Horizon Forbidden West 'Senior Writer' Joins Fable Team At Xbox

Of any Xbox studios, can pull this off and bring us screaming into true next generation and release the full power of the beast, it’s playground games.
Best of luck team. One to look forward to.

That’s a good hire but if they are just now hiring a lead writer this game is many years out.

I do wonder what his role is. The game has been in development quite a while now and would have thought that at least a basic story outline, dialogue etc would have been done - to create the characters, the world etc that the narrative would require.

Is his role to come in and tweak it, re edit some parts, move other parts around and get it to flow well. The standard procedure as you develop a game - like a movie also has scenes cut, new scenes recorded and others moved around to try and get the pacing and flow.

It seems somewhat late in development to be hiring a writer to write the entire main plot from scratch and then have to create characters, environments etc that the story plays out in. You expect a Story, then Storyboarded with concept art, voice actors recording their dialogue as the Character artists build characters, then animate those, etc - maybe then deciding to fill the open world with Side missions and everything else after.

So again, is he coming in to help the story and its flow/pacing as they are now at the point of finalising that and pulling all the story together, or is he coming in to 'write' the story from scratch?

I really liked what was done for HFW, so this is a great hire for me and leaves me feeling better about what they may make.

I'm pretty sure it wont have that daft english humour that made the original Fable so much fun, but I I can hope!
Playground can make a good game, but FH5 was a disappointment to me in several ways, so I need to be convinced they can deliver next gen with fast loading times and no need to choose 30fps or pop in.

I'm rooting for them as its an IP well worth preserving, and I worked with several people from Big Blue Box as many of them came from Bullfrog.

Doesn't sound like this one will be out before 2024, but I hope I'm wrong!

@FatalBubbles
Slightly disheartening, but you're likely very correct. I just hope it's a true AAA masterpiece whenever it does turn up, and I have much hope Playground will not disappoint on that.

Good hire in my opinion, although I'm not sure everybody on this forum feels the same (most people berate HFW story and pacing).
It's probably just to tweak the storyline, final tying of the narrative actually can happen very late in the game development process.

Excited to see what Fable turns out to be and play like. This is high on my Series X wishlist. One thing for sure i believe it will look very good as it will most like go for fantasy style graphics over realism. That should lean it’s hand with the power in the Series consoles.

This developer only made car racing games and never did any open-world rpg / sandbox games. Surprised they never got anyone experienced in storyline writing until now. Guerrilla Games only made Killzone games before Horizon Zero Dawn, and they had the foresight to get a writer who did Fallout New Vegas to help them with that game early enough, and it turned out for the better. Fingers crossed whatever recommendations / changes this writer makes is for Fable's advantage.

@Cikajovazmaj this is pure Xbox they just hate on it because it's a Sony game lol

@Would_you_kindly

this is pure Xbox they just hate on it because it's a Sony game lol

Perhaps you're right. But the fact that is a game with tropes and game systems copied from the Ubisoft's open-world formula might also be a factor. I personally like Ubisoft's open world's and played HZD.

Not to mention both Horizon games being hyped to unprecedented levels by the gaming media and Sony fans while constantly berating the FarCry and Assassin Series....take your pick 🙄.

@Sol4ris maybe it's because sony is better than ubisoft lol

@Doublecell

maybe it's because sony is better than ubisoft lol

Maybe, maybe not...subjectivity and all that 😁.

I guess "yay", but Horizon's mostly about the open world sandbox, it's not really a dialogue-heavy series in any way like Fable, so it's kind of an uninformative hire.