I guess I'll be the only one in the thread to say I really loved Fable 3. That's fine. I'll be on my throne with my chicken suit judging all of you.
I didn't care much for the first game, Fable II was the best thing, and I thought Fable III was pretty good. Not as good as the second one, but I still thought it was a good time. You had to fuck everyone over at the end, and make people miserable by charging out the ass for taxes and shit so you had enough money to fight the monsters. I think that was kind of the point though.
It play the real estate game until you alone could afford the nice ending.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I guess I'll be the only one in the thread to say I really loved Fable 3. That's fine. I'll be on my throne with my chicken suit judging all of you.
I didn't care much for the first game, Fable II was the best thing, and I thought Fable III was pretty good. Not as good as the second one, but I still thought it was a good time. You had to fuck everyone over at the end, and make people miserable by charging out the ass for taxes and shit so you had enough money to fight the monsters. I think that was kind of the point though.
Nah. You became a real estate kingpin and earned enough money to raise the army your damn self.
Fable 3's endgame was one of the most laughably poorly implemented ideas in the history of gaming.
It's a great endorsement of fascism though, even if I suspect that was rather unintentional on the developers part.
As for Black and White, while I loved that game, I could never figure out why my creatures only ever ended up regularly eating poo, or alternatively, throwing it at villagers.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who kind of thought this was overdue. Granted, I never managed to get into any of the Fable games, so Lionhead's appeal is probably lost on me, but it really felt like rapidly-evaporating vaporware for a while now. Too bad, of course.
Not sure what the connection is with Coalition (which is now the name of Black Tusk, I'm pretty sure), other than publishing exclusivity--we'v had (some) footage of GOW4, on what I thought was a normal, non-bizarro development schedule (and they put out a working game already in the form of the UE). Lionhead on the other hand...I don't blame anyone for not liking their work, but frankly there didn't seem to be very much of it any time recently. Unless they had some sort of sleeper hit that went completely under my radar? What was the last thing they released?
The Coalition didn't develop Gears UE, Splash Damage did (they're the Enemy Territory and Quake Wars devs). The Coalition have been around in some form since 2010 (first as Microsoft Vancouver, then Black Tusk and finally The Coalition) and they haven't released a single game yet.
Splash Damage did a bunch (most?) of the art, but TC did rest of the development as far as I know. They specifically farmed out the art to another studio so they could get the game out in a year without it impacting the development of Gears4. I don't think Microsoft cares who does what so long as it's within the budget (and the game sells well, of course)
How do you even do that without farming pretty much the entire game out? It's not like they'll have designers and programmers sitting around doing nothing while development on Gears 4 is ongoing.
My understanding is that it was done pretty much the exact same way the Halo remasters have been. 343/The Coalition have a small team overseeing development but pretty much everything else is farmed out to another studio (or studios). I don't know why Microsoft barely ever give those studios the credit but if you take a quick look at LinkedIn, it isn't too hard to figure out what's going on. Splash Damage wouldn't need a Lead Tech programmer or Lead Gameplay and Online Services programmer for Gears UE if they were just working on the art.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who kind of thought this was overdue. Granted, I never managed to get into any of the Fable games, so Lionhead's appeal is probably lost on me, but it really felt like rapidly-evaporating vaporware for a while now. Too bad, of course.
Not sure what the connection is with Coalition (which is now the name of Black Tusk, I'm pretty sure), other than publishing exclusivity--we'v had (some) footage of GOW4, on what I thought was a normal, non-bizarro development schedule (and they put out a working game already in the form of the UE). Lionhead on the other hand...I don't blame anyone for not liking their work, but frankly there didn't seem to be very much of it any time recently. Unless they had some sort of sleeper hit that went completely under my radar? What was the last thing they released?
The Coalition didn't develop Gears UE, Splash Damage did (they're the Enemy Territory and Quake Wars devs). The Coalition have been around in some form since 2010 (first as Microsoft Vancouver, then Black Tusk and finally The Coalition) and they haven't released a single game yet.
