Ah, Peter Molyneux. The games industry’s premier promiser taught me a valuable lesson when I was young: never believe in anything. Ironically, he did that with Fable 2—generally recognised to be one of the best of his games. I had let him get me so hyped for it that when it came out and was merely ‘pretty good,’ I was crushed..
But future generations will have to learn this lesson from someone else. Probably in Roblox or something. Why? Because Molyneux recently sat down with Edge to reflect on a long career of making extravagant promises about acorns, and in the process he mentioned that, yeah, his upcoming game, Masters of Albion, is going to be his last.
“Masters of Albion is a redemption title for me,” said Molyneux. “But also, it’s my last game. It just is.” Molyneux, it seems, is feeling his age. “I’m 66 years old. I’m working as hard as I’ve ever worked in my life. And I just haven’t got the life energy left to do this again.”
My almost kneejerk response to which is ‘pull the other one, Molyneux.’ This is a man pathologically compelled to speak in sweeping, grandiose terms which end up not quite reflecting the reality of a situation, after all. To be fair, Molyneux expects that response: “I know people are going to say, ‘Come on, it won’t be your last game'”, but he certainly seems to have convinced himself it will be. “Everything that I’ve done… it just feels like this is the bet, you know? I’ve put all my chips on the table.”
I gotta be honest, I still don’t buy it. You’ve burnt me one too many times, Molyneux, my old pal, and I’ll never kick the part of me that reckons this is just a ploy to gin up hype for Masters of Albion.
After all, even the man himself says “Everything about this game is just like all the other games,” when describing Masters of Albion, and I see no reason that shouldn’t apply to the hype cycle. After all, he says, “Realising I’m making my last game, that would be the wrong time to change a lifetime’s worth of practices.”
Boy ain’t that the truth? From what we’ve seen of the game so far, Masters of Albion sure seems like some kind of mashup of Molyneux’s greatest hits: Black and White, Dungeon Keeper, and Fable. Will it serve as the capstone on a career full of promises, finally washing the taste of that crypto nonsense and Curiosity out of our mouths? That’d be great, but I’m holding close to that lesson I learnt as a kid.
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