Has The Journey betrayed Fable? Lionhead addresses fan anxieties

We've gushed at some length about Fable: The Journey. We've praised its lavish Unreal environments, the intuitiveness of its motion sensitive controls, the beauty of its freeform, upgradeable magic system, and above all, the fact that it feels like a genuine contribution to Fable's fiction.

But in the back of our minds, there's a doubting voice. What's happened to traditional Fable, with its open-ended vistas, skilfully blended third-person combat and full RPG trappings? Where's the morality system gone? How come my dog has hooves and a mane? Is Lionhead really moving forward with the franchise, or is it simply treading water?

Our latest feature tackles such concerns head-on. It's a Q&A; based on interviews with studio co-founder Mark Webley and lead scripter Ben Brooks, aimed at the grumbles we've heard most often from Fable fans. Read my Fable: The Journey hands-on, if you haven't already, for details as to how the old girl handles, then browse the below for context and justifications.

We've seen some dodgy examples of motion recognition lately. What's the learning curve like on those Kinect controls?

Mark Webley: We originally thought it'd be great to not have any tutorials, that we could go "everyone knows how to ride a horse, everyone knows how to use magic". However the reality is when we got the user research, when we saw people playing it, some people ended up doing things in different ways. So there are a few tutorials that really enhance the experience, showing people the best way to do it.

There's been a lot we've experimented with, that's part of developing. For instance, with the magic tricks, we wanted a really compulsive experience where you feel cool. But you can sit twenty people down and ask them "How do you cast magic?" and they'll have different ideas.

We've had an awful lot of different ways of interacting with the world of magic, so there's quite a journey there in terms of what works well. There was also an opportunity to get user research, to get people in who've never played the game before, sit them down and try out these things, and hopefully arrive at what we feel is the most positive solution, not necessarily cutting something out.