Splash Damage did a bunch (most?) of the art, but TC did rest of the development as far as I know. They specifically farmed out the art to another studio so they could get the game out in a year without it impacting the development of Gears4. I don't think Microsoft cares who does what so long as it's within the budget (and the game sells well, of course)
And Synthesis
How do you even do that without farming pretty much the entire game out? It's not like they'll have designers and programmers sitting around doing nothing while development on Gears 4 is ongoing.
I'm not sure I understand your point? The idea is instead of splitting their time in half between UE and Gears4, they outsource a large chunk of it. A smaller part of the company works on UE with Splash Damage, the another larger part works on Gears4, and some people work on both. Once UE is done, those people at TC who were working on it move over to Gears4. Otherwise they would have had to dedicate more manpower to UE and less to Gears4, thus making Gears4 take longer.
My understanding is that it was done pretty much the exact same way the Halo remasters have been. 343/The Coalition have a small team overseeing development but pretty much everything else is farmed out to another studio (or studios). I don't know why Microsoft barely ever give those studios the credit but if you take a quick look at LinkedIn, it isn't too hard to figure out what's going on. Splash Damage wouldn't need a Lead Tech programmer or Lead Gameplay and Online Services programmer for Gears UE if they were just working on the art.
It sounds like TC licensed some of Splash Damage's existing tech (specifically mentioned is a particle system) so that may explain why they get programming credits. Or who knows, it might be a case of getting to put your job title in the credits regardless of what capacity you actually worked on it.
I have to agree, unless you're suggesting that UE consists nothing more than "new art assets"--never mind that creating a large art library is a multi-faceted operation even to my limited knowledge--I'm not sure why that's "pretty much the entire game." I do know this was not a matter of "okay, change a line in the INI file, then pop in those sweet new textures," because that's now how UE4 works versus UE3. I do know that the multiplayer profile system is fundamentally different, and incorporates a number of new game modes that simply weren't in the original game as well. So there's something here besides "new art" which is "pretty much everything."
It's not on UE4, actually. They determined it would be too time consuming to port it to a new engine, so they basically just enhanced UE3 as much as they could. I think they rewrote the multiplayer portion of the engine, but I'd need to double check that.
EDIT: But regardless of how much Splash Damage worked on UE, bringing it back to the original point of this thread, I don't really think Microsoft considers the Coalition to have "never made a game" so I doubt they're on the chopping block as of yet, like Lionhead and Press Play were.
I'd honestly be more worried about Rare at the moment.
It's not on UE4, actually. They determined it would be too time consuming to port it to a new engine, so they basically just enhanced UE3 as much as they could. I think they rewrote the multiplayer portion of the engine, but I'd need to double check that.
Really? Even on PC? Well, I guess I better catch up on that Polygon article.
It does seem to confirm what I'd heard about rebuilding a few thousand art assets for the job.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who kind of thought this was overdue. Granted, I never managed to get into any of the Fable games, so Lionhead's appeal is probably lost on me, but it really felt like rapidly-evaporating vaporware for a while now. Too bad, of course.
Not sure what the connection is with Coalition (which is now the name of Black Tusk, I'm pretty sure), other than publishing exclusivity--we'v had (some) footage of GOW4, on what I thought was a normal, non-bizarro development schedule (and they put out a working game already in the form of the UE). Lionhead on the other hand...I don't blame anyone for not liking their work, but frankly there didn't seem to be very much of it any time recently. Unless they had some sort of sleeper hit that went completely under my radar? What was the last thing they released?
The Coalition didn't develop Gears UE, Splash Damage did (they're the Enemy Territory and Quake Wars devs). The Coalition have been around in some form since 2010 (first as Microsoft Vancouver, then Black Tusk and finally The Coalition) and they haven't released a single game yet.
Splash Damage did a bunch (most?) of the art, but TC did rest of the development as far as I know. They specifically farmed out the art to another studio so they could get the game out in a year without it impacting the development of Gears4. I don't think Microsoft cares who does what so long as it's within the budget (and the game sells well, of course)
And Synthesis
How do you even do that without farming pretty much the entire game out? It's not like they'll have designers and programmers sitting around doing nothing while development on Gears 4 is ongoing.
