Fable Legends cancelled, Lionhead likely closing?

I agree and it’s SO CLOSE to being finished. It’s like saying free to play is important and then all of a sudden it’s not?

What should we belive.

Why didn’t they launch it with half the content that was finished if it’s free to play?

I loved the beta! Glad I’ll be getting my money back though!

Petition

My comprehension of text is different to yours? I’m not sure I understand the question?

It shouldn’t be their one and only project to start with…

Not liking something is slaging it? Not sure how that works? I didn’t like the Beta in fact many people didn’t like it, it was a huge departure away from the game and many online players would tell me it wasn’t what they were hoping for.

In any case it’s silly of MS to close a studio with so much potential over this one failure.

Margins in the video game world are small. Wouldn’t be the first (and won’t be the last) studio to go under because of a single project failure.

Saying “I hate the game they were working on, but I don’t know why they are closing,” is running against the obvious logic. If you don’t think MS’s perception of the Fable fan reaction to Legends played into this decision I don’t think you understand modern marketing. They have a staffer assigned to analyze our posts on this forum…

We live in an era where everyone feels like it is their right and their duty to express their distaste of everything and broadcast it all over the internet to sway public opinion. Maybe instead you should just walk away from things you don’t like without potentially helping ruin them for others. All the hate directed at Legends hasn’t magically produced Fable 4, but it sure helped kill this game.

1 Like

I think people can be real arsehats about this “AAA” thing. The fact that gamers even know the term “AAA” seems a little too inside baseball for the amount they actually know about the business of games. It’s just turned into a unit of measurement used in list wars between console fanboys on internet forums, or a way for indignant PC master race gamers to complain that they’re not getting spoilt enough because not nearly enough games are the fruits of the labors of hundreds of sweatshop 3D artists mostly churning out background scenery that they’ll never spend more than 3 seconds appreciating.

That is to say, Fable Legends looked cool and ■■■■ the haters.

Was waiting for this to come up, because I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing as well. Unless the right people had access to the beta and could get enough from the client and their online time to work into a preservation effort, or someone just leaks a recent build, this game could be lost.

But also, games in development get canned all the time, even after being announced, and we don’t wring our hands about preserving those so much – so where does this game stand philosophically? It seems like a bit of a grey area to me.

Nevertheless, hopefully something happens here. Maybe MS will even help out in some capacity, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.

It is really baffling and disconcerting to me too. But also, MS has a stupidly high amount of goodwill with me due to KI, so they’ll have a lot left to burn after this has blown over. Not sure how gaming enthusiasts at large are going to take it, mind.

1 Like

Hi Guys,

I made a video about this subject and i want to share with you :slight_smile:

I hope this isn’t an error, but Lionhead studios has just re-appeared on the official MS studio page.

https://microsoftstudios.com/studios/

I’m hoping MS is at least giving them the chance to prove themselves with Fable Legends.
I like my Xbox, but the one thing it really needs is more diversity in it’s first party games, and there’s nothing else quite like Fable.

That would be the best news in years…not goong to get my hopes up uet though till they confirm…

1 Like

We can but hope, It will be a ■■■■ sad day when Lionhead are no longer a studio :frowning:

Apparently MS are surveying staff members at Lionhead as to whether they want to continue working on Fable Legends or take a redundancy package.

We’ll probably find out for certain what’s going to happen by the end of the month…!

“One of the sources told MCV that this stems from a proposal from certain Lionhead employees about taking Fable Legends and continuing development as an independent studio”

In my honest opinion they should have stayed independent from the start, MS owning them meant they had a bigger budget to work with but also meant a loss of creativity. Even PM himself stated that many of his own ideas didn’t make it into Fable 2 because MS execs were not interested. Tried to find that interview but it appears it’s gone, Molyneux was stating that they were going through the ideas in a document and saying “no” to many of them.

Certainly hope the future of Lionhead is an independent studio once more

2 Likes

I saw this earlier today. I would love for Fable Legends to get released and Lionhead Studios to get another chance. But for now I’m not going to get my hopes up, I was in a bad mood for a week or 2 because of the bad news to begin with, dont feel like going through that again.

1 Like

I’m hoping that happens, it seems like the best option.
It’d be nice if they could convince Molyneux to rejoin as well.

1 Like

I don’t like to berate public figures in general, but it baffles me that anyone could think that what Lionhead needs now is goddamn Peter Molyneux, especially given the state of his current studio. For all we know, the aftershocks of several bad decisions and trumped-up interviews by Molyneux could’ve played a major role in bringing Lionhead undone.

The guy spoke a good game and sometimes he couldn’t deliver, he’s given many interviews on this. To be fair to him many of his ideas never made it into Fable 2 because of MS producers basically wanting the game to appeal to a wider audience.

The state of his former studio had little to do with him since the damage was done after he left. You get the feeling from him that the money from MS was good as it meant more production values, but at the same time it meant he had less control over his projects.

For instance you may not know that Peter was not the “guy in charge” when it came to Fable 2. When Molyneux left the studio people forget who took some key characters with him and I honestly feel the studio just wasn’t the same afterwards.

Imo they should just move on to another game. There is potential but the gameplay is just not there. Unless they rework the combat I don’t think it would be a good idea to continue support on the game because it would just fail at the end.

It’s a free to play game about to enter beta. Get the game out there, get the whales buying shackles or horse armor or whatever they sell in fable town. Then make improvements as you go. Lots of worse looking, less interesting, and bringing a smaller built in fan base F2P games have been released and done fine.

1 Like

Exactly, the money is lost anyways otherwise.

That said, I loved the combat, every character was different so there was something for everyone.

Just a reminder - the Fable Legends Beta ends today at 3pm GMT, that’s about three and a half hours left if anyone wants to play before it goes offline.

So what are the odds of one of those characters in Legends joining KI? I really loved Winter and can’t believe she will never see the light of day. That wulf coat she had originally was adorable.