A Fable 4 pitch was in the works when Fable creator Peter Molyneux was on his way out of original developer Lionhead Studios, but even internally it seems it never got off the ground.
Molyneux discussed the Fable 4 that might have been with Eurogamer alongside his (teary) response to the latest reveal for the next Fable, which for some time was thought to be a sequential Fable 4.
"We did have a proposition for Fable 4," Molyneux said. "And again, it was the thought of moving through time a little bit more, a little bit further," following the natural evolution of the Fable series, which was conceived as spanning generations of societies.
"We had a pitch document, which I think was proposed at the time," Molyneux added. "But that was just at the time that I was leaving Lionhead so I wasn't there for the full exploration of it."
Molyneux has discussed what Lionhead's take on Fable 4 might have looked like – in a reality where Xbox didn't push the studio into Fable Legends and then swiftly close the whole thing when that game predictably failed – in the past, but I don't remember hearing about a pitch document sitting in Lionhead.
In 2019, we reported on an unreleased 2014 interview with our own Josh West, in which Molyneux described a "steampunk Victoriana" vision for Fable 4.
"The long story – the very, very long story – for Fable, when we first spoke about it [at Lionhead], took you from an earlier Albion to 500 years on, and then the plan was to go all the way up to the modern day," he explained at the time.
"There was a whole sequence of concept art about a Fable set in a kind of steampunk Victoriana age," Molyneux added, noting that while it "certainly wasn't off the ground while I was there," the team had given the idea a serious stab.
"It would have been a Fable 4," Molyneux affirmed. "It would have been Fable 4 and it would have been fascinating to do. Focusing on the idea of becoming famous and becoming a hero, but the world had changed. It would have been interesting, actually."
New Fable developer Playground "got a treasure trove of documents" from original creator Lionhead "that had been in storage," and one sums up the whole series in 5 words.