I'm not sure I understand your point? The idea is instead of splitting their time in half between UE and Gears4, they outsource a large chunk of it. A smaller part of the company works on UE with Splash Damage, the another larger part works on Gears4, and some people work on both. Once UE is done, those people at TC who were working on it move over to Gears4. Otherwise they would have had to dedicate more manpower to UE and less to Gears4, thus making Gears4 take longer.
My point is that I don't think they just outsourced a large chunk of it, I think they outsourced nearly the entire game. Why? Because Gears 4 is on a fairly tight deadline (it's only been two years since they even started working on the franchise and it's meant to come out later this year) and would have been in full production during most of UE's development, so I can't see how they had the resources to juggle both. Add that to Microsoft's history of outsourcing remasters/ports and crediting them to the internal team who supervised them (you think Lionhead developed Fable Anniversary or that 343 developed Halo CE Anniversary or MCC? Nope) and that's why it makes perfect sense to me that Splash Damage were the ones who did the majority of the work on Gears UE.
I'm not trying to dismiss The Coalition's work on it, I just think their role has been overstated, while Splash Damage have received far less credit than they deserve.
My understanding is that it was done pretty much the exact same way the Halo remasters have been. 343/The Coalition have a small team overseeing development but pretty much everything else is farmed out to another studio (or studios). I don't know why Microsoft barely ever give those studios the credit but if you take a quick look at LinkedIn, it isn't too hard to figure out what's going on. Splash Damage wouldn't need a Lead Tech programmer or Lead Gameplay and Online Services programmer for Gears UE if they were just working on the art.
It sounds like TC licensed some of Splash Damage's existing tech (specifically mentioned is a particle system) so that may explain why they get programming credits. Or who knows, it might be a case of getting to put your job title in the credits regardless of what capacity you actually worked on it.
EDIT: Whoops, sorry for the @ Quote, Synthesis
No, the programming credits are specifically related to parts of the game. One guy specifically talks about the things he worked on, like making movement smoother, bringing across features from Gears 3 (like tac-com and enemy spotting) and improving online (dedicated servers, unlockable characters, respawn times, etc). Check for yourself if you like, here's his profile.
And at no point in that article did they say that Splash Damage only worked on the art. The only part along those lines in it is when they say that their art team worked with Splash Damage's art team by using concept art to communicate their ideas but that doesn't mean they weren't working on other parts as well.
Edit: Oh and I never thought The Coalition were on the chopping block, I just disagreed with Synthesis on the studios history. Gears is still a really important franchise to Microsoft, so they're perfectly safe.
If we're talking about studios who are probably next on the chopping block, it's probably Lift London, as they're the only "small game" studio Microsoft's got left. They did have some others but they've either been quietly dissolved or completely moved over to work on Hololens projects, either way they're not part of Microsoft Games anymore.
I'm tickled pink to discover so many other people fell for the black and white 1 hype cycle hook line and sinker, especially our illustrious tube. It must have been an 8 year hype cycle or something. I like to think that black and white was a big part of what killed the bad old days of games marketing but I have no idea if that's true.
They had me eating out of their hands. There's one preview image I can remember that was a lion creature standing over some Egyptian river houses and 14 year old me thought it was just the coolest thing ever
@dodgeblan that was my desktop wallpaper for a time. I also had an awesome picture of the rainbow turtle. Honestly some of those screenshots still look ok today, but I think people forget that both B&W games were among the most beautiful games out there when they were released.
Unfortunately the lion didn't look very good in the game, they went for a more cutesy approach which looked great on some creatures (the cow and turtle were particular highlights) and looked really stupid on others. They evened the looks out in B&W 2 so that there weren't any really stupid looking ones, but the cow and turtle weren't as cool.
One other great thing about the original that was lost in the sequel was that the creatures could become utterly massive if you played the game for long enough. The B&W 2 creatures were capped at maybe a quarter of the height of creatures in the original. Unfortunately in the original you had to play for about a hundred hours to get a single creature to the top rank, and there just wasn't enough game content to justify that. I'm guessing they thought people would play a LOT of multiplayer, and that the single player was supposed to be just a tutorial for that. Unfortunately it didn't really come together, the game was too content light.
I went ahead and reinstalled B&W because nostalgia.
