Upcoming Xbox 360 RPG Fable III may be following in the footsteps of its predecessor and going "episodic", according to comments from the game's creator, Peter Molyneux.
"We've always had a feel for Fable as a game that's got a big story, that starts in King Arthurs time and goes through this big arc so in some ways we're [just] playing out that, but I've often thought it would be brilliant to be walking through Charles Dickens' London", Molyneux told attendees at a SXSW panel.
"It was such a dark place and very episodic too – so we're doing that with Fable 3, we'll give you the first big episodes, and you'll be able to download new episodes, which is analogous to the way Dickens wrote."
Now, the episodic he's talking about here isn't the same as that employed by the recent "splitting up" of Fable II. That was a single large game broken up into several smaller pieces.
What Molyneux seems to be talking about here is that you're given a "full" game out of the box, with several major pieces of DLC released afterwards, continuing the story.
Having just finished Mass Effect 2's "Firewalker" pack, which feels disjointed and unfulfilling once you've finished the main storyline, it's an approach that seems to have a lot more merit than the current norm of simply adding new, random missions or quests.
Fable 3 and Emotional Games [Bit-Tech]