Molyneux Hits Back At Fable Critics News

Following on from some unjustified comments regarding omissions in the final build of Fable, Peter Molyneus has issued a frank and justified comment within the Lionhead forums, hinting that the UK developer will no longer be so open when revealing future Lionhead titles.

"There is something I have to say. And I have to say it because I love making games. When a game is in development, myself and the development teams I work with constantly encourage each other to think of the best features and the most ground-breaking design possible.

However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.

If I have mentioned any feature in the past which, for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise. Every feature I have ever talked about WAS in development, but not all made it. Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense. For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in. That 15 % was much better spent on effects and combat. So nothing I said was groundless hype, but people expecting specific features which couldn't be included were of course disappointed. If that's you, I apologise. All I can say is that Fable is the best game we could possibly make, and that people really seem to love it.

I have come to realise that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.

Our job as the Lionhead family of studios is to be as ambitious as we possibly can. But although we jump up and down in glee about the fabulous concepts and features we're working on, I will not mention them to the outside world until we've implemented and tested them, and they are a reality.

Thank you for reading.

Peter."

TVG firmly believes in what Molyneux is saying; itâ??s important to always aim high when creating and developing game concepts, after all what couldnâ??t be done today can always be done with tomorrowâ??s hardware. Unless this industry wants to become increasingly more reliant on brands and franchises, and every subsequent annual update that follows with them, itâ??s crucial that visionaries such as Molyneux are allowed to have such freedom when designing videogames.

The fact remains, that despite not being what we initially envisaged, Fable exceeds all of our previous expectations and creates one of the finest RPG in existence; anybody who has gripes is merely just nitpicking â?“ or a PS2 fanboy!!!