Peter Molyneux Talks About the Challenges of Fable II

Peter Molyneux is one of the most unique game designers out there, because he really knows how to promote his titles in terms of appeal to any class of gamers, be it hardcore or casual, and really does make you want to play them.

Microsoft has recently launched his newest title, Fable II, which is the successor to the first one. Although the Fable I received some very mixed reviews, with critics and gamers finding quite a lot of stuff about it annoying, Molyneux never gave up on it, and he now delivers an excellent game that has already gained critical acclaim for the wide range of choices offered to players.

He recently spoke with GamaSutra about the challenges he and his team encountered after releasing Fable I, and during the production of Fable II. He went on saying that the mixed reviews were definitely very hard for a developer to receive, because he needed to implement all of the stuff people had previously thought the game needed, and remove the ones that customers didn't like.

“At the end of Fable I, we sat down and we kind of thought, firstly the reviews were... some of the reviews were very mixed. We asked ourselves, ‘How did we disappoint people?’ with those reviews. The second thing, the boards were unbelievably passionate about some things. Incredibly passionate and very focused on, ‘Why isn't there free roaming? it's supposed to be an open world.’ That was 100%, everybody was passionate about that. There were some other things that were very confusing. The length of the story was immensely confusing because a lot of people said it was far, far, far too short and a lot more people said [it was just the right length].”

He then added that, “It was a real challenge. So we had this list of stuff which we went away and thought we're really going to try and fix that. We did, we really did do due diligence on that. I mean there is, when you've got that blank sheet of paper when you come to a new game, there's a lot of voices screaming in your ear trying to persuade you to take it in a different direction. It became clear that the real failing of Fable I is that we didn't make a truly emotional experience that people remember.”

Molyneux expressed on several occasions that Fable II would have a very addictive storyline, which would make people play it right until the end. It would also have a great impact on all types of gamers, especially the casual ones, changing their whole perspective on RPGs (Role-Playing Games).