in Fable 2. The more alive he feels, the more you realise that he will feel pain and that means that there’s a consequence to you pushing him hard. You can [travel] through this game as fast as you like,” Molyneux told us. “You can push a horse till he collapses from exhaustion but that’s going to be a little bit cruel. If you really want to, you can take a whip out and whip your horse to make him go faster.

“That is a moral choice you’re making within Fable: The Journey and that moral choice is going to have impact on the gameplay.” No word yet on what that impact will be.

When it comes to combat, you have full control over your magic. What didn’t come across in the demo was that you still control fireballs after they’ve left your hands. Keep your hands out to continue in a straight line or lower them to drop a ball of flames onto your wretched victims below. Use different gestures to create and throw a spear in the same fashion or draw a magical shield and then deflect incoming blows with your shield-arm. The one thing that’s unlikely to be in the game is swordplay. According to Molyneux “for me, what’s difficult on Kinect is anything you already know how to use really, really well. Swords are problematic for me because they’re physical things. It would be ridiculous to fight with swords sitting down.”

A big part of freedom is the ability to slouch in your seat while gaming, or have a beer of an evening. Lionhead understand the importance of gamers relaxing in their gaming time. Rather than forcing you into awkward positions and rigid gestures, they want the game to feel like a natural extension of your movements. Fable: The Journey will allow you to slouch all you want while continuing to play.

Finally, the question everyone wants answered is how do you move if the interface is used for magic? Quite simply, really. You can either lean in a direction to turn the camera and start walking that way, or reach out and point the way you want to go.

There you have it. Fable: The Journey. It’s not on rails.

Edit: For those of you who don’t take Molyneux at his word (can’t think why ;), Lionhead will be showing a not-on-rails demo at GamesCom in August. No official word on a release date. When questioned, Molyneux responded with “Hmm… maybe next year.”

After a long break, the PlayStation Store is finally back. It doesn’t include the welcome back gifts yet. Games that should have been released over the past month will be now be available like Under Siege, which we previewed a while back.

Lots of details about Sony’s NGP console (successor to the PSP) have been finding their way onto the internet today. See what Dutch site Tweakers.net had to say after getting hold of an actual NGP console. [Note: This article is in Dutch, so I've included a link via Google Translate so you can read it in English]

NeoGAF has tons of screenshots from many of the upcoming NGP games including Uncharted: Golden Abyss and WipEout 2048. Oh, yes, a new WipEout game is on the way. Yay.

Konami kicks off this year’s E3 with its pre-E3 show in a few hours. You can watch the whole event online on the special E3 section of Konami’s website from 1am BST (or 5pm PST) tonight.

Square Enix have released a barn-storming E3 trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club members get their mitts on the Duken Nukem Forever demo from tomorrow (3rd June 2011). It’s also been announced that they will also get the first multiplayer add-on pack for the game free of charge when it’s released. There’s also a stonking launch trailer to feast your eyes upon.

Amazon are selling the totally brilliant Portal 2 for £25 on consoles, with the PC/Mac version a measly £15.

Ubisoft is opening up a Child of Eden experience in London from the 4th – 17th June 2011 where you can try out the game and enjoy Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s very own artwork.

Sony is celebrating the first birthday of its PlayStation Plus service on the 29th June 2011 by dishing out lots of treats to its lovely customers. No details on what these treats might be but free games are always welcome.

To finish off today’s news we have the nimble little minx herself, namely Catwoman, from Rocksteady Studio’s Batman: Arkham City game. Interestingly, you will be able to take control of Catwoman and explore Arkham City. On this evidence she is going to kick some serious butt.

PlayStation Move starter pack – £49.99

This pack contains of the following bits of kit:

• Playstation Move: Motion Controller
• Playstation Eye Camera
• Starter Disc

So this looks to be the cheapest way of enjoying PlayStation Move. The only thing it doesn’t include is the navigation controller, which you can buy separately.

PlayStation Move Navigation Controller – £29.99

This allows you to control using an analogue stick, a d-pad and a couple of buttons. Will be needs for certain PlayStation Move games, just like some Wii games require the nunchuck as well as the Wii remote.

PlayStation Move Motion Controller – £39.99

The basic motion controller unit, with all its motion sensing gizmos and the light emitting orb on the top. Shiny.

PlayStation Move is due for release on the 19th September 2010.

In keeping with a classic tradition of the games industry – cramming lots of stuff into a short period of time (e.g lots of games and the Christmas period) – the E3 of old (pre-2007) used to squeeze practically all console and games related announcements into just 3 days every year. Then it was made boring for 2 years in an effort to distribute the announcements throughout the year and help reduce games companies marketing budgets. Yeah, that didn’t work very well.

The main E3 2009 expo takes place between the 2 – 4th June 2009 in LA. Actually, you need to include the 1st June 09 as well as some of the major players hold their big keynote addresses before the show actually starts:

• Microsoft keynote – 1st June 18:30 BST
• EA press conference – 1st June 20:00 BST
• Ubisoft press conference – 2nd June 01:00 BST
• Nintendo keynote – 2nd June 17:00 BST
• Sony keynote – 2nd June 19:00 BST
• Konami press conference – 3rd June 23:00 BST

If you want to follow all the of the E3 news and announcements (this will be a lot!) then check out E3Feed which pulls together all the E3 related news from the major gaming sites.

Here at TAG we will be be bringing you just the super tasty bits of E3 for you to digest. Yummy.

It seems that glamour model Bianca Beauchamp bears a striking resemblance to the Elexis character in the game (Bianca’s the one on the left!).

Given that both the SiN Episodes and the games developer’s website (Ritual) have both now disappeared, Ritual Entertainment’s community website – Ritualistic – is the best place to keep up with any further SiN developments.

Update 9th May 06: Errm, when I said “rather sexy trailer” I was referring to how kick-ass the game looks as a first person shooter and not referring to the rather gratuitous bikini scene randomly plonked in the trailer. I’m looking forward to playing the game as its been a while since I completed HL2 and F.E.A.R and there’s been a shortage of really good FPS recently (Doom 3 was just boring).

Update 28th August 2010: Added link to http://www.ritualistic.com/ and added some more pictures of Bianca Beauchamp.