Molyneux's new Fable "would keep the dog"

Asked what direction he would have taken the Fable series in should he have stayed at Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux noted that he would definitely have kept the dog.

Speaking with IGN, Molyneux said that if he made a new Fable game he'd "double down on emotion".

"I’d triple down on emotion, actually. I would keep the dog. I would make the dog love you even more, be less aggravating, more insightful. Because any damage that’s done to the dog hurts twice as much as any damage done to you," he said.

"I’d probably experiment with death mechanics again. I want to mix the casual audience and the core audience together in there. That’s the sort of stuff. It’s easy to say those lines, but how does that transfer itself into actual gameplay? That’s much, much harder.”

IGN said that Molyneux was noticeably disappointed to learn that Lionhead's new game, Fable Legends, does not include a dog.

"“Well, I hope there’s a chicken. At least there’s got to be a chicken, surely," he said.

“It’s a shame. They’re this emotional driver, this emotional engine. I mean, there was so much more that you could do with the dog, to focus on it being this thing that loved you, loved the player, and would sacrifice itself for you. I think we explored that in Fable II more than it was explored in Fable III, and you could go back to that. It’s a shame it’s not there. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s a huge amount of work, putting the dog in there."

Molyneux left Lionhead and Microsoft to found indie 22 Cans, which created Curiosity and the upcoming Godus. In his absence, Lionhead moved on to Xbox One exclusive Fable Legends, which is set 400 years before the first game and is an always-online game in which a group of heroes face a dungeon controlled by a villain; in multiplayer, one player takes on the role of villain. It is the only Fable game in development.