The Inside Story Of Fable 3, The Game That Broke Its Creators Hearts
The Inside Story Of Fable 3, The Game That Broke Its Creators Hearts
Former Lionhead staff walk us through the highs and lows of Fable 3's development - the threequel made in just 18 months.
The TLDR version?
Microsoft fucked it up. As they do- with everting they touch. They’re the Disney of gaming.
22IDK, they've done a pretty good job with Age of Empires, and Minecraft is still incredibly popular, and perhaps more popular since Microsoft bought them (IIRC, crossplay was added when Bedrock was released). I've heard they're pretty hands off with the studios the buy, so if games suck, blame the studio. Activision Blizzard was already going downhill from a respecting the player standpoint before Microsoft bought them, and 343 really was never as good as OG Bungie.
If we're comparing to Disney, that honor goes to EA. They're the kings of dumbing games down and manipulating players into paying a ton for mediocre content.
4I remember being so excited for fable 3 only to find it was not at all like 1 or 2.
3
This game could have been so good. It had the basis for it, the world was small but they filled it with tons small details, the story was short but tight and unique, it was shining with the fable-style personality with the philosophy of letting you make the small changes you wanted to make to the world and your character.
But then someone (probably a boss from Microsoft) came and said fuck you! and locked up a ton for areas behind DLCs, limited development time, and injected it full of brain-dead AAA game bullshit that didn't fit the game.
Spoilers:
Every time I am reminded of this one scene in the story where you learn the terrible secret of the kingdom, ending up fleeing into the desert. The tone of desert theme becomes harrowing and empty as you aimlessly wander through the barren wasteland, guiding along your even more helpless companion. In this hopeless situation you come to understand why your beloved kingdom has betrayed what it used to stand for, why it has fallen to tyranny.
As someone who loved the Fable franchise, this is what it was like to play Fable 3.
14The thing in the desert and the subsequent kingdom management arc are weirdly one of my most fondly remembered plot twists in gaming, although that probably has as much to do with how limited my gaming experience was when I first played it.
4
It's interesting. If I were a teenager today I would read this and think Microsoft ruined what would have been an amazing game by corporate greed.
I was a teenager when Fable III came out though, so I know better.
First game reviews from that era are completely whack. You had a ton of big name game blogs that were basically giving everything a 9/10 if it was from the right publisher. The smaller blogs weren't really in the internet zeitgeist until Fable III, so you could compare their scores of Fable I and II for reference.
That being said, there was a lot of discussion about how Fable II was a bit of a disappointment. People felt that the system was a lot shallower than promised, and the game itself felt extremely on rails at times. None of the endings really change the world, which wouldn't be that insulting if two of them didn't involve your dog dying. I think saying that Fable II was amazingly well received is kinda bs.
I can say for sure that putting the blame on Microsoft for Fable III over promising and under delivering is absolute horeshit. The guy behind Fable, Molyneux, was famous for pulling that crap. This was an era where basically virtually every single game trailer could have been an FTC violation of anyone was paying attention, and Molyneux somehow stood out beyond anyone else for how full of shit he was. At one point he implied that he developed AGI and implemented it in a video game.
While Boomers got a lot of things wrong, as I get older I sort of understand where they are coming from. This article paints a narrative so incorrect it's almost fictional, and it's being propagated because most people interacting are too young to remember but somehow extremely self assured.
13I remember playing the first two and loving them. When the third came out, I heard it wasn't even good, so I never played.
9I didn't go far into it. I remember it had a rather boring start.
Also I was already a bit pissed at those few doors in Fable 2 that mostly only opened in co-op (except one or two) and had weird stuff hidden behind them that I wanted to see, and I got to one again in 3. It's a minor thing but it may have played a part in the "fuck that game" sentiment.
Seriously, talk about tacking on and forcing a multiplayer mode into a game that is absolutely not made for it.
3My wife and enjoyed the cooperative greatly but soooo much went wrong
1