Showing Fable: The Journey off in the form of a brief E3 2011 presentation was a blunder, Lionhead's creative director Gary Carr has admitted, as it made the game look like a "spammy shooter".
Famously, the studio's former boss Peter Molyneux appeared on video following the conferences to retract controversial suggestions that the Journey is an on-rails affair (it sort of is, but it's bloody good regardless). The game's designers took the ensuring fracas to heart. "It destroyed them," Carr recalled to CVG. "You get very excited when something is very embryonic, and when you're building something at its very early stages.
"It looked a bit like some spammy shooter, but actually we were building this big world around it," he went on. "Y'know, you have about two minutes and 45 seconds to demonstrate what you're doing. I know that a main problem people have is they think we've taken the Fable series and trivialised it.
"I think we should have shown Fable: The Journey further down the line. I think we should have had some press cover it beforehand, just so they could get a better feel of it.
"This isn't a sequel to a Fable title. It's meant to be a sister-title, if you will. It's not meant to be a big RPG, but it does open the narrative of some Fable characters, and that's exciting to us because we want to tell this story."
Carr concluded with a tantalising hint. "To me it has always felt like the support title, while Fable itself is to my mind the mothership. But back in the studio we are building something more ambitious than we've ever done before."
Lionhead began hiring experienced multiplayer talent for an "ambitious" Unreal game in May. Could this be it? On what we hope is a related note, here's a list of wishes/demands/desperate pleas of a Fable-4-ish hue.
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3 comments so far...
pauloselhombre on 17 Jul '12 said:
I wish Lionhead would focus on getting 'basic' right before they attempt 'ambitious'. They're starting to become a bit of a joke in my eyes, a sort of poster child for half-baked mediocrity packaged up and marketed as some kind of grand game-changer.
scjh on 17 Jul '12 said:
I am still waiting for Lionhead to produce the addictive magic from the original Fable, i have to say what they produced for Fable 2 & 3 was good, but not great for re-play, it lacked something and well the journey just really dosent appeal at all so will be missed. I think Lionhead could possible learn that maybe lots of changes are a poor idea, maybe keep a fair bit more of what people liked about the original and improve the basics and add a few new ideas that are done well. P.s. can they also not keep saying the game will have this that and the other and not delivering it at all or in the way implied, its frustrating.
(note i accept that some of this argument may seem contradictory)
Grummy on 17 Jul '12 said:
I'm not sure what they expected tbh, people have been disillusioned with Fable for a while now, it's becoming less and less the RPG and more and more an unspectacular jack of all trades. Then they go and show a video that makes it look like they've stripped every last ounce of RPG out of fable and left us with a linear shooter, they have no reason to be shocked that people weren't happy. At this point, I don't think it matters how good this game actually is. If it turns out to be fantastic, it'll be a fantastic spin off, if it sucks, it'll just reinforce peoples beliefs that Fable is a wrecked franchise. They should be working on making a proper Fable 4 that blows us all away, not.....this.