Fable didn’t have a simple development history (and we’re not talking about how Peter Molyneux, who redesigned the original concept, promised a lot, and then not come through with a lot of those promises – this was especially the case with later games…), but it’s still interesting to see how the game looked in an early stage, when it even had an entirely different name, too!

People Make Games on YouTube had the chance to play an early build of Fable. Back then, this game was called Wishworld, and Dene Carter, the co-creator, revealed more information about it. Originally, this game was meant to be a magic duelling title with us creating the environment, the world around us (with lakes, forests, volcanos… etc). At the beginning of the game, we’d have had the chance to select a character archetype, each coming with a different speciality in magic. After that, we’d have been in a black, empty void, where our goal would have been to create the world around us. Depending on our character type, rivers, forests, volcanoes, and large lakes would have been created. We could have also cast creatures, and if we found orbs, we could have changed our spells.

Our enemy would have done the same thing, and we’d have seen their work in the background. After some time (finding the spells we want, creating the world around us), we could have attacked our rival, who, as an example, could have shot eruptions from volcanoes at us. Our response could have been a lake, and then, with some mermen and water spirits, we could have started a counter-attack.

This concept was not picked up by publishers. This is when Carter’s team, complete with Peter Molyneux (Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Fable…), reworked Wishworld that ended up as Fable, which came out on Xbox in the Fall of 2004, with a PC port a year later.

The franchise quickly became one of the pillars of Xbox, but it’s not going well at the moment: Fable Legends got cancelled, Fable Fortune is „just” a card game, but there are rumours about how Playground Games, the devs behind the Forza Horizon series, who became part of the Xbox Game Studios by E3 2018, are working on Fable IV, which is why they have significantly expanded last year. We’ll see at this year’s E3 if the rumour is true.

Source: PCGamer