“We have spent a long time thinking about what Fable is, then keeping the core of it.” says Murray, “And I think anyone looking at the screen now can see its Fable, instantly see it’s Fable. We have kept the character, we have kept the charm, the humour... “ pretty evident given the on-screen character is currently dressed in a chicken suit. “...but we have also thought about how we progress the franchise on,” says Murray “we have really put a lot of time into a entertainment experience and story that really drags you through, supported by an absolutely fantastic cast.”

Indeed, the game features 47.5 hours of recorded dialogue from well known characters such as John Cleese, Simon Pegg, Stephen Fry, Sir Ben Kingsly, Jonathon Ross amongst others. The build on show featured a host of charming audio delights from these talents.

Fable III is a little different to the first two outings on the Xbox 360, as Murray explains; “You start off as a teenager Prince or Princess - we have kind of dispensed with childhood as a concept - you’re in a world where your brother, the king, is really a tyrant, with the world starving, there is some hardship going around”

“With your mentor, you are called to arms; you are going to be the rebel, the revolutionary and you are going to take the throne. But what we do with Fable III, which is different from most games, is once you take that throne it is not game over. At that point, all the promises that you made to get to that throne, come back, then how are you going to deal with those?”

Fable II is expanding its land of Albion's borders, visiting Aurora this time around, how does all this new vision fit onto an Xbox DVD 9? “We are getting better at it, “says Murray “We’ve got a fantastic tech team back home, who have spent a lot of time making sure things fit. Yes, but we only just fit onto a single DVD, it was a bit of a squeeze, there were some tense moments there a few months back.”

Just too finally set the story straight, there will be no Kinect integration with Fable III, which is nice, for the fart animations in the game this time around, are, let’s just say, over the top. Recreating some of those poses in the living room would be just too much to bear.

“We decided we were not going to be able to do Kinect justice as simply an add-on to Fable III.” explains Murray.

What the team at Lionhead has done, is to challenge traditional RPG interfaces and conventions with this release. They identified early on that there needed to be an attempt to draw in a non-traditional RPG demographic to the Fable experience.

The Road to Rule – for example - is an ethereal place, presented like a graveyard path through a series of wrought iron gates. Instead of headstones, heavy chests line the pathway. Each gateway represents a character level; each chest can be opened to reveal game features. On the right are chests representing power and combat, on the left are the simulation features of Fable.

“We did a bit of research and felt that many people missed the simulation side of things, we had feedback that Fable II was kinda short, and we said ‘Really, is it?’, because you can play for a long time. We realised that these people just followed that golden breadcrumb trail and didn’t do anything else, now that we have these chests in these levels, we have really signposted that there are jobs, there is the ability to marry people, be the landlord, all that kind of stuff is now clearly signposted so you can make it the game you want.”

This is part of Lionhead’s vision of taking typical RPG structures and presenting them in a different way to players, Murray was determined to get across the point that there are no 2D menus or levelling up moments in this game, weapon selection and character customisations are done via a 3D walk-in closet style selection process.

The first time you see this in action, the immediate question is that it must be slower than a traditional 2D menu selection interface. “No!” Murray is emphatic “I was totally with you, going ‘is this really faster, because you need to walk around? Surely scrolling through a list is quicker?’ We set a challenge when we had two of our guys, Fable II and Fable III, we did this quite recently to check, ‘right, go and change your clothes’, the 3D was a couple of seconds faster, than the 2D, so we were very happy about that.”

Murray adds; “It’s quite a nice experience getting to learn [the new 3D selection process], because you have John Cleese talking to you”

The interface has change in this release, basically almost disappeared from the screen. “I’m so glad you spotted that, “ says Murray proudly, “We have actually got rid of as much as humanly possible off the screen, we wanted to keep the beauty of the world, keep you totally locked into it. We’ve gone away from icons that stay on the screen, icons just appear when you want to talk to someone, then they are floating above their heads, you just get what you need at the right times.”

Weapons are also handled a little differently in this release. Instead of hundreds of different weapon types and descriptive loot drops, weapons fall into a small number of broad categories and develop along with the players style, similar to the previous games but not quite; “It was a case of getting the XP and then spending the XP, and you got better at [different weapon abilities], now it happens automatically, and your weapon morphs as you use it. The more you kill innocents with it, the bloodier the effect will be because it is quite an evil sword. If you’re good and protect, then you get blue shades on it reflecting that you are a good and noble hero; the weapon is as unique as you are.

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