...The creature combat is just junk. I seem to remember both enjoying this and thinking I was good at it... and I can barely tolerate it now. Also I'm no good at being evil anymore; I used to be able to get all the way to the dark side by the time island 1 is done, and in my current playthrough I'm still neutral at the end of island 2. Water & Grain miracles 2 gud for modern me to resist.
I loved Black and White, and the original Fable had enough stuff in it to keep me going to the end game. I remember first reading about it back when it was called Project Ego, going on about how you could plant seeds and watch them grow, and if you became famous enough kids would copy your haircut.
Fable 2 was brilliant, apart from the dumb "choose to keep your dog or not" choice at the end. It was one of the first games that my then girlfriend and I bonded over. She's now my wife, so read into that what you will.
Fable 3 was... eh. It felt like less stuff than Fable 2, but the weapon modding was cool, and I enjoyed the magic gloves. Then it shit the bed once you became king.
I'm sad to see them go. Another good Fable would have been a solid reason for me buying the Xbone.
I liked Fable 3. I would have loved a Fable 4 too.
I heard mixed statements about Fable Legends, and their delaying that open beta wasn't a good sign... so I don't know.
There's an interview where Phil said that Lionhead was oriented entirely toward making Fable Legends and had high turn over or something which was why it couldn't support creating a proper Fable sequel and such.
He continues to say, "it's been in beta for a while, and we're watching the engagement numbers. The thing around Legends that I'm committed to is I want to make sure its release matches the expectations in terms of quality that our customers deserve. So it's not about releasing something because it's on a poster, because there was a date posted somewhere." Or, as it turns out, releasing it all.
For the studio itself, Lionhead, Phil stated that "the team's really committed to what they're doing with Fable right now," and referenced a "healthy turnover at the studio" as a reason why they couldn't do "a big single player RPG-driven thing like the Fable of old," because "that studio isn't that same studio," adding, "they've really crafted themselves around Fable Legends."
that's some impressive corporate-speak for 'all the good people left'
Microsoft have developed the absolutely best corporate speak for "This thing is going terribly, but it's really okay! The house is on fire around us but it's totally fine".
That interview was from last week, so it seems to me like Phil already knew they were closing Lionhead and was just trying to downplay the studio.
Yeah, they also didn't have Fable Legends on display for the Xbox Spring Showcase.
Which got this response from the Fable Legends forum early Monday Morning:
Been delayed now it seems multiple times.
Last week was the Xbox Spring showcase and the game wasn't even there.
So does that mean the open beta was again delayed?
Like what the heck is happening? What is going on.....
Does Lionhead even know anymore? The overall reception hasn't been to pleasant. Most people don't even remember this game even exists. Every game gets a certain threshold where it remains in the minds of consumers. But if you wait to long. They move on to something else. And that's whats happened here.
If this game released next week as $60 it would probably flop...
Should Microsoft have continued to be committed to a project that was likely going to flop? It was a free to play game too... so... it's not as though they would have definitely made money off a sale when engagement was required to profit.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I don't think anyone really blames Microsoft for this one. The writing was on the wall.
GAF is all over the place on it, along with the usual subjects in comments on articles regarding the closure.
At its worst, the hottest take that I've seen this action being interpreted as is "Microsoft killing off their first party studios as they make further steps toward the Win10 SteamBox One."
Thankfully there's none of that here, but it's out there.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I don't think anyone really blames Microsoft for this one. The writing was on the wall.
GAF is all over the place on it, along with the usual subjects in comments on articles regarding the closure.
At its worst, the hottest take that I've seen this action being interpreted as "Microsoft killing off their first party studios as they make further steps toward the Win10 SteamBox One."
Thankfully there's none of that here, but it's out there.
That makes no sense. Fable Legends was going to be a Win10 game too.
And wouldn't it make sense for MS to have MORE developers, not less, to push.. Whatever the hell they'd be pushing?
Which... is... obviously a lie because of course he would say that? I don't know.
