Fable 4 would have been “darker and grittier” than its predecessors, that’s if Lionhead’s John McCormack had gotten his way.
The game would have been developed on Unreal Engine 4 and pushed the franchise into the “technological, industrial age, with tram cars and flying machines.”
“We wanted to hit the late Victorian proper far out Jules Verne sh**,” McCormack told Eurogamer.
According to the site’s extensive report on the recently closed studio, Fable 4’s principal city would have been dense and massive with references to British stories such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and real life people including Jack the Ripper.
The character would’ve been in “this kind of weird f**ked up London environment”.
“And that was going to be Fable 4, and it would be darker and grittier,” McCormack added. “And because it was R-rated it would have the prostitutes and the humor. I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be f**king brilliant, and everybody was really into it.”
Microsoft rejected the pitch and turned the studio’s attention to the free-to-play title Fable Legends, which was cancelled when news of the studio’s closure first emerged in March.
Simon Carter, another former employee, said the Fable games were “highly profitable” but not in the same league as Microsoft’s other franchises such as Halo leading to a “certain amount of tension” in the run up to Fable 4 being pitched.
McCormack was said to be “incensed” by the game’s rejection and cited it as one reason he left the studio in 2012.
“It was like, ‘You’ve reached your cap of players for RPG on Xbox and you need to find a way to double that, and you’re not going to do it with RPG,” he commented. “I thought, ‘Yes we can.’
“I said, ‘Look, just give us four years, proper finance, give us the chance Mass Effect has, Skyrim has, the games at the time. They’re getting four years and a lot of budget. Give us that, and we’ll give you something that’ll get you your players.”
McCormack added that Microsoft’s response amounted to, “‘Nah, you’ve had three shots and you’ve only tripled the money. It’s not good enough. F**k off.’ That’s what I was annoyed about.”
One source told Eurogamer that Microsoft spent $75 million on Legends before the game was cancelled.
Fable designer and Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux expressed an interest in returning to the studio in the report.
“When I finish what I’m working on now, if someone comes to me and asks, ‘Hey, do you want to do Fable 4?’, I’d totally be up for it,” he said. “It’s such a rich world and there are so many avenues we didn’t explore. That would be really good fun to do. And I’d still want the equivalent of another dog.”
Buyers were reportedly prepared to spend “hundreds of millions” to save Lionhead and acquire the rights to the Fable franchise but Microsoft refused to sell the IP according to reports yesterday. The company has not yet announced what it plans to do with the franchise or which developer might take on the series.
