That just makes it all better!
What are those simple unbreakable truths of the universe that you hold true no matter what happens out in the world today? You know; the sky is blue, taxes and death, water is wet, Peter Molyneux is a habitual liar who cannot keep his damn peeper shut. What would you do if any of these fundamentals were broken? What would happen regardless of input for the very merit of them being broken in the first place? Would the very spine of reality bend and shatter, crippling all of reality and plunging us into a swirling torrent of
statistical impossibilities? Imperceptibility will balloon into blinding definition and the very limits of imagination will be stretched and broken atop the table of broken sense and the now shockingly real. The great islands will shift, the sunken temple will rise once more, the crusted doors will slip open and out will rise the sleeping king. Woken one last time to seal the world within a blink of his thousand eye stare! Is that what would happen?
Because if so, maybe we should start looking into some anti-Cthulu charms to ward off the potential fallout of Peter Molyneux, the platinum liar of the century himself, coming out to condemn his past conduct in a recent interview. For clarities sake, Peter is an industry legend around the world of Game Design for his work in two of the most influential game franchises of all time, the God Game blueprint: Black and White and the Fable games. Since then he's also been know for chasing his lost glory in a desperate procession of nowhere projects that either fizzle out into nothingness or underwhelm in their delivery. To that point, his latest project is literally a crypto-scam he launched at the tail end of that whole nowhere craze. So yeah- He's one of those 'legends forever overshadowed by the vestige of themselves in a manner they can't ever escape.' Kind of sad when you think about it.
Of course, Peter is also know for being the head of many projects which he would end up unintentionally sabotaging by holding interviews and bragging about impossibilities that the team would materialise. The most famous, of course, being the tree which could planted as an acorn and would grow real time- despite that being a ludicrously stupid prospect that would deliver nothing to the core conceit of the product in question, Fable. Even if such a feature had made it to the final game, it would have been an idle curiosity. Why hype that up? Because Peter can't help himself, he was born to tell fibs because he's always been desperate to spark the excitement of others- even if he holds no legitimate means of exciting them. It's a curse.
Now, I do want to say that personally I don't think there's anything horrifically wrong with the idea of Molyneux being excited about his game, but the act of speaking falsely about what it will contain is a hostile move against the playerbase. It feeds falsities into their hearts about what the final game will contain and encourages them to get excited over a dream. A fabrication. Some idle bit of inane banter that Peter summoned out of thin air in order to deceive and belittle. He never saw it as such, which is why it's taken the man so long to see the effect of his loose lips- but just because the intention wasn't so bad that does not mean the action is harmless. I'd imagine there are some who consider his actions hostile to the development team too.
But, there was an apology: Let's talk about that. In an interview Podcast, Molyneux touched on his own creative process- the insane process of generating ideas and all that guff we've heard about before. But in a sudden spark of surprising introspection, the popular developer comments about how he used to "specialise, if that's the right word, in talking about the games I made before they were finished." From his account we can hear a different side of the situation that we could only guess at before. That side being how yes, he would make grand claims about features return to his studio and hear " 'Peter, We didn't know that we're going to have in <that> feature." The last time I remember that sort of scenario in a big way it was the reveal gameplay trailer for Anthem, which informed the developers at the same time as the public as to what it was they were even making.
"I have an enormous amount of regret for it" the man himself says in a humbling moment only mostly belittled by the fact that he swindled tens of millions out of people in his crypto scheme 'Legacy' only a couple of years prior. (I know we often make the refrain that 'you have to be ready to forgive', but the weak-spined are easily bowled over.) Of course, there's the very human effect of his conduct. The erosion of trust and respect, possibly contributing to the eventual eradication of his founded studio: Lionhead. Although there were certainly larger forces at play there and I wouldn't lay Lionhead's destruction entirely at the man's door. Still, his legacy has certainly become stained in the wake of everything that has happened.
Of course, as anyone could have likely guessed, Peter did decide to defend himself by pulling out of the stereotypical book of excuses: you guys just don't understand development! Like Hello Games before him, Peter did cite the very volatile nature of creative development, ideas always been raised and then dropped before release, as an reason why he shouldn't be quite crucified for making promises that never came true. He was simply drunk on the possibilities and it was audience's fault for not hearing his words, extrapolating that they were merely baseless assumptions on what he could do if he had unlimited money and time, and choose to forgo any possible excitement whatsoever in the knowledge that we're essentially spit balling to each other in on the brainstorm board. Seems a little stupid in my opinion, but go off.
Video games are already full of enough falsely inflated hype, misconceptions and down-right false equivalences for us to have to 'happily' accept an apology for what equates to false advertising over the past twenty years. I understand the 'whimsy of the creative mind', trust me, but I can't think of anyone who would use that as pretence for gabbing about the imaginary and pretending you were in a fugue state the entire time. But hell- at least Peter has enough self awareness to admit he has a problem, which the first step to getting... wait, he's working on his project? Of course he was, why else do this interview! I guess this is going to be his test in fire, we'll get to see if Peter can go the entire time between now and his project's launch without running his mouth off. So far so good, my man, but it's only pebble one on the journey of a thousands steps.
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