I got the collector's edition which is delayed, but Atlus sent the game a day early. And that time is accurate  

Took a work week off to play, stayed up most nights until 4am. Few game series get me this hooked to this extent, Persona is one of them.

Unrelated, but if I played this on PS5 I would have been the 15th or 16th person done according to true trophies. Probably has more to do with the small size of TT than Persona users on Xbox. 

Exactly, I've seen people say how much of a loss it would be comparing it to Sony losing Bethesda. SE doesn't even put games on Xbox... Would hurt Nintendo more if Sony bought them and they made them exclusive. 

I'd welcome a Sony buyout of SE. No more fake exclusives. 

It's news like this that makes me curious how far along Fable is in development.  Obviously I'm not in game dev work, but I intuitively figured most of the script (main & side) would already be far along.  

Am I off-base on this one?  

Hope I'm wrong but we'll probably see Fable 4 in 2026? I think Narrative Writer is a big deal?  and it they are just approaching 400 employees for this I wonder how much bigger Lionhead Studio was when they worked on Fable 3 though the good employees unlike Halo studio with that massive employee count but most of those employees sucked didn't do much in making Halo Infinite hit 90+ But the Next Halo should really want to hit 90+ metacritic.

That is a great question! The game has been in development for 5 years now and you would think main & side quests would be completed by now, but for all we know, the past 5 years Playground has been working on finishing the open world design, combat, magic system, and any other mechanics besides main/side quests since the quests would be intertwined with everything I just mentioned. The story could be the last piece they're working on or Andrew is working on the actual RPG aspects of spiderwebs on spiderwebs of choices/consequences. Or he could be working on the story for future DLC or planning the story for the next Fable game already. 

There's so many unknowns unfortunately, but, for Matt Booty and Phil Spencer to be openly calling for Fable to be shown off already says a lot. 

It varies from developer from what I've read in the past, some will do gameplay first and weave the story around the world, some will do the story first and create the world around the story. Anna has been on Fable for a couple of years now though as Lead Writer and then Lead Narrative Designer. Walsh could just be another writer for the team to create some side quests.

But I've always downplayed some of the optimistic Fable dates, always using the Horizon example which took 7 years to create and while yes, Horizon is a new IP, I think Fable has more than enough challenges which would close that gap and make it essentially almost like creating a new IP anyway. Plus, the obvious, Covid in the middle of Fable's development.

Firstly, Fable is a reboot, so even if it isn't a new IP, almost all of it will be created from the ground up and unlikely anything mechanically can be transferred over from previous Fables, even the concepts and designs of creatures I'm assuming will have Playground's own spin on them, the story will be entirely new, I don't think it really matters at this stage whether it's a new IP or not.

Another thing, the engine being Forzatech instead of Unreal Engine will add time, it means Forzatech will need to be adapted to an open-world RPG style of game too and it further amplifies what I said above that nothing from previous games will be able to be transferred over (at least, not easily). Then we also have it being Playground's first RPG (larger scale than most genres) and them having to staff from the ground up.

Wouldn't expect Fable until Holiday 24 at the earliest at this stage, Avowed will be early 2024.

https://www.twitch.tv/trunkswd

Totally shameless plug of my own stream. I'm live streaming going over the latest gaming news then possibly checking out Scorn or A Plague Tale.

I don't know if this have been posted already but :
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/31/23433114/microsoft-call-of-duty-playstation-phil-spencer-comments
Microsoft promises to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for as long as PlayStation exists
“As long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation,” says Spencer

Many will throw this as nothing more than PR speak the second they read “our intent”

So, I've never worked in gamedev, but my assumption for large open word RPGs would be that writing continues until very late in the project. The main story, I'm sure, would be completed earlier on in the process, but games like this require a massive amount of side quest, ranging from very minor to potentially being impactful on the overarching plot. I see no reason why you wouldn't continue to come up with new questlines, scripted encounters, and various lore elements to flesh out the world while your programmers go about the business of refining gameplay systems, polishing up areas, fixing bugs, etc.

Edit: It's also possible that certain quests and storylines are only roughly outlined in the early process, to give the programmers an idea of what to design the levels/areas around, so it's thematically fitting, and the pacing works...then later you hire more writers to flesh out the finer details that bring everything to life.