At this point, Peter Molyneux is essentially a man of two reputations. On one hand, he's the well-respected game developer who headed up Bullfrog Studios and turned out Populous, which is widely regarded as a really good game, as well as games that actually were good such as Syndicate and Magic Carpet.

(That's your cue, by the way. I will not pretend to be writing unbiased prose in this preview.)

Peter also has another reputation. He's the guy who promised the world that Black and White and Fable would be games rich in player-created fun. I'll be focusing on Fable in particular, since that's kind of what this preview is all about. Fable was promoted originally as a game with a truly open-ended world behind it, a game where your character could be anyone, do anything, have kids and grow old in a world rich with exploration and open-ended possibilities, a land in which you could roam until death, start up again, and never have the same experience twice.

Okay, no. That's not Fable.