Fable de-make to revive promised ideas

By Tom Bramwell Published 19 October, 2010

Yes, you can plant the sodding acorn.

The creator of a 2D Fable "de-make" has popped up a video of his progress and explained how he's incorporating systems from the first two Fable games - including some that were mentioned during their development but never made it in.

According to ROFLGames' latest update, the de-make includes the fishing system from the first Fable, but rather than button-mashing it now draws inspiration from Ocarina of Time and SEGA Bass Fishing.

The de-make will also attempt to correct perceived imbalances in Fable II's in-game economy, which players widely exploited (myself including - nyaha!) although the author is keeping some of the changes under wraps for another update this week.

But what of those promised features that never made it in? "The plan is to bring some missed features (real-time vegetation growth, weapon pickups) as well as features from the previous games (body morphing, moral choices, crumbtrail) into a simplistic 2D retro-styled game," he explained. "This is a tribute game, and may not capture Fable's magic, but it'll try to capture some of its basic concepts."

Fable creator Peter Molyneux recently told an audience at the Eurogamer Expo that he is still mystified by people's anger at not being able to plant an acorn in Fable 1 and watch it grow into a tree - something he mentioned during development that eventually didn't make the cut.

"I still don't understand why people were so excited about that," he said.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • kinky_mong #1 2 years ago

    Fable creator Peter Molyneux recently told an audience at the Eurogamer Expo that he is still mystified by people's anger at not being able to plant an acorn in Fable 1 and watch it grow into a tree

    Because it was one of many promises that didn't occur. Anyway Ocarina of Time did the idea of planting seeds to grow a useful pant many years later long before Fable was around.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #2 2 years ago

    oh oh ive had an idea you know how we can plus and minus each others comments can you make it so we can plus and minus articles this will give you more accurate feedback on what we like instead of everyone just bitching in the threads about slow news days and what not.

    Edit.
    maybe if you don't want to give away the exact number you could have an acorn and the more positive votes it grows into a beautiful tree and the move negative it grows into a dead leafless tree, and the more votes either way the bigger the tree!
    Edited by GamesProgrammer at 19/10/10 @ 09:49

  • Gambit1977 #3 2 years ago

    @kinkymong
    A useful 'pant'? Like Y Fronts? Awesome ;)

  • telboy007 #4 2 years ago

    Boxer briefs, surely?

  • kinky_mong #5 2 years ago

    Haha I'm leaving that typo for comedy effect!

    And the most useful pant is of course the Banana Hammock.

  • Harmonica #6 2 years ago

    ""I still don't understand why people were so excited about that," he said."

    Bollocks - PM said that with glee in countless interviews because he thought it was something that captured the imagination. That was the sort of idea that HE thought was neat. His old games revolved around such ideas in abundance.

    Fable is kiddy blocks gaming, oversimplified under-nourished de-cultured dross for the masses.

  • metalangel #7 2 years ago

    @Harmonica: The Molyneux apologists will be along presently to tear you to shreds.

  • butler` #8 2 years ago

    I'm the biggest PM fan, but I can't disagree with Harmonica. Part of loving PM is loving what he did at Bullfrog etc. and hoping that he can achieve such heights again.

  • OnlyMe #9 2 years ago

    Apologists? If being an apologist is seeing games as they are, and not judging them on wether you like the creator or not, then I'm proud to be an apologist. I couldn't care less about what Molly says, thinks or shits, but I enjoy his game for what they are. Games.

  • Rack #10 2 years ago

    Molyneux might want to take a look at Minecraft if he hasn't worked out how much people have wanted a morphable world.

  • MaybeLater #11 2 years ago

    It's really not that hard to understand Peter pants-on-fire; Lying is fun, but it pisses people off.

  • Harmonica #12 2 years ago

    @metalangel: suggesting that you are one yourself? Or you think they'll turn up in their droves to disagree with me?

    I've never met a Fable or post-Bullfrog PM fan that can argue their point very well, so I wouldn't be concerned.

    Yeah I had a go at Fable, but the other part was hinting of what I thought of pre-LH Molyneux, and that is, game designer genius.

    So whatever.. I'm just trying to be as apathetic as I can be on PM until he starts making good games again, or doesn't.
    Edited by Harmonica at 19/10/10 @ 13:47

  • hiddenranbir #13 2 years ago

    Woo Fable!

  • ronuds #14 2 years ago

    What is this game? When is it being released? On what platform? WTF?

    I've never heard of this de-make, but colour me intrigued!

  • kangarootoo #15 2 years ago

    @Harmonica

    "I've never met a Fable or post-Bullfrog PM fan that can argue their point very well, so I wouldn't be concerned."

    Well let me have a go.

    I played Fable 1 and 2, and I had fun doing so.

    There ends the argument.


    You see, I don't care what PM said before Fable 1 or 2 came out. I barely listened to any of it. And I didn't care aferwards whether the experience I had playing the game bore any comparison with the stuff he had previously said that I wasn't aware of. I played the game. I had fun. I never concerned myself with what PM said about the game, before or after playing. End of story.

  • DrMGinius #16 2 years ago

    ''The acorn becomes a TREE...! Acorn!... tree!''

    -Edd

  • the_dudefather #17 2 years ago

    It's not just a fable thing, Dungeon keeper had a bunch of things that never made it into the final game, or made it but didn't have anything near the suggested significance (some of which are even mentioned in the manual), but that doesn't stop it from being one of my favourite games ever made

  • Harmonica #18 2 years ago

    Dungeon Keeper was a great end product, nobody was worrying about things that didn't make it into the game.

    The same is true of all the games going back through the years. They were all missing things, they were all odd in certain aspects. With Magic Carpet for example the 50th and final level was bugged and impossible to complete. However it was also the first game to do reflections and deformable terrain and require a Pentium and had properly amazing AI (as most Bullfrog games did). The problems with oerleaping himself came when he started Lionhead and had massive freedom to do anything possible without being constrained. Black and White really tells it all, lots of ideas that might be interesting on their own taken to the nth stage of development - but the end product is a hundred ideas all thrown together in the hopes that they stick, all half-finished, some completely unworking or unfathomable (again, BnW featured a bugged level 3/5 which you couldn't get past beyond a patch but that time people were fairly irritated by it. I know people joke about games these days being horrible buggy but can you imagine being outright prevented to progress, stuck in a level in a linear game?

    Same follows with The Movies, a good idea but poorly implemented. A theme park remake without the charm of the original and a really substandard management aspect in light of games like RollerCoasterTycoon - with a movie making bit tagged on which didn't feel at all right. Fable itself is legendary now for underachieving, not only based on expectations, but on any scale. There's nothing PM standard about it - unless you think graphical and sound design can make up for incredibly rote bish bash adventuring (there's no adventure in it).

    BC was the best game that never got made.

    @ kangarootoo "I played Fable 1 and 2, and I had fun doing so.

    There ends the argument. "

    The argument wasn't about having fun with it, and are you serious? The reason I said that noone has really sufficiently stuck up for Fable is because of comments like that which assume there's no discussion to be had. Ridiculous.