Fable isn’t getting off the ground and the Forza engine could be to blame
An insider describes the lengthy development of the new fable, but there is no reason to panic.
Fable will be a completely different game than we are used to from Playground Games. The team behind Forza Horizon is venturing into completely new territory, instead of blasting through the pampas with racing and rally vehicles, we carve and conjure our way through a fairytale world. However, switching to a new genre not only seems to be very demanding from a technical point of view, there is also said to be a lack of the necessary experience.
The technique doesn’t suit a role-playing game
Like “Gaz”, co-founder of the English-language news site GameOnDaily, in the XNC Podcast according to an internal source, the development of Fable is progressing slowly.
In the Forzatech engine used, which was once designed by Turn 10 for the Forza Motorsport series, it was difficult to implement game mechanics that an open-world role-playing game absolutely needs. The team also simply lacks experience with the genre.
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We remember his statements to many messages about the Frostbite enginea graphics framework originally designed for the Battlefield series but later made mandatory for almost all EA studios.
Since Frostbite was purely tailored for multiplayer shooters, developers had to design numerous systems for their games themselves. These included what were apparently the simplest functions, such as the option to pause the game, a dialogue system, or the representation of creatures with more than two legs.
In the course of the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare had to develop numerous systems for the Frostbite engine, which were not yet mature even in the subsequent Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Fable could behave similarly: In contrast to cross-genre engines like Unreal or Unity, Forzatech has historically only been used in racing games, which could have resulted in a strong specialization.
While Forza Horizon 5 shows very well that Forzatech can represent huge game worlds, linking them with the mechanics of a role-playing game could actually turn out to be difficult, since the basics for them have to be created first.
By the way, if the new fable is no longer in your head, here is the announcement trailer from 2020 again:
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The announcement trailer suggests that the fairytale world of Fable will be big – but that’s where the similarities with Forza end.
A few months ago chatted a former Fable designer that development was slow due to the team’s inexperience, Job postings from Playground Games also show that countermeasures have already been taken. We are currently looking for gameplay designers and engine developers.
Fable has been scaled down
Gaz also says the game won’t be the size Playground Games once wanted to achieve. Fable senior producer Amie Loake immediately took to Twitter and gave the all-clear, although she doesn’t disagree with the journalist’s statements. The said reductions are a “normal, necessary and healthy process in game development”.
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It is important that the team has a clear, focused vision in order to work efficiently. In addition, crunch is avoided if content that turns out to be too ambitious is deleted at an early stage.
Fans of the first part were able to see that a downsizing for a Fable game can have a happy ending. At the time, Lionhead Studios was dreaming of an almost lifelike fantasy simulation, leaving behind smaller sub-mechanics that breathed a lot of charm into the ultimately very classic role-playing game.
Although Lionhead could only achieve a few of the goals they set themselves, Fable became a classic.
Playground Games itself also speaks of an early phase of development in job advertisements, which is why quick reactions to problems are a good sign. Features are constantly discarded during the development of games, if this happens too late, there can be long delays because a large number of interlocking systems may no longer work.
Hopefully that won’t be the case with Fable until we can get a feel for the game, but we may have to wait longer than Playground Games and Microsoft originally intended.
Would you actually be bothered by a “smaller” fable?
Reference-www.gamepro.de