Fable is a franchise which is near and dear to many people’s hearts, myself being one of them.
However, with a new Fable game looming on the horizon, there is on big question on everybody’s lips. Will it live up to the quality that fans remember from the very first Fable game, or end up disappointing us like Fable 3 did?
If I am honest, that really is quite a difficult question to answer, however, I’d like to play devils advocate a little bit while I discuss it. Or in simpler terms, I want to look at why the new Fable could be totally amazing, but also why it could potentially fail. And who knows, perhaps by the end of this I will have a concrete opinion on which way I personally think it will go.
So lets start with the positives. It seems unlikely that Peter Molyneux is going to have to much control over this new Fable game. Now I know this sounds unkind, and Molyneux has taken a lot of bashing over the years, but the truth is, having him as a leader is a very mixed bag.
Sure, on the one hand, to give him his due, Molyneux did come up with the original idea for Fable, kicking off the franchise that we all know and love, and for that he must be respected.
On the other hand however, his constant messing with the formula of Fable, and slowly developing it from the first Fable’s tight RPG style, to a sort of action adventure/landlord simulator (depending on who you ask) by the time of Fable 3. Something which…well it went over less than amazingly.
The worry of having Molyneux involved in “Fable 4″ as a lead developer is that he could lead the franchise further away from what people love about it. To that note, I have a solution.
For “Fable 4” Molynuex could serve as an outside consultant.
Having Molynuex involved on within a light consultancy role with no true power to change things would be perfect. It would allow him to be involved in a way that would keep the heart of Fable intact, while not allowing him to mess with things too much and mess with the integrity of the finished product.
Another great thing to think about, is the fact that this will be the first mainline Fable game we have received since Fable 3 all the way back on the Xbox 360. This means that 2 generations of Xbox consoles have released since we last got a in the Fable franchise, so the idea of a truly “next gen” Fable game is very exciting.
Not only would the graphics be so much better than the older games, but features that were impossible to add to the old games due to technical limitations could finally be possible now.
Dynamic weather shifting between sun, rain, thunder, and snow would all be possible in this day and age. In addition, concepts Molyneux originally discussed such as “the passage of time aging your character actively”, and “seeing trees grow as you travel through the game” could finally be possible, making Molynuex’s once outlandish hopes finally possible.
Another thing that I would love to see added to the new Fable is a truly efficient co-op system.
Now before you say it, yes I know Fable 2 and 3 had co-op, but it was in a heavily limited capacity, and never truly felt like it was perfectly optimized.
With the jump in online connectivity and technology over the years, it would be great to see a new Fable that allows you to fully engage with your friends in the world of Albion. This would be an amazing change to the previous structure of co-op within Fable.
The “classic” way that co-op worked within Fable 2 and 3 was basically that you could enter a friends world as a ghost and help them kill things like bosses or arenas etc., but were unable to do anything to engage with their world outside of that very limited feature.
So, if there are so many things to be hopeful for with the new Fable game, why aren’t I unendingly optimistic? Well, lets look at some of reasons it could all go wrong shall we?
The first, and most questionable thing I have noted about the Fable reboot is that Lionhead Studio’s aren’t the ones making it.
Now, obviously no one was expecting Lionhead to be involved in the new Fable, given they were sadly dissolved as a company several years ago. It would have been nice however, if Microsoft had brought some of the the old team back to work on this new game, in order to keep some of the classic feel alive.
Without any of the team from Lionhead that worked on the original games, I seriously have my doubts that the new games will have the same vibe as the older games, at least in terms of humor, world design and characters, that made this franchise so loved.
In a point that somewhat connects to the last, I am also rather concerned about the team that has been brought on to make this game. You see, it has been announced that Playground games will be making the new Fable.
Don’t get me wrong, Playground games are great developers, but they have only ever made Forza games in the past.
Forza, for those not in the know, is an incredibly long running and well loved racing game franchise.
The fact that Forza has been running for so long successfully is of course a good thing, as it means that Playground games have the capacity to make a long running franchise work. Something which of course is useful when taking on something like Fable.
The thing that worries me however, is that they have absolutely no history or experience with a game in the genre Fable is in.
As Playground games only has experience in making racing games, I am not exactly confident in their ability to develop an open world RPG. The skill set required in developing games of those two vastly different genre’s are, well vastly different, and Playground games really hasn’t demonstrated they have what it takes to make an RPG.
Now, things may have been different if Forza had ever contained an open world, with a deep storyline and some RPG elements, alongside the driving, as this would show they have they capacity to work with these features. As it stands however, that is not the case.
My other worry, which you may be surprised to hear, is can Fable still be relevant?
At this point, Fable 3 is now 12 years old, and the franchise has been mostly dormant since then, with only a couple of side games releasing in the years since.
Not only does this mean that many will have moved on from Fable as a franchise, but more importantly, that the world at large has moved on.
Fable was a very tongue in cheek franchise back when it first started in 2005. It had some rather rude jokes, and a sense of humor, that was similar to Monty Python in many ways.
Given the fact that it has been over 12 years since the last Fable game, my worry is that the games humor and style will be changed completely, in order to try and appeal better to a modern audience, and may not even feel like the Fable we all know and love.
On the other hand, if this new Fable retains the style that we are used to with the other games in the franchise, people may not love it as much as they did the old games, given how much the world has moved on, and what people found funny 10 years ago, may not be still funny to present day players.
So, overall, where have we ended up after that little exploration of what could go right or wrong with the new Fable?
Well, in short, it’s somewhat full circle.
I’m still not sure whether I think this game will be good or bad, there’s an argument to be made for both sides. however. For myself however, I am willing to hope it will be good, in spite of my usually skeptical viewpoint.
I mean, after all, how can you not be hopeful about a game you never expected to get.
Connor Queen: Thoughts And Things 