Getting There Is Half the Fun

Seldom has there been such anticipation for the arrival of an RPG, and seldom has the long wait been so richly rewarded. Fable® is, at its heart, about a journey. Thanks to the ingenuity of designer Peter Molyneux and developer Big Blue Box, Fable gives you unprecedented liberties in gameplay. You have freedom of character, freedom of story, and even moral freedom. You start as a young boy, but you can become a savage, muscular barbarian; an enigmatic old mystic; a noble knight; an evil archer; or even a lustful, overweight scoundrel. It's your story to tell.

The game's development story, however, begins several years ago with that most powerful of all origins: an idea.

In the Beginning
The game's roots are buried back in 2002, when Peter Molyneux shared a fateful conversation with Dene and Simon Carter, the founders of Big Blue Box. "We wanted to create a roleplaying game like no other," recalled the trio in their online development diary at alterego.lionhead.net, a Fable fan site. "We wanted to give the player control of a hero that would adapt to the way they played … we wanted each and every person who played our game to have a unique experience, to have their own stories to tell."

Good or evil? Your choice.

The vision was clear and compelling—but bringing it to life was a daunting challenge for a fledgling studio, and the developers weren't certain of how to execute their plan. Molyneux had just founded Lionhead Studio and was seeking fresh, original projects. The Carters and their partner, Ian Lovett, agreed to a development partnership with Molyneux and Lionhead and then set about developing the initial concept.

You Want It When?
The next stages included producing publisher-friendly design documents and demos, building the Fable design team, and moving into an actual office. (They'd started the project in the back bedroom of Molyneux's house, and it was getting a little cramped in there).

With a team and a place to work, the actual process of moving the game from concept to development could begin. But, they had to work quickly and carefully because staying on schedule can be unbelievably difficult. "To realize why, just think about what a detailed schedule can involve," said the Carters in a 2003 development diary entry. "Essentially, you take your period of development—say, two years. You turn that into days—roughly 520 of them. Then, you break down your game design into the work that needs to be done: all the textures, meshes, levels, code, animations, sounds, etc. Then, and here's the fun bit, you take your 25 members of staff and try and predict which of those pieces of work each of them is going to be doing every day for the next 520 days of development. What's more, every time you deviate from the plan (i.e. every two weeks) you have to redo it all."

This Fable designer missed a deadline.

Juggling Act
The road from concept to development is rarely smooth. The process is amazingly complex, and the pressures are constant.

"Developing a computer game is a tricky business," said Molyneux in a 2003 interview at Boomtown. "On the one hand, it's a fantastically liberating art form, in many senses devoid of physical limitations, and the only form of creative expression that can truly interact with the viewer. Then again, it's a mammoth engineering effort, with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, tens of thousands of pieces of art work, sounds, etc. that not only need to be implemented, but also all need organizing and testing. If just one of these 'resources' is put into the game [incorrectly], it may well cause problems with the entire game."

Despite this, the Fable designers and developers welcomed the challenge.

"But we wouldn't have it any other way," proclaimed a 2004 development diary entry by the Carters. "There's nothing in the world like the sense of achievement you get when you've come through an intense, ulcerating experience like this, and you've delivered something you're happy with."

Fable sails into stores later this year.

Journey's End
From what we’ve seen in the most recent Fable builds, we're confident that the game's journey is nearly at an end. Combining a huge amount of freedom with a strong story, it's destined to be the most innovative RPG yet. The ability to play the game you want, developing your own character and story along the way, proves that the game lives up to its original vision … and that Fable players will live happily ever after.

Article by Jim W. Gettys