TGS 08: Peter Molyneux thinks you should skip Fable 1, go right to sequel

Peter Molyneux is proud of what he and Lionhead have done with Fable II, slated to hit the Xbox 360 on October 21. 

“I look at Fable II, and I think it’s one of the best games I’ve ever done,” he tells me during a private demo of the title at Tokyo Game Show today. 

When he asks me if I had played the original, I admit that I never finished it. It sits in my pile of shame, I tell him, and I promise that I’m going to do my best to sit down and play it through before the sequel is released. 

“No you won’t,” he says firmly. “Don’t.”

He calls the original title a “fractured experience,” likening it to a “glass vase that’s been stuck together slightly wrongly.”

“And I’m being honest,” he continues. “There’s some mechanics in there that just didn’t work. There’s some other mechanics that are brilliant that are never shown off properly. The story wasn’t told with any great skill.”

There’s nothing about Fable II, based on what I see, that looks like a stuck-together glass vase. Still, I want to go back and experience the original, but Molyneux insists: “I’d skip it, I really would.”

Check back next week for more tidbits from my conversation with Molyneux about Fable II, designing a game that can make you cry, and more.