Fable: The Journey criticism "destroyed" Lionhead team

Lionhead’s creative director Gary Carr has confessed that the internet backlash to Microsoft’s E3 2011 reveal of Fable: The Journey had a bit effect on the Guilford studio.

It destroyed them,” Carr told CVG. You get very excited when something is very embryonic, and when you’re building something at its very early stages.

I think the studio took the criticisms to heart. I was okay, personally. The team rallied really quickly, it made us double-down on the project and worked really hard to make sure it was the best thing they could make.

In the past we have shown things much more underdeveloped, much cruder, than the Fable The Journey demonstration at E3 [2011]. But for some reason, it wasn’t resonating with people.”

Carr also admits that the studio’s handling of the presentation was certainly a key element in the negative reaction.

I think the presentation itself is partly to blame,” he added. It looked a bit like some spammy shooter, but actually we were building this big world around it. Y’know, you have about two minutes and 45 seconds to demonstrate what you’re doing. I know that a main problem people have is they think we’ve taken the Fable series and trivialised it.

I think we should have shown Fable The Journey further down the line. I think we should have had some press cover it beforehand, just so they could get a better feel of it.

This isn’t a sequel to a Fable title. It’s meant to be a sister-title, if you will. It’s not meant to be a big RPG, but it does open the narrative of some Fable characters, and that’s exciting to us because we want to tell this story.

To me it has always felt like the support title, while Fable itself is to my mind the mother ship. But back in the studio we are building something more ambitious than we’ve ever done before.”