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Peter Molyneux Apologizes for Fable
A message from Peter Molyneux.
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.
I ended up having completely no interest in the game. Is it better than a Zelda, a KOTOR, a Shadowrun, or even a Final Fantasy game? Nope, not according to most people. And yet, PM, who had claimed so many great things about Black and White, which came out to be a disappointment, had the nerve to say that this was "the greatest RPG ever". He did the exact same thing, and yet somehow even reviewers were tricked into giving the game suck great scores, even admitting that it was so short, missing so many of the innovative features, and in no way differentiates itself from things that have been done before, and better, in game like KOTOR (which had much better light/dark paths). Besides being able to fart and get married (which you can do in the Sims even), there's just nothing original about the game that makes it stand out, at all. And yet he has the nerve to now apologize about features that were left out, when it was he who brought them all up in the first place, and claimed the game as a second coming? Sorry PM, but the apology just doesn't cut it. Don't apologize for missing features, apologize for the fact that you were talking out of your ass about a game that's only decent, and nowhere near greatness. That, and anyone in software development knows that you never promise users features unless you know for sure that you can deliver them.
What is up with slashdot and all the misleading articles? If the editor would RTFA (or RTFF in this case) he is not apologizing for the game, just for apologizing for features he told people about but did not end up in the game. This is really becoming a problem... is this FARK or slashdot?