I will say that if they do make something else using the Fable IP, I hope they keep Mike McCarthy involved. As far as I'm concerned, his artwork IS Fable to me. Old Kotaku article that featured more of his work.
edit: corrected attributing actions.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Ehh, it honestly sounds like the residual trails left behind by this sort of vaporware. Not that I fault people for missing a franchise dear to them, nor am I going to complain if Microsoft wants to resurrect a IP of theirs that some people, at the very least, clearly enjoyed, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
I don't think anyone really blames Microsoft for this one. The writing was on the wall.
I don't know about that. The writing may've been on the wall but it's Microsoft's mismanagement of the studio that led them there in the first place.
Microsoft's mismanagement is what led to Fable 3 being a shitty game with an extremely poor reception? Microsoft's mismanagement is what caused Peter Molyneux to consistently over-promise on every single product until the Molyneux hype machine finally lost all credibility and left to go die in a puddle of it's own tears on Kickstarter?
Lionhead was a studio with pie in the sky ambitions and limited resources. Your publisher and golden years reputation can only do so much for you if you aren't going to consistently create products that justify their large sticker price once or twice a year.
I think really it's sad that Phil Spencer's the guy that's had to do this, because he really seems like someone who wants good games on the console. The demise of Lionhead seems to be more Don Mattrick's legacy (nobody's mentioning Fable: The Journey, which shows how little impact that made), when it seems like the whole Kinect push came from him. Fable 2 came out a year after he took over as the head of MS' Entertainment and Devices, and then everything after that has been increasing degrees of poor. Spencer's obviously had a couple of years to try and turn it around, but if the damage was already done, he probably felt it best to make the hard call and cut the losses.
Spencer seems like a pretty good guy; it's a shame he's basically had to run damage control and clean up other people's messes since he took the position. He actually seems to give a shit, unlike his predecessor.
From what little I know, Phil Spencer seems as nice and even-handed a guy as you could get in that high a position--of course, as general manager since '08 he was front and center, along with others, with the hugely unpopular decisions to have the Xbox One exist as a purely digital gaming device that integrated further into XBL for distribution, etc. And, of course, he was part of the team that quickly repudiated their decision and rapidly turned those policies around response to that.
Granted, I personally didn't mind the decision--I just assumed it was hastening the regrettable trends that Steam's business model and Sony's mandatory installations had already long put into motion, and was prepared to accept it. Though I'm a pessimist, and it's not like people didn't hate the shit out of the oXbox and Xbox 360 when it launched either, heh.
But I wasn't one of the people burning Spencer and Matrick in effigy. He's had his share of bad calls, it would seem, I just wouldn't know better personally.
I 100% support blaming Mattrick for the current state of Xbox since he's the one that turned it from leading to losing by way of pushing it off of a cliff. Spencer's the guy who stumbled onto Xbox's broken body at the bottom of the cliff and is trying his best to nurse it back to health but just can't because there's too much damage.
I 100% support blaming Mattrick for the current state of Xbox since he's the one that turned it from leading to losing by way of pushing it off of a cliff. Spencer's the guy who stumbled onto Xbox's broken body at the bottom of the cliff and is trying his best to nurse it back to health but just can't because there's too much damage.
@Opty, curious exactly what you mean by pushing it off a cliff. Not disagreeing with you, I'm mainly a PC guy so I don't have strong opinions about the console wars, but I'd just be interested to hear your elaborate.
Without digging through the merits, pros/cons of it... the original Xbox One plans included "always online" functionality with 24 hour check-ins. This, NSA-related hysteria (specific to the Kinect's camera and mic), and Mattrick's responses including but not being limited to:
"The Xbox 360 is an offline Xbox"
via twitter seriously damaged the brand. I think this was also in response to a concern raised by someone who was a vet/on a military base or something that made it that much more volatile.
ediT: Sorry, wasn't a tweet but an interview. His tweets weren't helpful though, but I can't find any atm:
The interview with Game Trailers' Geoff Keighley took place before Microsoft's E3 press conference and has Mattrick citing the rather extreme example of a gamer aboard a nuclear submarine with a problematic internet connection disappointed at the state of affairs.
"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity and it's called Xbox 360," says Mattrick. "If you have zero access to the internet that is an offline device."
I 100% support blaming Mattrick for the current state of Xbox since he's the one that turned it from leading to losing by way of pushing it off of a cliff. Spencer's the guy who stumbled onto Xbox's broken body at the bottom of the cliff and is trying his best to nurse it back to health but just can't because there's too much damage.
