14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Lionhead and publisher Microsoft are announcing that they are planning to delay the launch of the open beta for the upcoming Fable Legends to make sure that the quality of the experience is up to the standards that the fan community is expecting.
The two companies are announcing that they are aiming to now open up the testing phase for all those interested later in the spring of 2016, using the extra time to improve the core mechanics of the title and to make sure that the network infrastructure can support it.
Initially, the plan was to give all those interested in the action title a way to play it during the holiday season of this year and to announce a clear launch date for 2016.
100,000 new players are being invited to the closed beta of Fable Legends over the coming weeks, with Lionhead saying that priority is being given to those who have been waiting the longest to get access and experience the core features.
The official site announcement explains that Lionhead failed to anticipate how big the title would become and the complexity of the core mechanics that will have to be perfected before a public beta test goes live.
The company states, "We’ve built a unique and innovative multiplayer experience combining RPG and RTS gameplay that allows you to play, and use your gear seamlessly, across Xbox One and Windows 10. On top of this, we’ve built a beautiful new world full of grand stories and adventures. And it’s taking more time than we thought."
Lionhead says that it wants to polish the core game features of Fable Legends while also continuing to add quests, creatures, heroes and more to the closed beta stage, with many of the tweaks based on fan reports.
Neither the developers nor Microsoft are willing to commit to an official launch date for the 1.0 version of Fable Legends, which might be pushed into 2017 if the open beta shows a range of other issues that need to be dealt with.
Lionhead aims to create a complex cross-platform experience
Fable Legends is a cooperation-driven action title that will allow the gamers to become either a hero, who needs to work with his team to defeat enemies and achieve objectives, or a villain, who can use the environment and armies of creatures to thwart the efforts of the good guys.
For each character, players will get a wide range of customization options, most of them cosmetic, and they will also have a chance to interact with other characters and to create complex social relationships.
The game will be free-to-play, and Lionhead says that it has a five-year plan for content delivery, with revenue to support the effort presumably derived from microtransactions that have not yet been detailed.
Fable Legends is created using Unreal Engine 4 and will features cross-platform play between the Xbox One and the PC, integrating DirectX 12 on both platforms and using the new cloud tech from Microsoft to support a diverse world and to deliver increased performance.
