Fable’s Lead Designer Discusses the Game’s Transition to the Windows Platform
By Michael Lafferty

“…we wanted to create an Action-Adventure-RPG hybrid that had a lot of depth and replayability, but which also appealed to people who’d never touched an RPG before.”

When Fable released for the Xbox, it marked a new direction in RPG gaming.  There was actually personal consequence for action, a notion heretofore not at the forefront of the role-playing genre. Think about it – in most games you are tasked to go through a series of missions to kill a bad guy (as Richard Garriott is fond of saying) who has done nothing wrong as far as you have seen. You are slaughtering hundreds and the only repercussions are you get more powers to slaughter more.

Fable was a little more insidious. You were given choices – both good and bad, and the choices you made affected the way you looked. Sure, you fought and got scarred up, but if you made evil choices, you soon started to sprout horns and such. It was a breathtaking approach to gaming.

Until now, only Xbox gamers had the opportunity to experience that, but coming in September, Fable: The Lost Chapters will allow PC owners the opportunity to experience this rich world where the differences between good and evil are often physically defined.

Dene Carter, Lead Designer for Fable: The Lost Chapter (for Windows) talked with GameZone.com about the title.

Q: Fable was released in September of 2004. Was it always planned to move the tale over to Windows, or is that something that was determined later in the development cycle of the Xbox version?

Dene: “Believe me – there was no time to think about the Windows version when we were doing the Xbox game! The decision and drive came well after we’d stopped killing ourselves to get the game out!” 

Q: The game features a character that is customized as you move through the game, and yet, with the Lost Chapters, it promises even more customization than before. What elements are new to the process?

Dene: ‘”We’ve added everything from really silly fun features (a selection of silly hats, like the ‘Chicken Hat’ for example) to things like the ability to create your own tattoos in your favorite art package and import them into the game. You also have a lot of extra abilities with which to express your personality; more spells (such as Divine Fury) and expressions (like ‘Cossack Dance’ and ‘Cock-a-doodle-do’).”

Q: Does this game end in the same place that the Xbox title did, or does it move beyond the console game and explore new areas and advance the story further along? What aspects of the legend of Fable do The Lost Chapters flesh out?

Dene: “As we were finishing Fable on the Xbox we felt that a lot of questions were left unanswered by the story. Who was Jack? What happened to the other heroes? We took the opportunity of working on the Windows version to extend the story into a new continent, and to flesh it out from the original game to make a fuller and more satisfying experience. The new game gives you a lot more opportunities for good and evil, some of which are really quite momentous.

“As I said, the game’s landmass is also larger. The new area (the snowy ‘Northern Wastes’) features many winding paths though the blizzards to areas such as the village of Snowspire, and the haunted Necropolis. It feels very, very different than any other area in Xbox Fable.”

Q: Obviously the control scheme has undergone a major transformation, but what did you do to the graphics to make it shine - with all the possible system configurations - to make it shine on the Windows? Did the sound of the game undergo any upgrades?

Dene: “Windows platforms have more memory, and modern video cards allow you to do a great deal more than any current console. As a result, we were able to go back and use textures we’d made at double-resolution (when we had no idea what the Xbox was actually capable of), allow you to increase the resolution as high your monitor will support, and add improvements such as larger shadow buffers and up to 16x anti-aliasing. Overall, Albion looks sharper, brighter, richer and more beautiful than ever before.

“And, being the sort of folk who can’t stop twiddling with things, we took the opportunity to tweak a few of the sound effects, too; some of the voices have been re-jigged, and the post-processing reworked, so this version of Fable sounds even better than it did before.

Q: Are there new skills in the game or has the skill system undergone any kind of change? What about new monsters? How many new ones are there, and what is your favorite?

Dene: “We’ve tried to keep the game as ‘Fabley’ as possible, so we’ve left the skill system well alone while adding a few extra treats for the new audience. Hopefully, folks will be nice, and not start using Divine Fury on unsuspecting villagers. But then, nobody would do that, would they?

“We’ve a selection of new creatures to harass and challenge the player’s Hero. Some are variants on old favorites; the Ice Troll, for example – a faceted, shiny behemoth who creates ribbons of homing ice shards which hurt rather a lot. We’ve also created brand new horrors like the Summoner: a suit of plate-mail armor surmounted with a rotting human skull. These nasties wield massive swords and pull ball-lightning out of the ether for fun, sparking and sizzling and causing a lot of damage when they even get close to you. However, my favorite is probably the new ‘Big Boss,’ but I’m not allowed to say much about him. He’s big. And bossy.”

Q: Fable was the kind of game that started people rethinking about how RPGs play out on the console. Do you think this version will have the same effect on the single-player RPG experience on the Windows, and why?

Dene: “We’d always considered Windows and console gamers to be very different audiences in the past. Where Fable is concerned, we wanted to create an Action-Adventure-RPG hybrid that had a lot of depth and replayability, but which also appealed to people who’d never touched an RPG before. I think this aim is as relevant to the Windows as it is to the Xbox.”

Q: And, as a second part to the previous question, where do you think RPGs should be, where do you think they are going and how does Fable fit into that picture?

Dene: “For me, RPGs are often far too long, far too po-faced, and too self-absorbed to be much fun. Value for money shouldn’t mean ‘Let’s make sure every step of your journey is so dull, painful and tedious it takes 200 hours to complete, with 90% of that being random ‘grind’ play!’ Nor should it mean, ‘Let’s create a landscape the size of the entirety of the USA! And make you walk from state to state!’ Again, this receives no points in the ‘Fun’ stakes. Likewise, if I wanted to read 2,000+ pages of text I’d probably pick up a novel and put down the joystick.

“I’d like to think that as time goes on, RPGs will get back to the core that made the concept so compelling when D&D originally came out: the ability to shape your character, to experience a vivid world, and to feel that what you do has consequences.

“Our aim was for Fable to lay a few stones of that particular pathway.”

Q: What is your favorite part of the Fable experience?

Dene: “For me, our greatest achievement was the sense of irreverence, fun and the overall ‘feel’ of Albion. Our intent was not to play ‘Catch Up With Mr. Tolkien!’, but to look at the things that influenced fantasy writers throughout the decades and make our own world from that standpoint. I think Albion turned out pretty well, and I hope players enjoy spending a little time on its slightly silly shores.”

del.icio.us | Digg This | Glink It

---