Peter Molyneux promises his next lie will be the best lie he’s ever told

April 24, 2012 12:02 pm

Peter Molyneux, the brains behind Fable and the ill-fated Project Milo, has assured fans that he is currently working on the biggest and most outrageous lie of his career, a lie so grand in scope and vision that it will change gaming, perhaps even life as we know it, forever.

The self-proclaimed king of really big fibs recently left Lionhead, the Microsoft owned studio he founded 15 years ago, to set up 22Cans – the name being a subtle reference to the amount of beer he had consumed the night he decided to go it alone. However, Molyneux is adamant that his ninja-like skills of deception remain unscathed and that his next lie will change everything.

“I know people don’t trust me”, Molyneux said. “But you’re just going to have to believe me when I say that my next lie will be totally mind-blowing, a real step change for the industry. Sure, there have been some fantastic lies over the last few years, and I really respect developers like Guerrilla Games for pushing the boundaries with their brilliantly deceptive CGI demos. But compared to the lie I’m working on at the moment… Well, let’s just say it’s in a completely different league.”

Asked why he thought his lies were so popular amongst gamers, Molyneux was happy to share some of his theories.

“Very few developers have managed to recapture the crushing realisation players experienced when they discovered they couldn’t really have children in Fable”, Molyneux chuckles. “Or the sheer anger they felt after spending countless hours unsuccessfully attempting to carve their initials into a tree. You just don’t forget those magical gaming moments.

“The mistake most developers make is that they admit to their lie well before their game launches, immediately lowering expectations and losing the element of surprise. My lies are popular because I sustain them right up to release. Whether it’s the fact that your decisions in Fable 2 mean jack shit in Fable 3, or that you can’t actually beat up your dog and leave it for dead, I believe in letting gamers discover the awful truth themselves.


5 Comments

  • Geekerthanyou

    Peter Molyneux is overrated, talked a big game, but has yet to deliver on any of the features/promises. I guess Microsoft finally realized this, and canned his ass.

    • DrKatataFish

      So all these games were also overrated?

      Pre-Bullfrog
      The Entrepreneur (1984) (designer/programmer)
      Druid 2

      Bullfrog Productions
      Fusion (1987) (designer/programmer)
      Populous (1989) (designer/programmer)
      Powermonger (1990) (designer/programmer)
      Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods (1991) (designer/programmer)
      Syndicate (1993) (producer)
      Theme Park (1994) (project leader/lead programmer)
      Magic Carpet (1994) (executive producer)
      Hi-Octane (1995) (executive producer)
      Genewars (1996)
      Dungeon Keeper (1997) (project leader/designer)

      Lionhead Studios
      Black & White (2001) (concept/lead designer/programmer)
      Fable (2004) (designer)
      Fable: The Lost Chapters (2005) (designer)
      The Movies (2005) (executive designer)
      Black & White 2 (2005) (lead designer)
      The Movies: Stunts & Effects (2006) (executive designer)
      Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods (2006) (lead designer)
      Fable II (2008) (lead designer)
      Fable III (2010) (lead designer)
      Milo and Kate (formerly known as The Dmitri Project) (cancelled) (lead designer)
      Fable: The Journey (TBA)

      Yes he did promise some features that never made it to the final product but he created some of the most enjoyable PC games to date. If you look at the titles you can see when Microsoft bought Lionhead, as quality of his games declined.

      • Populous was the only decent one on the list. The rest all promised far, far, far more than they delivered. Black & White was a tech demo, not a game. Fable 1 was fun, but he promised that it would revolutionize games, and instead was a very basic beat em up action game.

        He wasn’t the reason those games were good. The programmers were. He’s just some rich asshat who makes promises he doesn’t realize he can’t keep until its too late.

      • Most of them? Yes. Populous and Dungeon Keeper are the only games on that list I’d consider unambiguously ‘good’. Almost everything Bullfrog ever released was awful.

  • The peter molyneux bullshit translator:

    PETER: milo was too emotionally connecting and didn’t have a place in todays gaming shelves.
    Translates as;
    PETER: milo was a fucking dull rape simulator that would have caused FOX news to absolutely flip their shit and get me arrested!

    Okay, that last translate attempt sucked but the next one will completely blow your minds. Honestly this sort of comment has no other kind like it…

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