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The company's creative director has confessed a poor presentation at E3 2011 had big repercussions.
Lionhead's creative director has admitted the criticism the company received over Fable: The Journey "destroyed them".
In an interview with CVG, Gary Carr claims that a poor presentation at E3 2011 gave people the wrong impression, which really upset the developers.
It destroyed them. You get very excited when something is very embryonic, and when you're building something at its very early stages.
He explained, "It destroyed them. You get very excited when something is very embryonic, and when you're building something at its very early stages. In the past we have shown things much more underdeveloped, much cruder, than the Fable The Journey demonstration at E3 [2011]. But for some reason, it wasn't resonating with people.
"I think the presentation itself is partly to blame. It looked a bit like some spammy shooter, but actually we were building this big world around it. Y'know, you have about two minutes and 45 seconds to demonstrate what you're doing. I know that a main problem people have is they think we've taken the Fable series and trivialised it."
Carr goes on to suggest that the reason for such a reaction may be because the game was shown too soon, explaining that some press coverage beforehand may have enabled people to get a better idea of what they were trying to achieve.
"I think we should have shown Fable The Journey further down the line," he said. "I think we should have had some press cover it beforehand, just so they could get a better feel of it.
"This isn't a sequel to a Fable title. It's meant to be a sister-title, if you will. It's not meant to be a big RPG, but it does open the narrative of some Fable characters, and that's exciting to us because we want to tell this story.
"To me it has always felt like the support title, while Fable itself is to my mind the mother ship. But back in the studio we are building something more ambitious than we've ever done before."
The reaction caused the team to go quiet for the past year and just focus on making the game. Rather than change elements or go on a PR campaign, Carr explains they had to take a more passive approach and leave it to hands-on press coverage.“
I can't really recall a time when we gave a game to the press and just left them to it. But we had to do it.
He revealed, "We decided then to go quiet for a while, not promote the game for a year, and then give it to the press to just play. I mean, I can't really recall a time when we gave a game to the press and just left them to it. But we had to do it. By that stage, Fable The Journey wasn't something we could have PRed, it wasn't something that we could have promoted on its own, we just had to show it to people and let them decide for themselves.
"We showed journalists the start of the game, not the mid-point or a highlight; the very start. This was the tutorial, meeting new characters for the first time. No guides. No tricks. And fortunately the response was really positive. I struggled to find people who said 'no this is still s***'.
"I understand that people won't love this game just by watching other people play it. You have to see it for yourself. That's part of the challenge."
Fable: The Journey will release exclusively for Xbox 360 on October 12 in the EU and October 9 in North America.
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