Monday 4-Oct-2004 1:07 PM Lionhead boss says sorry Lionhead Studios boss Peter Molyneux has issued an apology to Fable players over planned features intended for the Xbox RPG which eventually failed to make it into the final cut.
In a post on Lionhead's official Fable forum which reports have attributed to the industry legend, Molyneux initially speaks about his love of games development and his general enthusiasm when approaching a new project and of relaying ground-breaking ideas to press before, well, saying sorry.
"...What happens," says Molyneux in the post, "is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned.
"And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them."
He continues: "If I have mentioned any feature in the past which, for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise. Every feature I have ever talked about was in development, but not all made it. Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense.
"For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in. That 15 % was much better spent on effects and combat. So nothing I said was groundless hype, but people expecting specific features which couldn't be included were of course disappointed.
"If that's you, I apologise. All I can say is that Fable is the best game we could possibly make, and that people really seem to love it."
Molyneux adds that: "I have come to realise that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.
"Our job as the Lionhead family of studios is to be as ambitious as we possibly can. But although we jump up and down in glee about the fabulous concepts and features we're working on, I will not mention them to the outside world until we've implemented and tested them, and they are a reality."
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