Opty, curious exactly what you mean by pushing it off a cliff. Not disagreeing with you, I'm mainly a PC guy so I don't have strong opinions about the console wars, but I'd just be interested to hear your elaborate.
I'm referring to E3 2013 where they doubled down on being always connected, allowed Sony to outplay them in every single way, and insulted large parts of their userbase to the point that even mainstream media was reporting on how big the backlash was. They eventually reversed pretty much everything but the damage was done by that point and they've been fucked ever since.
Without digging through the merits, pros/cons of it... the original Xbox One plans included "always online" functionality with 24 hour check-ins. This, NSA-related hysteria (specific to the Kinect's camera and mic), and Mattrick's responses including but not being limited to:
"The Xbox 360 is an offline Xbox"
via twitter seriously damaged the brand. I think this was also in response to a concern raised by someone who was a vet/on a military base or something that made it that much more volatile.
Both the initial messaging, and the messaging in response, was badly handled.
I would add my own theory to the appraisal: many, many people in the vocal gaming community hate Xbox consoles upon launch, all of them, albeit with different levels of vitriol (though make no mistake, it is absolutely hate). It's based on the rather unscientific theory that I was around for all three console launches, and people repeatedly screamed into my ears how much they hated a given Xbox console all three times, over and over. People hated the oXbox to the point of raging vitriol fueled hard-ons (Tycho and Gabe were part of that audience for a time!), and right up to the end of its lifespan a very vocal sect of the console gaming community hated the Xbox 360 for a variety of reasons that changed overtime (hardware reliability, the unified online platform, genre bias, etc.).
I kind of think that, had it not been that, it would have been something else. I don't think Microsoft is capable of launching a video game console that some respectably-sized community doesn't hate with the undying passion of a thousand suns. They are that bad at it. Now, just how many thousands of suns of hate are involved does vary, but there's going to be a lot of hate no matter what.
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It play the real estate game until you alone could afford the nice ending.
Nah. You became a real estate kingpin and earned enough money to raise the army your damn self.
It's a great endorsement of fascism though, even if I suspect that was rather unintentional on the developers part.
As for Black and White, while I loved that game, I could never figure out why my creatures only ever ended up regularly eating poo, or alternatively, throwing it at villagers.
And @Synthesis
How do you even do that without farming pretty much the entire game out? It's not like they'll have designers and programmers sitting around doing nothing while development on Gears 4 is ongoing.
My understanding is that it was done pretty much the exact same way the Halo remasters have been. 343/The Coalition have a small team overseeing development but pretty much everything else is farmed out to another studio (or studios). I don't know why Microsoft barely ever give those studios the credit but if you take a quick look at LinkedIn, it isn't too hard to figure out what's going on. Splash Damage wouldn't need a Lead Tech programmer or Lead Gameplay and Online Services programmer for Gears UE if they were just working on the art.
I'm not sure I understand your point? The idea is instead of splitting their time in half between UE and Gears4, they outsource a large chunk of it. A smaller part of the company works on UE with Splash Damage, the another larger part works on Gears4, and some people work on both. Once UE is done, those people at TC who were working on it move over to Gears4. Otherwise they would have had to dedicate more manpower to UE and less to Gears4, thus making Gears4 take longer.
Here's an article about the development of the Ultimate Edition: http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/28/9005697/gears-of-war-present-future
It sounds like TC licensed some of Splash Damage's existing tech (specifically mentioned is a particle system) so that may explain why they get programming credits. Or who knows, it might be a case of getting to put your job title in the credits regardless of what capacity you actually worked on it.
EDIT: Whoops, sorry for the @ Quote, Synthesis
S'okay, Scottsman, I pretty much treat you as the de facto GOW technical and fiction go-to guy.
EDIT: But regardless of how much Splash Damage worked on UE, bringing it back to the original point of this thread, I don't really think Microsoft considers the Coalition to have "never made a game" so I doubt they're on the chopping block as of yet, like Lionhead and Press Play were.
I'd honestly be more worried about Rare at the moment.
