Fable 3 Devs Discuss Its Large Chunk Of Cut Content; A Sequel Was Once Considered

Fable 3 is a generally appreciated entry and received mixed reviews, at worst, from some outlets. However, it could have been much more than what the world got to see. Fable 3 staff recently appeared in an interview with TheGamer and discussed how a large chunk of the game content had to either be altered or canned altogether because of development struggles. A sequel could also have been a possibility if things went right.

Peter Molyneux, the co-founder of Lionhead and lead designer, shared his sentiments for the game. He claimed that the first two titles did quite well, but speaking about Fable 3 “breaks his heart.” The dev mentions that the studio was acquired by Microsoft at that point and had to work under the conglomerate. While Microsoft was quite supportive, it also restricted the team from fully realizing their ambitions because of the time limits.

The problem was we were now fully owned by Microsoft. After the success of Fable 2, Microsoft came back and said, ‘Brilliant job, guys. But next time, do it on time’. That’s not the way we worked. We didn’t work by producing game bibles. We [make] the game, play it, go back to the drawing board, play it, go back to the drawing board. And that makes it very hard to predict the timing,” said the lead designer.

The development process had largely been smooth in Fable 3 compared to other games, with devs having a bigger budget to work with. The studio even secured some big-name actors for the audio as well, but the deadlines were fixed and could not be moved. The large-scale development was able to meet the deadlines, but the studio failed to realize the full potential of the game.

We hit our dates and Microsoft gave us a great pat on the back. But the game was a third of the size that it should have been.”

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The devs told TheGamer that huge cuts were made in the final third part of the game. After all the reduction in content, notable game events were merely reduced to basic choices and small mini-games, which sliced a large portion of the devs’ initial ambitions and immersion. Additionally, an entire story element was removed from the pipeline because of the deadlines and possibly other factors. 

It was supposed to be the first third of the game was your claim to power. And then the next two-thirds of the game was all about the exploration of power and responsibility. We had to cut that back so much that it became ten mini-events.”

Fable 4 was also considered during the development, but the team was confused about its setting because Fable 3 featured almost modern elements already. And the development complications further ended up removing the idea from the studio’s to-do list.