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Molyneux: Fable III shortfalls due to lack of time

Fable creator Peter Molyneux has admitted that the third game in the adventure series didn’t quite turn out the way he’d dreams, and puts its shortfalls down to a lack of time and inefficient development process.

"I thought the idea of leveling outside the GUI, but leveling in the environment and the world was actually quite a good one, but I’m not sure..." he said to Gamasutra.

"The real dream of that leveling process was that, as you went through each gate, there would be these tough choices for the player. Which chest should I open? This one or that one? The feeling that you’re going through the game at your own pace, but having to make these tough choices, was never actually realized," he admitted.

The development process was to blame, Molyneux explained. "The process, the way that we designed, and the way that we crafted -- meant that the game came together very late. That is one of the things that we’re changing; that is just such an old school way of working," which he said meant there was "so little time to balance and refine".

He went on: "We didn’t have the time to craft that into what that dream was ... Lionhead -- especially me -- has never created projects in less than two years. This was the first time we ever did that."

To tackle this Molyneux say Lionhead’s made some changes to its development process. "It’s because of those things that, now, when we approach development, it’s very different, because we want to know precisely how long the experience we’re crafting is up front, rather than waiting to the end, so that we have a clear idea how each of these mechanics is used, how they’re meted out, how they’re exploited, and how they’re really used to amplify the whole drama of what that is.

"So we’ve got a very, very different process of designing now," he said.

Molyneux recently took a break from his relentless praise of Microsoft’s Kinect controller, admitting that it has "some real problems as an input device".

His lasted project is Fable: The Journey a Kinect game being designed as a core experience