Fable creator Peter Molyneux says his next game will be his last

The upcoming Masters Of Albion will be the last game Peter Molyneux ever makes, and he swears this is one promise he’ll definitely keep.

Peter Molyneux is known for many things. He’s credited for not only creating the Fable series for Xbox (which is still due a new entry) but also for pioneering the god game genre, with classics such as Populous and Black & White.

He’s also cultivated a reputation for overpromising, with the most infamous example being his 2013 Curiosity experiment that was meant to reward one player the role of ‘god’ in his new game Godus and a portion of the game’s revenue; a prize the winner ultimately never received.

It appears Molyneux is self-aware enough to recognise his reputation, as he’s treating his next game as something of a redemption arc. And it’s one he really needs to pull off, since it’s also his last.

Molyneux announced his latest project, Masters Of Albion, at last year’s Gamescom, describing it as an open world god game where you manage your town during the day and fend off monsters during the night.

At the time, Molyneux never indicated that Masters Of Albion would be his swansong, but admitted as much in the latest issue of Edge magazine, as transcribed by VGC.

Molyneux explicitly references past instances of him overpromising on features, but then adds that Masters Of Albion will be an opportunity to meld together various of his past works, such as Fable and Dungeon Keeper, which, to be honest, sounds exactly like the kind of overpromising he can’t stop himself from doing.

‘I think that line in Fable – ‘for every choice, a consequence’ – wasn’t delivered on well enough. I think the possession mechanic that we had in Dungeon Keeper wasn’t delivered on enough. The open-world freedom that we had in Black & White, I think it was good at the start, but it didn’t deliver enough at the end,’ says Molyneux.

‘And Masters Of Albion is an opportunity to mix all those together. Even though one is an RTS, one is a god game, and one is a roleplaying game, why the f*** can’t we mix them all together?’

He goes on to describe Masters Of Albion as ‘a redemption title’: ‘I know people are going to say, ‘Come on, it won’t be your last game.’ But, you know, I’m 66 years old. I’m working as hard as I’ve ever worked in my life.

‘And I just haven’t got the life energy left to do this again. Everything that I’ve done… it just feels like this is the bet, you know? I’ve put all my chips on the table.’

Molyneux also refrains from saying Masters Of Albion will be ‘a great game’ because ‘that’s a promise,’ and at one point even expresses some doubt over whether he’ll actually succeed.

His trademark enthusiasm returns later into the interview, though: ‘I’ll tell you the amazing thing – it’s going to f***ing work. It really is. It’s like nothing you’ve ever played before, but it’s still unbelievably familiar. It is Black & White, it is Dungeon Keeper, and it is Fable, but it’s a completely new genre. And it shouldn’t really work, but it does.’

Elsewhere in the interview (via Time Extension), Molyneux was also questioned on his NFT game Legacy, which managed to make more than £40 million by selling virtual plots of land before it even fully launched.

Despite making quite a bit of money out of it, and it apparently still being played today, Molyneux does not seem proud of the game, saying: ‘I don’t stand by it, because fundamentally the whole notion of crypto gaming was flawed.’

At least this should rule out Masters Of Albion having any sort of blockchain or crypto nonsense. It certainly has some talent behind it, since Molyneux is joined by several former staff who worked alongside him on Dungeon Keeper and Black & White.

The game is currently slated for Steam but it lacks any kind of a release window.

Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.