The story of how Fable, the incredibly British fantasy series that once dominated Xbox, got its name is a strange and surreal one. But accordi𝕴ng to Pete Hawley, head of production at Lionhead back in the day, it didn’t need to be.

“So everyone was like, ‘we’re making this fantasy game, what should we call it’?” says Hawley. “I'll argue with anyone about this - I said, ‘let's call 🥃it Fable’.

Related: 16ꦺ8澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fable Needs To Be British In The Right Way

“Then everyone's like, ‘Nah, it's too obvious. It's too ******* boring. Let's go to Peter [Molyneux, one of the ꦿgame’s creators]'s house, smoke weed, get drunk, and play board games. Everyone's coming out with🌼 these stupid ******* names and I'm like, head in my hands.

“It's like 2:30 in the morning and Peter goes, I've got it,” says Hawley - sounding just as exasperated as he no doubt was all of those ಞyears ago. And I don’t blame him, because nothing could have prepared me for Molyneux’s pitch. “Jesus 2000: He's back but this time he's pissed.”

The story of Fable is a flurry of ideas - some good, some bad, some weird - and a rush to turn them into something that worked. There was so much going on that even a question as simple as “Who came up with the name Fable?” ▨gets so many different answers all of these years later, depending on who youജ ask.

An older wizard with shining blue face tattoos looks down on a young boy, who sits on the ground looking sad

“All I can remember about Jesus 2000 was Pete 🐽[Hawley] just found that the funniest thing ever,” Molyneux tells me, laughing as soon as I mention the story to him. “‘We were all drunk’ is one way of putting it, I suppose. But we were all pretty high as well.”

However, Molyneux is sure of one thing: he didn’t come up with Jesus 2000. “I think it was Hawley,” he sa🃏ys. “I don't think I'm that 🌱funny.”

Whatever it was called at any given time - Wishworld, Project Ego, or som💛ething else God-related - so much of Fable was made in this way. Molyneux says it was like being in a pressure cooker, something others are quick to agree with.

“The first game's develop💧ment was a trial by fire,” says Dene Carter, one-half of the Carter brothers who programmed and wrote Fable. While they would go on to be best known for their work at Lionhead, they started out at Big Blue Box, the smaller studio that did much of the work on Fable.

A hero from Fable with very pale skin aims a bow and arrow at a huge flying bug

“[Big Blue Box] was working on this concept called Wishworld, which was more about battling wizards than✱ anything else,” says Molyneux. “But then it morphed into this idea of ‘let's do a role-playing game that’s funny’.

“Part of these discussions were talking about the frustrations of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:role-playing games back then. They tended to be humourless, serious, com💜plex, and number-driven. They were less about what was really important, which was playing the role of a hero.”

When Molyneux joined the Ca🤡rter brothers on this early Wishworld project, their diffe💝rences in what they wanted out of an RPG complemented each other greatly. Their opposing views even gave us the morality system. As Molyneux puts it, the Carter brothers were “goody two-shoes” and he wanted to be a bad guy.

As this went on, this snowballed into even more possibilities. But massive, misshapen mounds of snow are difficult to turn into a video game, and with so many features being discussed, it quickly became the most demanding unඣdertaking of their careers. According to Carter, suddenly management was advertising a fantasy RPG that was “many times the s💦ize of what we had the capacity for at the time.”

Townsfolk cheer for a hero in Fable

It was too much even for the larger Lionhead studio, let alone Big Blue Box, so they needed outside help. They found it in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Activision - but it didn’t last. In the short term though, it gave the project some funding. Hawley, who had just “b🎀ugged” Molyneux into giving him a job, was tasked with making sure Activision and Lionhead were getting along.

“There was nothing there. It was just a rendered landscape,” he says, remembering the version of Fable he would show Activision reps. That didn’t mean the team wasn’t busy - far from it. Black & White was also in development, and there were even three teams working on different game engines. “The Activision relationship was weird, it wasn't working,” h⛄e says. “It's crazy that a small company like [Lionhead] was building three game engines.” That’s when they caught wind of a new kid on the bl𝓡ock.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft decided they were going to make a games console,” says Hawley. “They put people on planes to meet the best developers in the world. And obviously, Pet𓄧er [Molyneux] and Lionhead were on that list. We ended up doing a much better deal in terms of financials - Microsoft is just massive. I remember at the time their executives were saying, ‘We're just going to outspend everybody until we win’.”

But for all the problems it fixed, it created even mo🐼re. For starters, Fable now had to be Lionhead’s focus, and some developers weren’t prepared to ditch the RPGs of the ‘90s in favour of this new 3D world.

