Are the Broken Promises of Fable for Real?

We’ve been subjected to a lot of broken promises when it comes to the Fable series, the lot of which IGN has editorialized about in a new article that helps prepare us for more when Fable III is released on Tuesday.

…nobody can discount the fact that the Fable games do arrive to your Xbox without previously discussed features. The original Fable was allegedly going to have multiplayer over Xbox Live, something that was yanked and didn’t appear until Fable II and even then, it came in the form of a post-release patch. Getting married and having a baby was also supposed to be in the original Fable, but this was also removed and appeared later in Fable II. Discontent over these cuts is understandable, because they would have added quite a bit to the game.

It’s the nitpicking over smaller features things have would have been cool but are not necessary or affect the narrative that doesn’t make much sense. Would it have been neat if, in the original Fable, children started wearing their hair like your character if you were heroic? Well, sure that’s a nifty bit of world-building. But losses like this are hardly comparable to the excision of multiplayer, yet many gamers bemoan them as if they were.