This reminded me I have a Lionhead game I still haven't played; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Movies.

Can't say I'm surprised Lionhead was shut down either, it's been 6 years since they released Fable III and since then it's just been junk. And when they shut down their official forum years ago it wasn't exactly a good sign either.

But what I will remember the most from Lionhead is the crazy hype the first Fable game had during it's development. Never fell for the hype myself, but I have played Fable 1-3 and they were pleasant. But I never felt like replaying any of them.

Back in early 2002 Big Blue Box started to talk about how amazing their Project Ego was gonna be, and around the same time Morrowind was released, which resulted in a huge amount of Project Ego vs Morrowind threads everywhere (the Skyrim vs Witcher 3 threads didn't get anywhere near this ), especially here on the official Morrowind forums, with lots of people claiming Morrowind is so much worse than Project Ego gonna be.

Then Lionhead bought Big Blu Box, renamed it Fable and over the next 2.5 years feature after feature was cut out, until it was finally released in late 2004.

So the development was pretty much like this.

2002: "Fable is the ultimate in non-linearity! Go anywhere, do anything, any time! It's your choice!"
2004: "Well, the plot is fairly linear, but what matters is the choices you make."

2002: "Play any character you want!"
2004: "C'mon, who really wants to play a female anyway?"

2002: "Awesome coop multiplayer. Play with your friends. Save your character on a memory card and bring it to your friends house!"
2004: "Um, yeah, about that multiplayer..."

2002: "Late 2002"
2004: "Sometime in 04."

the first Fable wasn't bad, not terribly amazing either but i did enjoy it for the most part.. never had a chance to play 2, but 3 was really bad imho

The Fable games were good if you never took into account the various promises about the games that didn't get delivered.

MS should hopefully create a new studio to continue making Fable games and make them better than what they have been too.

So where does Peter Molyneux fit into all of this? Is he essentially out of a job?

I loved black and white. I remember when in was a paperboy, waiting for my papers to get sorted before heading out, and seeing a magazine on the shelf caked PC Zone with a big full-on front page picture of Black and White. I had never heard of it before, or PC Zone, but I picked it up and started reading. After my round had finished I returned to the shop and bought the magazine. I couldn't believe it, it seemed like such a revolutionary game. I obsessed over black and white until it finally released. The first 2 levels lived up to their hype. The final 2 levels felt like a grind. I don't think I ever actually bothered completing it. With that said, were a remastered version ever released I would snap it up in a heartbeat, for nostalgia if nothing else.


I found Fable 2 while browsing Xbox 360 games at my local Sainsbury's. I had never heard of the series before, but this was very cheap as fable 3 was already out. I didn't know much about either so i did a quick Google and decided on picking up Fable 2 for about ￡5. I'm very pleased I did. It was a very charming game. It want hardcoe, it wasn't particularly deep, by it had bold colours, soft voices and a relaxing soundtrack-it even had a cute dog you could throw balls for-so I found it very relaxing and I actually still return to it now. I even went and bought the digital version of it for ￡15 when it went backwards compatible. It just relaxes me and makes me smile to play it. Plus I enjoyed that there was local co-op.


So yeah, I have strong memories of Lionhead and it is sad to see what felt like a pioneering studio at the time of Black and White fall into disfunction. But it has done nothing substantial for years.

I believe he had left Lionhead and Microsoft a couple years back. Have no clue what he is doing these days.

Check out Fable The Lost Chapters or the newer version of it that's been updated for the Xbox One.

Guess that acorn isn't gonna grow into a tree any time soon.

He left Lionhead 4-5 years ago and started a small independent studio called http://www.22cans.com/ which is located just a few steps away from Lionhead. So far they made Godus and a few other minor things, but nothing really impressive.

LOL! I remember all this. Yes, Fable promised a lot of things that were never delivered when it was code named 'Project Ego.'

Damn! I hadn't heard this. Well wasn't he the driving force behind the Fable games? No surprise then that the company tanked after he left.

It's funny, but a part of me wants to re-play Fable II and Fable III (as they are the games I have from the series) again. In a sort of 'last good-bye' way.

Fable 2 and 3 are a couple of my favorite games, and they were successful. Fable 3 had little over 5 million in sales -- better than Oblivion but not as good as Skyrim. Fable 2 had a little over 4 million in sales, slightly less than Oblivion.

The problems came when Microsoft decided to use Lionhead to sell Kinect with Fable the Journey, a huge flop. Then instead of making Fable 4, a sure seller, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to develop a watered down MMO, Fable Legends to expand the fanbase, sell xbox 1 and Windows 10 (I think, at this point I'm really not sure what they were thinking with Legends.) Instead, all Microsoft really accomplished was alienating the Fable fanbase, killing Fable and Lionhead.

There's a petition to save Lionhead here https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-studios-don-t-close-lionhead-studios%C2%A0%C2%A0While I don't think it will change Microsoft's mind, if it gets enough attention, maybe some other game studio will pick up the Fable series.

I was testing the Fable Legends game for XB1 and I received an Email from them saying it is being shut down. The same email named Lions Head Studio and a couple of other Xbox sponsored studios (England, Denmark and one in the US?) were being closed. It then listed some other XB/Microsoft studios they were supporting.

I think they said the testers can still play until something like April 13. And they stopped all gold purchases and will be refunding any made during the testing.

I had already decided Fables Legends wasn't for me and had recently deleted it. So I was not surprised that XB decided to shut it down.

The game seemed to be a Evolve clone, with a F2P model. Except the combat seemed much less exciting IMO. There were certainly people on the forums that loved the game. So it had it's supporters. I think the biggest problem is some Fable fans like myself wanted a single player, with co-play story mode old Fable. And the 4v1 PVP would be a great extra. The PVP people saw it as a MOBA. But I didn't see much that was like a MOBA. But what I tested was a Fable based Evolve. With about as little to do as Evolve.

I think it's real problems was optimizing it for XB1 and Windows 10. People who played it on Windows 10 and used keyboards loved it. But it wasn't optimized for XB1 yet and there was a ton of waiting/loading.

I thought once it was optimized for XB1 it would be okay, but certainly nothing I would put at the top of any list. But apparently many people who answered the recent surveys felt it wasn't that great of a game. So it was pulled.

Either way though it is sad to see a studio shut down. But this game had at least 3 months of testing I saw. So it has been in development for a bit.

So no more fable?

Heh....I really do hope we get to see more, because this blows otherwise.

Meh. Doesn't bother me. I only liked the first one. And liked it quite a lot. Only played maybe 10 hours of the second one and never played the third one. Can't say I even knew there was a third one.

Oh I remember the hype -- Morrowind Killer, greatest RPG ever made, ect. It finally came out, I played it, wasn't anything like what they said, but it was still a very fun, enjoyable experience -- the first Fable that is. There is a lot they wanted to do with the game, and you can see some of it especially in the AI, which I think was just as good if not better than Oblivion's AI. It's too bad, they couldn't make a sequel that realized the vision Peter Molyneux had for the game, then it might have indeed been a "Morrowind Killer".

They shouldn't have poured resources into Fable legends, it was doomed to fail from the start. All we wanted was a fable 4 lionhead

Nooooo! Gotta have those on-line MMOs, yo! To hell with single-player games. See, this is why Bethesda's careful with their money and how they treat their flagship game series.

I remember when it was still called 'Project Ego,' it was said you could have children and watch them grow and have their own lives. Talking about Peter Molyneux. I think I remember him apologizing for not delivering what he said in earlier interviews. I also remember a lot of people wanted Project Ego instead of Fable when it was released.