Geartest.com Games - Interview - Peter Molyneux's Fable: Xbox-exclusive fantasy adventure role-playing game goes beyond black and white concepts of good and evil, and lets players explore the grey zones with their choices

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Game designer Peter Molyneux in front of a plasma widescreen shows a character from Fable, his latest game for Xbox.

GAME ICON Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios shows his latest creation, Fable, in which every decision a player makes affects the evolution and outcome of the game.

Peter Molyneux's Fable

Geartest.com Staff
September 6, 2004.

Designer's morality play: Game icon takes good vs. evil past black and white to shades of grey

"If I see one of your saved games, it will tell more about you by looking at your character in a saved game than any personality test. It will tell me if you're easily tempted, or if you enjoy inflicting pain," Peter Molyneux says.

The bold statement by the British game designer - widely regarded as a visionary innovator - doesn't apply to any game. He's talking about his latest creation: Fable.

The fantasy adventure is a morality test, he says.

"You don't have to be good or evil," he says.

In the game, "your character slowly evolves" with each choice, taking on a correspondingly heroic or sinister look.

Players start as a child, interacting with a "living world," Molyneux says, highlighting the example of encountering a bully. The player can fight the bully, join in the bullying or walk away. Defeating the bully is a good deed but "if you continue to fight him, it turns into a bad deed."

Players can also do things that haven't traditionally been part of a game, such as "chatting up girls," getting married, buying property and even having sex.

Molyneux says there is no female player character, "but there was a request from the Germans to let you ... experiment with your sexuality. That's in the game."

He mentions an employee who, in Fable, married a mayor's daughter, murdered him so the bride would inherit his wealth and when she didn't share it, he killed her.

"Why shouldn't we have the things you can do in real life in a game? I hope people look at this as more than a game and experiment with it," Molyneux says.

They'll have their chance when Fable hits store shelves in North America on Sept. 14 and reaches Europe in October.