X02: Project Ego is Fabled

Project Ego, Lionhead's ambitious life sim, has been officially dubbed Fable, and should be with us during 2003 according to the firm's X02 release sheet.

Fable begins melodramatically, with the kidnapping of your mother and sister, and your first job is to cross the magical land of Albion in search if your heroic father. Unfortunately, games have a tendency to plunge wannabe rescuers into a world of danger, and Fable is no exception. An evil power is looking to decimate the fairytale lives of Albion's inhabitants and has turned the heroes into power-crazed, cold-hearted monsters. With the exception of your father, whose tenacity prompted the kidnapping of your nearest and dearest. So, basically, your job is to rescue them and save the entire world.

Your journey starts with you as a young, callow youth with only the force of will to guide you. You will grow in size and strength as the game wears on, but how you grow is apparently down to you. Lionhead plans to give you the opportunity to shape your own character for good or evil, rather as you could in Black & White. If you're a malicious, spiteful, ruthlessly cunning man with no respect for anything then you'll end up just as evil as those you hope to stop. Use your force of will and you'll become wise and wizard-like. The immensity of Albion means that you can cross entire continents visiting a stupendous amount of locations and meeting a variety of colourful characters, but all the time the Will guides you - Peter Molyneux recently told the press that you could very well take a wife and father a few children, just existing happily in Albion, but you mustn't lose sight of your goal, and the Will interjects by fiddling fate to remind you. If your wife ends up the victim of an unfortunate ploughing accident and your children accidentally brutally slaughter themselves with the kitchen cutlery, that's probably the Will telling you it's time to move on.

Lionhead is promising unparalleled freedom. You don't have to sit through a word of storyline if you don't want to, and you can choose your own path down to the very last. Hopefully Lionhead can deliver on this awesome undertaking, because it does sound like the game to embody every adventure movie... ever.