Fable Co-Creator Says He “Ripped Off” Devil May Cry To Create Xbox RPG’s World
The original Fable could have been completely different before co-creator Dene Carter turned to an unlikely source of inspiration – Devil May Cry.
“When you feel lost: steal it,” he said via Twitter. “100% rips it off from another game.”
Of course, Fable not do it – at least not in the way you think. The themes, ideas, and story of the 2004 RPG are completely different from Devil May Cry … but the game’s creator revealed that it almost got out of hand until he approached DMC to get an idea of the game’s scope.
I’m sure everyone knows this hack already, but I’m going to talk about it anyway, on the off chance that it saves someone from going completely off track during development. It’s a hint of scope, when you feel lost: steal it. 100% rip it off from another game.
— Dene Carter (@Fluttermind) 14 November 2022
“How did the world of Fable get that size? Because I had played [Devil May Cry] and noticed that the world was something like 82 zones,” he explained. “It didn’t seem excessive. It reused and re-contextualized areas. It worked for a relatively short but high-quality game.”
Carter goes on to explain how it helped. Essentially, he copied the way DMC used these zones to map out Albion’s world.
“I literally counted the number of zones, the size of those zones, and the average time spent in those zones, and used that to block the entire world of Albion,” he said. “At that point we were spiraling out of control, convinced we had to make something ‘big’ (whatever that meant).”
Yes, it looks like Fable developers had a pretty grand vision. Instead, Carter refocused the game’s development considering the scope of DMC… and there were some other inspirations as well.
“Literally copying the scale of DMC, the interaction density of Silent Hill, and the encounter style of the first Way of the Samurai changed Fable from a floppy, undefined, never-ending death march to something we could actually finish *without* ever having to work with a 3D game.”
IGN’s review of Fable gave it a 9.3/10, saying, “Fable opens a door for you, lets you see this wonderful treasure that the idea of an open world, competing heroes, and NPC interactions can offer—but it doesn’t let you through. It are a lot of great ideas in the game that aren’t fully realized. While I was playing, I kept thinking, ‘Why didn’t they do this or that,’ but in the end, I had a blast playing Fable, and for me, that makes all the difference .”
Want to read more about Fable? Check out what Fable creator Peter Molyneux wants from a new Fable as well as our top 10 best original Xbox games.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him further Twitter.
