One of Fable 2's villains will be "one of the most evil people in video game history," Lionhead creative director Dene Carter told IGN recently.
Eurogamer summed up some more of the recent hints thusly:
The first examples of the faces you'll come across in Fable 2 are Arfur, a murderous and vicious thief who sounds like the infamous Bill Sykes; Barnum, an unlucky inventor likely to be laughed off of Dragon's Den time and time again; and Giles, a tough-as-old-boots farmer who used to be a soldier and now has problems with a violent gang.
Nobody's saying just how many characters there will be in the world, but Carter said some 50 hours of voice acting has been recorded. And though Lionhead is aiming for an open-ended world, you won't be able to kill anyone where doing so will remove huge chunks of the story - wouldn't want to waste all that hard work, right?
Fable 2: Meet the Populous [IGN via Eurogamer]