Lionhead: Fable Legends possible thanks to Xbox One
In a gargantuan interview with Eurogamer, John Needham, the new studio boss at Lionhead (the man who replaced Peter Molyneux), explained why Fable Legends is only possible thanks to Xbox One and its capabilities, specifically the often discussed cloud.
It’s the capability of the Xbox One. All of the cloud services available to us and the online features we can build around that, that will connect players. A connected experience just brings you closer to the product, right, because you have shared experiences with your friends in-game, and it adds an engagement layer people expect these days. Most of your game experiences are connected, if you think about it.
Later on, he refused to label Fable Legends as a traditional MMO, mentioning Dark Souls and Journey as inspirations instead, and adding once again that the Xbox One’s cloud brings it all together.
It’s not about MMOs. It’s just about having games that people can play together, connected games. The Xbox One improves the things we can do in the cloud with Fable and the things we can do with matchmaking and different online modes. I always mention this, but I love Dark Souls, where you’re invading other people’s worlds, and games like Journey, where people are organically coming in and out of your game world. Having that kind of infrastructure behind the Xbox One gives you a lot of flexibility to do highly innovative online.
Despite this, Titanfall also uses the cloud and it does across all of its versions - Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC. Many games in the Fable series have been ported at some point to PC, so perhaps there’s still hope for PC gamers, especially as Fable Legends is expected to be running for up to 10 years. The game is the first true foray of the series in multiplayer, enabling up to four gamers to band together for a cooperative experience ; when no human players will be available, AI will seamlessly take their place, much like in other games.
Fable Legends is one of the first title in development using Unreal Engine 4, which is yet another reason to look forward to it, although Lionhead didn’t really specify any release date yet. We’ll keep you posted on any news.