Black and White, Dungeon Keeper, and Fable creator Peter Molyneux has acknowledged his tendency to overpromise, but hopes his upcoming game will be a redemption for the designer.
Before No Man's Sky's launch state was heralded as the peak of overpromising and underdelivering on a game, fellow Guildford-based game designer Peter Molyneux was considered the king of it. And while resulting games like the Fable series and Black and White weren't bad games by any means, they didn't quite live up to the promises made ahead of time, and things like Project Milo and Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube? ended up giving the designer the reputation in line with a snake oil salesman.
However, Molyneux has since acknowledged this reputation several times, telling Edge (issue 416) he said, "I admit now that I did overpromise on things, and said things that I shouldn't have said about Curiosity. But I only ever did that because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time."
Molyneux spoke about his other promises about games like Fable, Black and White, and Dungeon Keeper, and said his upcoming title, "Masters of Albion is an opportunity to mix all those together. Even though one is an RTS, one is a god game, and one is a roleplaying game, why the fuck can't we mix them all together?" He added that "I don't know if it's going to work. It's so important to me, this game, because to a certain extent it's about redemption," adding "Masters Of Albion is a redemption title for me."
However, while he is saying that mix of genres is "going to fucking work," and that "it's the most significant title that I've ever done, for sure," he's admittedly hesitant to talk it up too much because of his past promises. "I can't call this a great game. That's the wrong thing for me to say, because if I say, in the press, 'Masters Of Albion is going to be a great game', that's a promise." Molyneux explained, adding that "What I'm saying is, it's a unique experience, which is unbelievably intimate and familiar to any person who played Fable, Black & White and Dungeon Keeper" but that, "If I turn around and say, "This is going to be my greatest game, that's when I get in trouble."