Related: Richard♌ Aཧyoade Was The Perfect Actor To Get Me To Care About Fable

Dene Carter remembers this culture clash well: “The team more than tripled in size, and consisted of a new mix of Big Blue Box staff, happyꦓ Lionhead staff, resentful Lionhead staff, contractors, and even Microsoft employees drafted in to help out with the mammoth task of finishing a new 3D action RPG - a ve🔥ry new genre. None of us had ever worked on a 3D action game of any kind. Some Lionhead staff even refused to work on it.”

Carter remembers a time when a Lionhead dev was modelling a boss battle and exclaimed 🅺“Look what we’ve been reduced to!” in the office. It’s saf🧜e to say that Fable, no matter what name it was under at any given time, was not viewed as a guaranteed hit.

“Everybody crunched,” says Molyneux. “That meant a lot of stuff got done in a very short amount of time, but it burnt through people terrꦿibly.”

Carter agrees. “The crunch resulted because we suddenly found ourselves with the biggest game any of us had ever worked on, married to what was now a very aggressive deadline🍸 where we previously had no dea☂dline whatsoever.”

A magic using hero in Fable glows blue, standing in a forest.

Hawley also sa🍸ys that this lack of experience in the industry led to crunch. “We were really young, in our 20s, full of the love for making video games, and what we were doing was really hard.”

For Molyneux, who was bouncing between projects at this point, the hours were unsustainable.🌜 “The worst game for me was Black & White,” hꦚe says. “We worked seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, for nine months. That was just insane. Some people had babies in that time - I don’t know how they’d find time to have sex.”

In his role as producer, Hawley remembers being on the phone with Microsoft every night, reassuring its representatives that the game was being made. Between other ga🐷mes like The☂ Movies, Black & White, and now Fable, everyone on the team had too much on their plate.

“[We doubted ourselves] every week. It didn't work. It was just too big, too ambit൩ious,” says Hawley. “How do you tell a meani🥂ngful tale in a simulated open world? No one had ever done that before. It felt like what we were doing was completely mad.”

An older hero with grey hair and silver armour looks at the camera. There are old fashioned wooden homes in the background in what appears to be a forrest setting.

It was at this point that another Fable veteran was introduced to the project: Georg Backer. Pulled from the now-released Black & White, he was suddenly tasked with putting together all of the cutscenes for the team’s biggest game ever. And when he saw what they’d been working on this whole timꦉe, he couldn’t believe it.

“Dene [Carter]’s approach to design was just awe-inspiring,” says Backer, remembering the first time he got to work on Fable. “Everything had meaning and ༺a sort ofꦓ ancestry to it. There's a reason why the Balverines are the way they are, or the Hobbes.” [Side note: Backer actually voiced the Hobbes. Yes, he can still do the voice].

As fondly as he remembers Carter’s work,💮 he can’t say the same for his own. He tells me “the teꦡch was there,” but not a whole lot else. “When it came to our desk, it had to be set in stone. I just ended up talking to everyone, just going from the design [team] to technical, then to art and audio.” With so many story elements - the hero bloodlines, the Guild, Jack of Blades, and a whole bunch of lore - Backer was often pushing for everyone to make a decision on the narrative so he could actually do his job.

“Theꦯ irony is I don't like cutscenes anymore,” Backer laughs, even as he remembers how well they came ou😼t in the end. “That was the game that told me I hate cutscenes with a passion.”

A cutscene in Fable. It is in the form of a painting that tells a story, depicting a strong bandit leader training a young girl with bandages over her eyes.

In any case, they were done. It was another thing the team could tick off the list. Things were looking up. They had a bigger team, they were communicating, and Microsoft was in their corner. With Black & White, Lionhead had “hamstrung a game together” (Hawley’s words) on much less than this. But then another challenge presented itself to the young team: E3.

“The terrible thing about E3 was you had to crunch like ****,” says Molyneux, who quickly became the face of Fable in showcase season. “You had to start the crunch in January. I know that the Fable team spent many nights putting in a huge amount of work for the demo. And then you almost always threཧw it away. You lost almost six months of development.”

For all of the trouble it caused, one thing can’t be denied: Molyneux thrived in this role. “When you went to E3, you had 20-minute interviews starting at 9am and finishing at about 10pm,” he says. “Just back to back. I used to get really punch-drunk. One slot would be a journalist, the other slot would be a GameStop representative. As you're talking to these people, you realise𝕴 they were going to decide the success of your game before it was even released.

“By the end of it, you were just spouting out complete drivel. I hadn't had a cigarette in six hours, so that always makes me speak incredibly quickly,” he says. “There was this notion of whatever you said in the press had to be set in stone, it has to be absolutely factual. Because otherwise people interpret it as a promise, and you break their prom🔯ises and all of that rub🍌bish.”

