Peter Molyneux Q&A, Fable III to be Episodic

TechRadar had a chance to sit down with Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux for a two-page Q&A about his recent promotion at Microsoft Game Studios Europe, project Natal, and, of course, Fable III. As it turns out, the recently released episodic version of Fable II wasn’t just a trial run – Fable III will be following a very similar route next year. The answer in question:

TR: What about storytelling? You made some interesting comment recently about how you were inspired by Dickens’ “Penny Dreadfuls” when thinking about story in games.

PM: Yes. It is why I don’t like demos. The first part of our game [Fable 3] is going to be free. And at the end of that first part you can choose to continue playing as normal, by buying the full game. Or, if you are still not quite sure, just buy the next episode.

And because it is constructed like that, by pure coincidence, the really big inspiration for Fable 3 was the world that Charles Dickens’ had painted the idea that there was a very two-faced rich versus the poor society… and the very visual ways in which he wrote about London, everything from Highgate Cemetery through to the workhouses.

It was fantastic inspiration and you can see how that will fit well with the Fable ethos. The moment you start to realise that all of Dickens’ books were written to promote the sales of these ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ where the idea was that he wrote a chapter, there was a cliff-hanger and people were literally raiding the ships where the magazines were printed on in their desperation to find out what happened next!