Fable: The Journey to use skeletal tracking system from Milo and Kate, says Lionhead

Fable: The Journey will include the same skeletal tracking system for Kinect that was implemented into Milo and Kate, Lionhead has told Polygon.

The studio said the tech meant players could pretty much slouch on their sofa rather than sitting on the edge of their seat, as the inclusion of Kinect into Forza Motorsport 4 and The Gunstringer has shown.

But Lionhead's creative director Gary Carr said even that is old tech compared to the new stuff used in The Journey.

"With Forza you had to sit slightly on the edge of your seat. But they were a year ago, so we've got an extra year on that. In Journey you can slouch. It doesn't worry that you have your coffee table over there, you don't have to clear space," said Carr.

"That was an important step change: people don't have to re-jig their living space. When you look at houses here in Guildford, England or in Japan where the living spaces are tiny, you need to offer the ability to sit down, which is a concept that came from Milo."

He added: "I think that with Kinect there are going to be some step changes that will make the games come through. And one of those things is seated gameplay.

"Because I think a lot of developers were just waiting for that kind of technology. It's easier for us to develop it because we're first party, we've got Microsoft supporting us. It's not fair on third parties to write this kind of technology. It takes time and it's probably taken us the best part of two and a half years to write it.

"Now I think once this is released back to the industry, we'll just see lots of long-play games where you can sit down and play."

Fable: The Journey launches later this year for Kinect on Xbox 360.