Co-creator of the original Fable, Dene Carter, has taken to Twitter to talk about how one of the biggest influences on the development of Fable was the original Devil May Cry.
Talking about how easy it often is for the scope of a game during development to accidentally start spiralling out of control, Carter talks about how playing through Devil May Cry helped the studio recontextualise the scope for Fable.
“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-the-rails during their dev,” says Carter at the beginning of the tweet thread. “It’s a hint about scope, when you’re feeling lost: steal it. 100% rip it off from another game.”
According to Carter, Devil May Cry‘s use of a relatively small number of zones, and how the hack-and-slash action game often re-used its zones with new context helped the development of Fable.
Other games that helped influence Fable are Silent Hill and Way of the Samurai.
“Literally copying the scope 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 deathmarch to something we could actually complete *without* ever having worked on a 3D game,” said Carter.