Really? Even on PC? Well, I guess I better catch up on that Polygon article.
It does seem to confirm what I'd heard about rebuilding a few thousand art assets for the job.
My point is that I don't think they just outsourced a large chunk of it, I think they outsourced nearly the entire game. Why? Because Gears 4 is on a fairly tight deadline (it's only been two years since they even started working on the franchise and it's meant to come out later this year) and would have been in full production during most of UE's development, so I can't see how they had the resources to juggle both. Add that to Microsoft's history of outsourcing remasters/ports and crediting them to the internal team who supervised them (you think Lionhead developed Fable Anniversary or that 343 developed Halo CE Anniversary or MCC? Nope) and that's why it makes perfect sense to me that Splash Damage were the ones who did the majority of the work on Gears UE.
I'm not trying to dismiss The Coalition's work on it, I just think their role has been overstated, while Splash Damage have received far less credit than they deserve.
No, the programming credits are specifically related to parts of the game. One guy specifically talks about the things he worked on, like making movement smoother, bringing across features from Gears 3 (like tac-com and enemy spotting) and improving online (dedicated servers, unlockable characters, respawn times, etc). Check for yourself if you like, here's his profile.
And at no point in that article did they say that Splash Damage only worked on the art. The only part along those lines in it is when they say that their art team worked with Splash Damage's art team by using concept art to communicate their ideas but that doesn't mean they weren't working on other parts as well.
Edit: Oh and I never thought The Coalition were on the chopping block, I just disagreed with Synthesis on the studios history. Gears is still a really important franchise to Microsoft, so they're perfectly safe.
If we're talking about studios who are probably next on the chopping block, it's probably Lift London, as they're the only "small game" studio Microsoft's got left. They did have some others but they've either been quietly dissolved or completely moved over to work on Hololens projects, either way they're not part of Microsoft Games anymore.
They had me eating out of their hands. There's one preview image I can remember that was a lion creature standing over some Egyptian river houses and 14 year old me thought it was just the coolest thing ever
edit: found it:
https://medium.com/@alascii
Unfortunately the lion didn't look very good in the game, they went for a more cutesy approach which looked great on some creatures (the cow and turtle were particular highlights) and looked really stupid on others. They evened the looks out in B&W 2 so that there weren't any really stupid looking ones, but the cow and turtle weren't as cool.
One other great thing about the original that was lost in the sequel was that the creatures could become utterly massive if you played the game for long enough. The B&W 2 creatures were capped at maybe a quarter of the height of creatures in the original. Unfortunately in the original you had to play for about a hundred hours to get a single creature to the top rank, and there just wasn't enough game content to justify that. I'm guessing they thought people would play a LOT of multiplayer, and that the single player was supposed to be just a tutorial for that. Unfortunately it didn't really come together, the game was too content light.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-10-a-celebration-of-lionhead
...The creature combat is just junk. I seem to remember both enjoying this and thinking I was good at it... and I can barely tolerate it now. Also I'm no good at being evil anymore; I used to be able to get all the way to the dark side by the time island 1 is done, and in my current playthrough I'm still neutral at the end of island 2. Water & Grain miracles 2 gud for modern me to resist.
Fable 2 was brilliant, apart from the dumb "choose to keep your dog or not" choice at the end. It was one of the first games that my then girlfriend and I bonded over. She's now my wife, so read into that what you will.
Fable 3 was... eh. It felt like less stuff than Fable 2, but the weapon modding was cool, and I enjoyed the magic gloves. Then it shit the bed once you became king.
I'm sad to see them go. Another good Fable would have been a solid reason for me buying the Xbone.
I heard mixed statements about Fable Legends, and their delaying that open beta wasn't a good sign... so I don't know.
There's an interview where Phil said that Lionhead was oriented entirely toward making Fable Legends and had high turn over or something which was why it couldn't support creating a proper Fable sequel and such.
Source
https://medium.com/@alascii
Microsoft have developed the absolutely best corporate speak for "This thing is going terribly, but it's really okay! The house is on fire around us but it's totally fine".
Yeah, they also didn't have Fable Legends on display for the Xbox Spring Showcase.
