Fable 4 is crucial to Xbox’s future, but it could be a Monkey’s Paw moment for fans

Although gaming is a creative industry in which, perhaps more than any other, it is disingenuous to pin the success of any product on a single individual, it is extraordinarily difficult to separate Peter Molyneux from the Fable series.

Before his frankly unsustainably tainted reputation required his departure from Lionhead Studios, to go out and mess around with cubes or NFTs or whatever he’s selling now, Molyneux was a gaming executive with considerable power. Absolute power over his own main studio, to the point where entire game features would manifest by making them up in the middle of press interviews for “prevent the journalist from falling asleep”. And organizational power within the hierarchy of various Microsoft studios, which some believe was key to preserving Lionhead’s independence. Following his departure, the studio would slowly but surely collapse, being mired in a Microsoft-mandated live-service Fable game that never saw the light of day.

It’s a tragic end for one of Britain’s best and most beloved game studios, as beautifully reported. Wes at Eurogamer in 2019. And, I would say tragically, it would be the end of Molyneux as a major player. Although he fell out of favor for selling too many wheelbarrows of nonsense, which he culminated in some downright shoddy deal of an unsuspecting competition winner, part of me wishes he was still a big shot: doing his crazy role-playing games, doing his silly interviews. The industry felt a lot more exciting back then.

Still, he messed it up, and that’s the end of that. But Lionhead’s legacy lives on in the enduring hunger for a new Fable game, a wish currently being fulfilled by the good folks at Playground Games, the beloved Forza Horizon factory that is one of Xbox Game Studios’ greatest assets. We know from various job postings that Playground has assembled a great team to put together this new chapter of Fable, and I have no doubt that they can pull off a decent Fable-style open world action RPG.

But I wonder if it could really be a Fable game.

The quintessential Fable game for me is the second, Fable 2. It represents the point where Lionhead was firing on all cylinders and delivering on much of the promise that the original game, as beloved as it is, failed to deliver. Fable 2’s Albion wasn’t a perfect open world like you’d find in an Elder Scrolls game, but its various regions seemed vast, each with its own unique character. The NPC sim stuff felt genuinely revolutionary at the time, as you could have real meaningful interactions with non-story characters in an unscripted context. And, of course, it gave you a dog: Powered by a full core of Xbox 360’s tri-core CPU, Fable 2’s dog behaved like a true companion that learned from your behavior as a gamer, engendering a genuine bond. So much so that (spoilers) when the dog gets shot at the end, many players, myself included, cry like they lost an actual pet.

It was the culmination of the entire Lionhead and Molyneux experience. The sophisticated AI companion and Pythonesque humor of Black Whitethe NPC popup behavior of The moviesthe unapologetic British character of the first Fable. It was arguably the same game that the studio had been building for its entire existence. Without a doubt, in my opinion, it is Molyneux’s best game as a creative director.

Playground’s journey to become the series’ new custodian doesn’t have many parallels to Lionhead’s history. Sure, it’s a British team, which surely helps, and they’ve arguably created some of the best open-world playgrounds we’ve seen in the Forza Horizon series, which are some of the most gleefully creative driving games ever. . conceived. And I love them, even though they made me drive a car in Edinburgh, which is something I used to do in real life and it sucks. Ahem.

But one wonders if Fable would be Fable without the behind-the-scenes drama: the unhinged director making up half the game on the fly during press conferences. The crazy aspects of the simulation that don’t drive the narrative, but exist simply to connect the player to the world. That boardroom tug-of-war feeling you can almost taste in the air of Albion as you trot through nature, interacting with the world through one-button combat, endless binary options, and farting.

The Fable games were the product of a particular group of talented people, operating at a particular time and place within an industry that now seems starkly different. Long ago, when Xbox was king and Molyneux was a favored courtier. We know what happened after Lionhead’s executive talent fled and Microsoft began dictating what Fable should be: total collapse. Death. A bright moment in time vanished.

So, I am conflicted. I have nothing but respect for the folks at Playground, who have created five of my favorite driving games. Despite the inclusion of Edinburgh. And like I said, I don’t doubt its ability to produce a good fantasy RPG. They certainly have been busy bringing the right talent. Like every other Xbox fan out there, I desperately want Fable back. The third honestly brilliant game built for a world state that’s crying out for a follow-up, and considering how pivotal it was to the first Xbox mix during its zenith, it seems like Fable is absolutely essential to the platform’s fight. In a sense, Fable 4’s job is to take us back to 2008, as well as modernize the series for a new generation of gamers.

But without Molyneux, without the old gear, without the tug of war, the conflict, and the blob of deranged madness that the old games were infused with, it’s hard not to hear that nagging, nagging feeling that, no matter how good the game is, new Fable is, could be Fable in name only.

Having said that, as long as you can kick chickens, Fable will probably suffice for most.