Fable: Anniversary - Interview @ VG 24/7

VG 24/7 interviews Ted Timmins the Franchise Manager of the Fable series.

How does the development process of the original Fable compare to Fable Anniversary?

You have to approach it as you would making a brand new game. Sure, it’s a remaster, not a full-on remake. But a remaster on the scale of Fable: The Lost Chapters is a huge undertaking. There’s so many different parts and components. At one stage we had over 100 artists working on the art. There was Halo Anniversary which was very successful a couple of years ago, and there’s Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time on the 3DS which I love. When you look at those they’ve set the standard for what people expect in a remastered game.

This isn’t a reboot like Tomb Raider. This is reminding the fans why they fell in love with Albion all that time ago. The fans have been demanding this and it’s one of the reasons why we decided to put it on the Xbox 360 – to let the fans complete their collection and have the whole franchise on one platform.

What was the original goal with a remake like this, what did you want to achieve?

Initially we really wanted to just remake the whole thing. But then once we worked out it would take about three years we realised it wasn’t viable. And that’s not really what the fans would want. The fans want a nice excuse to play through the original again. The feedback that we’ve had so far is that they’re ecstatic. I have that feeling towards a lot of games myself, like Halo – it blew my mind. I can relate to the fans’ feelings.