Infamously, this followed Fable for years to com♔e. “I wouldn't dare go to 📖the press now,” says Molyneux. “I wouldn't dare unless [the game] was released.”

Unfortunately, back in the UK and on the actual build of the game, things were hardly more relaxed. Now with Backer onboard for good, they had some cutscenes and character animations, but actually implementing it all was a problem in itself. Backer tells me even minor adjustments would take at least ten minutes a time, every time. After each change, Backer couldn’t even rem𝐆ember if the animation looked good or not. With so much falling apart, the date when Fable had to reach the “zero bug rating”, a point where there were not obvious, game-breaking issues, was rapidly approaching.

“Every game when you release it, you're deeply ashamed of it.ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ It feels horribly unfinished,” says Hawley. “Imagine this, you're the person that has to say, ‘Alright, we're done. Stop.’ And then the ******* thing gets burned onto a DVD and they distribute milꦬlions of them. If that thing was ******, it's ******.”

At this time, Backer was helping out a bunch of different departments. “There were days where I was complaining about story stuff with the cinematics,” says Backer. “Then I spent time talking to everyone about the technical stu💙ff. Trying to implement a way of changing cutscenes around without rebuilding the whole game.”

The young male hero in Fable standing with a wooden sword near some trees. He is depicted in a 2D artstyle.

Eventually, it was time to say enough was enough and start burning the game onto discs, ****** or not. After years of ✱spitballing ideas at Molyneux’s house, it was over. Fable would ship, andಌ it would be up to the world to decide what to make of it.

“We had this wonderful tradition at Lionhead when we finished a game,” says Molyneux. “We used to all go down to the local greasy spoon cafe and have breakfast, because normally the sun was coming u👍p. You’d just be looking around that table saying ‘We've done it’.”

Yet just because it was over, it didn’t mean the impact of such intense crunch was gone. Molyneux also tells me of “mental health ca♉sualties” experienced at Lionhead, and others agree that time doesn’t heal all wounds.

“I deeply regret the effect that this level of overwork had on the people making the game - including myself,” says Carter. “On the other hand, I have no idea how else a team so lacking in experience with this kind of game could have pulled something of the desired scale off in the time available. In 2002 this kind of ‘live to work⛄’ attitude had been established for decades. Everyone hated crunch, but accepted it as ‘just the way the industry is’.”

A hero in Fable using a huge spell that glows blue

For the Big Blue Box devs, who had at this point poured years of work into Fable, it seems like they had spent so much of development exhausted and overworked. Some in management roles were still unsupp🌳ortive when this was raised to them.

“Responses varied from 'You can't do this to people' to 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen', depending on the particular management member you asked,” Carter says. “The thinking was 'overwork isn't as bad as everyone losing their jobs' w🌳hich is - if not necessarily 'good management' - a horrible truth of sorts.

“Even now, many other well-established studiജos are struggling with this very issue, and how yo✤u handle them largely depends on how much cash you have, how much your publisher supports you, and how large an advertising spend has been locked down to a particular period.”

25 ♏years after Fable’s launch, the effects of its development are still fresh for Carter. “I still love Fable and regularly interact with fans of the series. However, anything which reminds me of what it took to create it still causes me extreme mental discomfort - including all the details I've shared here.”

Box art for Fable: The Lost Chapters. It was exclusively released for the original Xbox.

Hawley shares a similar sentimeಌnt, recalling a discussion he had with Carter years after Fable’s development had wrapped. “I had a great conversation with Dene only a couple of years ago. He said, ‘I just want t𝕴o apologise to you for being such a ******* asshole’.” Hawley says he doesn’t remember it being like that, but admits Fable gave him thick skin. “All that stress, all that craziness, all the shouting, the unravelling - and we're still all good friends.”

Even if many can look back on this time with pride, few wanted to go through it again. Backer, who was more than happy to show off his Hobbe voice acting, would work in a completely different department by the time Fable 2 rolled around. Molyneux, who believes Fable couldn’t have been ma⛄de on time without crunch, tells me he now bans anyone from working past 6pm at his new studio, 22cans.

So, as Fable sold well above projections and guaranteed a sequel, everyone had learnt an important lesson: it can’t get that bad eveဣr again. But that meant waving goodbye to plꦐenty of other quirks of Fable’s development - less getting drunk at Peter’s house, and more meetings with Microsoft. Less transparency with fans, and more well-planned, structured gameplay demos. Fable had taken the RPG genre into the modern age, and now, it was time for Lionhead to join it. With buckets of goodwill from Microsoft and a brand new console to work with, the team got straight back to work, ready to make Fable a full-blown franchise. Keep an eye on TheGamer for the story of Fable 2 & 3 to come.

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