Good and evil is barely the start of it, frankly. Fable is one of those rare, fascinating game series upon which nobody can really seem to agree about anything for very long. It's a shallow RPG, or maybe it's a canny and satirical examination of RPGs in general. It's hilarious - oh, the burping! Or maybe it's just juvenile. Let's face it: Fable's easy to the point of being obsequious, isn't it? Or maybe it's choosing to measure itself in ways that go beyond mere difficulty? It's no surprise, then, that with all this discussion churning around it, the world of Albion is so often defined by a mechanic that it doesn't even contain.
Work is underway on a brand new, big-budget Fable game, Eurogamer can reveal.
When Lionhead was developing the first Fable game back in the early 2000s, it attracted the attention of a determined group of trolls who managed to snag internal images and a list of planned future games that were never intended for release.
Hello! Hopefully everyone's had a chance to read Wes' spectacular feature on the life and death of Lionhead by now, but if 20,000 words isn't enough to satisfy your curiosity, I had a chat with Wes to discuss how the piece came together. Oh, and we recorded it! That's lucky!
In October 2008, Microsoft released Lionhead's Fable 2 to critical and commercial acclaim. At a launch party an emotional Peter Molyneux held aloft glowing reviews and praised the exhausted team of developers who had spent the previous four years pouring everything they had into the game. Fable 2 would go on to win a BAFTA and become the best-selling role-playing game for the Xbox 360. Lionhead was on top of the world.
UPDATE: Fable Legends ends at 3pm on Wednesday, 13th April 2016, Lionhead has said.
New Xbox boss Phil Spencer has discussed his 26-year career at Microsoft and how he intends to take Xbox One forward in a new video interview with Major Nelson.
It's a grey January morning and the rain batters the windows of the taxi taking me from Guildford train station to Surrey Research Park. Typical English weather, then, as I head to the home of a developer which has been making typically English video games for a decade.
Update: Xbox Live's Larry Hryb, he who styles himself Major Nelson, has announced the Fable 1 HD remake as Fable Anniversary. Lionhead's Ted Timmins, lead designer, joined him on his podcast to share details of the game.
Fable developer Lionhead has a new boss.
Fable Heroes lead designer Ted Timmins has described departed Lionhead figurehead Peter Molyneux as "irreplaceable" and a "total legend", and said "there's no one who can fill those shoes".
"How long have you got to talk?" I ask Peter Molyneux at the beginning of our Skype interview.
For the past day and a half, Kerry Turner has been thinking about swans. She's been making a game using Flixel - this is an open-source Actionscript library put together by Canabalt creator Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman - that's loosely based, she tells me, on the fairy tale about the swans and the princes. I have never heard of this fairy tale, but, as she's worked on the game for many hours without taking much of a break, Kerry has the look of a person who isn't to be argued with.
Peter Molyneux's departure from Microsoft and Lionhead sent shockwaves throughout the game industry. Not only had one of the most influential developers of all time ditched the company he founded in 1997, but Fable, a series guided by Molyneux's leadership over eight long years and across two generations of home console, was left without its poster boy.
Fans need not worry about the Fable series following Peter Molyneux's shock exit from Microsoft - so say the creators of the franchise.
Peter Molyneux, creator of Populous, Black & White and Magic Carpet, has left Microsoft and the studio he co-founded, Lionhead.
A number of high-ranking Lionhead staff responsible for the Fable franchise have left the developer to form their own studio, Another Place Productions.
It looks like Fable developer Lionhead is the latest studio to ramp up its next gen plans.
UPDATE: Lionhead has issued Eurogamer the following statement:
"Thanks for checking in with us! We're happy to tell you all about what we're working on. Just apply, get hired, and we promise to spill our guts!"
ORIGINAL STORY: Fable developer Lionhead wants a programmer with MMO skills to help make an unannounced game.
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Microsoft has registered Fablethejourney.org as a domain name, along with three other phrases which seem to suggest a bunch of Kinect titles is on the way.
Lionhead boss and newly-crowned holder of a BAFTA Fellowship Peter Molyneux has admitted making game features up on the spot to stop bored journalists falling asleep during interviews.
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.
The evolution of the Fable series.
After arriving 10 minutes late for his Develop Conference keynote, Peter Molyneux took another 10 minutes to plug an Xbox 360 running the latest build of upcoming role-playing game Fable III into a projector set deep within the bowels of the Brighton Metropole hotel.
Microsoft exclusive RPG Fable II was "terribly messy", "rushed" and suffered from "huge design flaws", creator Peter Molyneux has admitted.
Celebrity talker Jonathan Ross seems to have inadvertently confirmed the development of Fable III on his Twitter, claiming he's been offered a voice-over role.
"Tweeting" after last night's BAFTA shindig, the British TV and radio star wished his gossip-hungry fans goodnight with this message: "Goodnight all. Must go to bed. Got asked to do voice in Fable 3 tonight. Subarashi. Oyasuminasia. Woss out."
When asked to confirm the slip by a fellow Tweeter, Ross proclaimed, "Yes they are doing it. Charlie Brooker said he would do a voice for it to! Great fun!!"
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In December 2007, Microsoft launched the Xbox Originals platform. Part of Xbox Live Marketplace, it allows you to download Xbox 1 games for 1200 Microsoft Points (GBP 10.20 / EUR 12.00) apiece, with the likes of Halo, Psychonauts and Fahrenheit among the launch titles.
Not content with the level of excitement stirred up by the announcement that Fable 2 is coming to Xbox 360, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux has revealed that the studio is also at work on a game so good it will make you breakfast. Er...
Honestly: one thing just led to another.
If you want to blame it on anything, blame it on insecurity. I'd decided I was too thin. A 34-year old hero, hailed throughout the realm of Albion and I still had the lithe figure of a boy, since my sporadic snacking hadn't done anything to fill me out. Something a little more determined was needed, I thought, as I cleared the shopkeeper out of meat and sat, gorging myself on thirty or so portions.
I went too far. I was morbidly obese. Oh dear.
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