Fable is an Action RPG developed by Big Blue Box, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, originally published by Microsoft for the Xbox in 2004. Originally developed under the name Project Ego, Fable’s development involved more than seventy people. The game’s release was widely anticipated, due in part to Lionhead creator Peter Molyneux’s enthusiastic hype of the game. [Info from Wikipedia]
Many of the features promised for Project Ego were never implemented: the original concept was to give the player total freedom on the game’s world, but the final game was instead very limited. A cooperative multiplayer mode was planned too, but it was later removed. Most of the places seen in the early screenshots were removed from the final game or heavily changed.
Big Blue Box wanted to create a time system in which seasons and years would pass according to the game’s time, making our character to age and the world to change according. This hyped time-system was completely removed. The main character does age in the game, but after a cutscene and not following the game-time. As we can read from an IGN preview:
Not enough to convince you of how intelligent this game may be? Well, let’s say you are a mean cuss and one day you cut a kid. That cut will become a scar and if you return to that town twenty years later, that kid will have that same scar and a serious hate-on for you. Or maybe you’re more into plant mutilation. Carve your name in a tree and it will stay there through the years.
As you can imagine, this is not possible in Fable.
Even if one of the beta screenshots shows that we could have been able to kill even kids, that was not possible in the final version. As noted by ResidentDante from the NeoGAF Forum:
I remember Peter Molyneux telling about this on a documentary on tv. They let you kill children in the beta version, which they tested with a group of people. When they noticed a guy playing the game killing all the children around in the village, they decided to remove this “feature”.
Thanks to FullMetalMC for some of these images!
Images:
Videos:
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(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
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I have a about 185 screenshots of Project EGO, I would gladly post ’em for the world to see.
I saw your site, awesome collection! I really hope one day we could update this article, there’s so much more to add :O
I run a little website called Fable History Source, and I wanted to add some more screenshots and concept art to this article. As they are quite interesting.
https://sites.google.com/site/fablehistorysource/
I also have a YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkO1sigUpQf0HiHXN8qSoMg (forgot to mention it)