Which got this response from the Fable Legends forum early Monday Morning:
Source
Should Microsoft have continued to be committed to a project that was likely going to flop? It was a free to play game too... so... it's not as though they would have definitely made money off a sale when engagement was required to profit.
It takes great design to survive the march of graphics technology like that
The balverines, the cartoonish look of humans, the dog, the drunk animations...
They had such a cool style to them and it was fantastic.
GAF is all over the place on it, along with the usual subjects in comments on articles regarding the closure.
At its worst, the hottest take that I've seen this action being interpreted as is "Microsoft killing off their first party studios as they make further steps toward the Win10 SteamBox One."
Thankfully there's none of that here, but it's out there.
Mike McCarthy is their lead character designer. Really liked his designs and stuff.
While we're at it, here's the artbook for Fable Legends: Via Amazon
edit: fixed link
I don't know about that. The writing may've been on the wall but it's Microsoft's mismanagement of the studio that led them there in the first place.
That makes no sense. Fable Legends was going to be a Win10 game too.
And wouldn't it make sense for MS to have MORE developers, not less, to push.. Whatever the hell they'd be pushing?
A person from GAF contacted Phil with that thread and he responded.
Which... is... obviously a lie because of course he would say that? I don't know.
I will say that if they do make something else using the Fable IP, I hope they keep Mike McCarthy involved. As far as I'm concerned, his artwork IS Fable to me. Old Kotaku article that featured more of his work.
edit: corrected attributing actions.
Microsoft's mismanagement is what led to Fable 3 being a shitty game with an extremely poor reception? Microsoft's mismanagement is what caused Peter Molyneux to consistently over-promise on every single product until the Molyneux hype machine finally lost all credibility and left to go die in a puddle of it's own tears on Kickstarter?
Lionhead was a studio with pie in the sky ambitions and limited resources. Your publisher and golden years reputation can only do so much for you if you aren't going to consistently create products that justify their large sticker price once or twice a year.
Granted, I personally didn't mind the decision--I just assumed it was hastening the regrettable trends that Steam's business model and Sony's mandatory installations had already long put into motion, and was prepared to accept it. Though I'm a pessimist, and it's not like people didn't hate the shit out of the oXbox and Xbox 360 when it launched either, heh.
But I wasn't one of the people burning Spencer and Matrick in effigy. He's had his share of bad calls, it would seem, I just wouldn't know better personally.
@Opty, curious exactly what you mean by pushing it off a cliff. Not disagreeing with you, I'm mainly a PC guy so I don't have strong opinions about the console wars, but I'd just be interested to hear your elaborate.
"The Xbox 360 is an offline Xbox"
via twitter seriously damaged the brand. I think this was also in response to a concern raised by someone who was a vet/on a military base or something that made it that much more volatile.
ediT: Sorry, wasn't a tweet but an interview. His tweets weren't helpful though, but I can't find any atm:
Source
I'm referring to E3 2013 where they doubled down on being always connected, allowed Sony to outplay them in every single way, and insulted large parts of their userbase to the point that even mainstream media was reporting on how big the backlash was. They eventually reversed pretty much everything but the damage was done by that point and they've been fucked ever since.
Both the initial messaging, and the messaging in response, was badly handled.
I would add my own theory to the appraisal: many, many people in the vocal gaming community hate Xbox consoles upon launch, all of them, albeit with different levels of vitriol (though make no mistake, it is absolutely hate). It's based on the rather unscientific theory that I was around for all three console launches, and people repeatedly screamed into my ears how much they hated a given Xbox console all three times, over and over. People hated the oXbox to the point of raging vitriol fueled hard-ons (Tycho and Gabe were part of that audience for a time!), and right up to the end of its lifespan a very vocal sect of the console gaming community hated the Xbox 360 for a variety of reasons that changed overtime (hardware reliability, the unified online platform, genre bias, etc.).
I kind of think that, had it not been that, it would have been something else. I don't think Microsoft is capable of launching a video game console that some respectably-sized community doesn't hate with the undying passion of a thousand suns. They are that bad at it. Now, just how many thousands of suns of hate are involved does vary, but there's going to be a lot of hate no matter what.
That's only a theory though.
I think we're kinda veering off topic here though. :P