Peter Molyneux Discusses How Fable 2 Has Changed His Attitude

Creator explains what went right and wrong and what changed during development.

In an interview with European game developer magazine Develop, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux took time to discuss the process of making Fable 2 and his own value as creative guide for his team. The interview covers Molyneux's thought on the popular 360 title in the wake of its launch and looks back on changes made as a result of the company's earlier development efforts -- including the original Fable:
"We also had a long list of complaints about what was wrong with Fable. So when it came to the sequel we went down that list and said we can definitely solve that, fix this, more of this, and so on. That's things like demands for more weapons, and a world that's three times bigger -- all of those kind of requests. We ended up with a feature-set that would make a pretty good sequel."Molyneux goes on to explain that while Fable succeeded on many levels the team was dedicated to making some changes the second time around.
"We first looked at our capabilities and worked out what our strengths and weaknesses were. One of the weaknesses was writing, so we hired scripters, stagers, scriptwriters, screenwriters from Hollywood, and we acted out the entirety of the game and story -- this was all before we had any tech. We let them rewrite and improvise it, all in order to get it right. That was done entirely at Shepperton Studios. It was a real learning process for us.
"And...at that point, I realized how terribly I had approached game design at that point. I realized that a fundamental error I made was mistakenly believing that if you added more and more features into a game it would make a game great."
The interview itself is fairly lengthy and frank, showing that the hype backlash Lionhead and Molyneux himself experienced over the last few game releases have caused him to reflect a bit more on what he does as a creator and how he manages his projects. Check out the extensive coverage of Fable II here on 1UP, including our recent review of the game, to see if we think this new attitude has paid off in the final product.