What began as a quirky role-playing game created in part by one of the industry’s most notable auteurs would go on to count among Xbox’s most important properties. Fable from Lionhead Studios always boasted a certain charm that meshed well with its fascinating characters and awe-inspiring fantastical world. The 2008 sequel Fable 2 arguably represented the series at its best, considering it took home a BAFTA and a slew of well-deserved Game of the Year awards. This momentum wouldn’t culminate in similar praise for Fable 3; yet no one could have anticipated the third number title marking the end of Fable as fans had known it for the better part of a decade.
A cutesy beat ‘em up in Fable Heroes and Fable: The Journey’s magic-fueled Kinect adventure trailed far from the franchise’s established status quo. But free-to-play game Fable Legends truly subverted expectations, wearing the guise of a big-budget console and PC experience while missing the mark on what made the mainline installments so appealing. In other words, players craved a proper Fable 4, and the team at Lionhead desperately wanted to deliver as much. In fact, studio leads pitched one such project right before Legends started occupying center stage.
The proposal didn’t receive so much as a passing interest at Microsoft, its gaming vertical preferring to stick the award-winning single-player studio on a multiplayer-only title just as the Games as a Service craze got underway. This decision begat a host of issues, all of which contributed to Fable Legends’s unceremonious cancellation and the untimely closure of the UK development house co-founded by game design luminary Peter Molyneux.
