14 DAY TRIAL // Fable: The Journey, the newest game in the franchise developed by Peter Molyneux and his team at Lionhead, is targeted directly at hardcore gamers, and, despite the gameplay demo that was shown at E3 2011 last week, isn't an on-rails experience.
Microsoft is keen on making the Kinect device a hit with its hardcore demographic, so it has begun showcasing new games made specifically for the device, including Fable: The Journey, as well as other ones with support for motion sensor, like Mass Effect 3, Ghost Recon: Future Warrior or Forza Motorsport 4.
Speaking of the new Fable game, which continues where the last game left off, Peter Molyneux, its designer, has confessed to the media that the gameplay demo we saw at E3 2011, during which a player used his hands and the Kinect to cast different types of spells and magic, isn't indicative of the actual game.
The demonstration, according to Molyneux, made it look like the game was an on-rails experience, where players just needed to eliminate enemies, while their character moved on his own throughout the level.
"I made a horrendous mistake on the press demo of taking out the navigation allowing players to move," he said to the Official Xbox Magazine. "I'll just state on record now that Fable: The Journey is definitely not on rails."
The British games designer also revealed to CVG that the new Fable game is aimed squarely at hardcore games, which is quite a formidable task, knowing how attached they are to their regular controllers and the reluctance to use a Kinect during a "proper" game.
"This started only eight months ago when Microsoft came to us and said, 'hey, could you do a core game for Kinect?' We had been working on a project called Milo for well over a year so we had lots of experience with Kinect, but this is a challenge that's not for the faint hearted, to be honest with you, because I think that the core, as such, are really tied to their controllers. I think what we need to do is to prove that you can have as full and engaging and as immersive and as easy to control and as comfortable a game as anything you'd have on a controller."
Fable: The Journey might appear later this year, for the Xbox 360, but nothing is certain, as neither Microsoft, its publisher, nor Lionhead, the developer, talked about the possible launch date.
Until then, check out the gameplay demonstration for Fable: The Journey below.