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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Fable 4's narrative lead announces departure

Anna Megill is leaving Playground next month

www.gamesradar.com

 

[systemr123]

Fable 4's narrative lead announces departure

Anna Megill is leaving Playground next month

www.gamesradar.com

Yep, she fired

 

[Gudji]

 

[Draugoth]

If a buinch of people start leaving then this will be another Halo Infinite

 

[Fredrik]

So the narrative work is done then?

 

[clarky]

Sounds like she got fired there. Maybe MS is finally starting to manage studios (press x for doubt).

 

[Fake]

After that trailer even me.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

I wrote TWO books, y’all

Maybe you should have focused on making ONE game

 

[Helghan]

I don’t even know why this is news

 

[ConcealedBlaze]

Oh damn. She was the narrative lead on Control. I’ll have to keep an eye out on impressions of Fable then.

Also sounds like she tends to operate primarily as a gig worker and the reason she’s leaving is the narrative work is at a good point with Fable (from her follow-up tweet) and now she wants to do something else. Having known a few people that work as free-lancers it doesn’t seem like a particularly strange thing for her to do.

 

[Roufianos]

Ah dudes, I'm completely devastated, I mean that trailer was just so funny, ROLFCOPTER.

 

[TIGERCOOL]

a quick scroll through her twitter tells me everything I need to know. she was fired, likely has always been unqualified for the position. when the going gets tough virtue hires quickly become untenable business propositions. funny watching Hollywood and the gaming industry scrambling to climb out of the massive hole they've been smugly digging for nearly a decade. get fucked.

 

[Interfectum]

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

Fable is starting to seems more like Fib if you catch my drift.

 

[ConcealedBlaze]

a quick scroll through her twitter tells me everything I need to know. she was fired, likely has always been unqualified for the position. when the going gets tough virtue hires quickly become untenable business propositions. funny watching Hollywood and the gaming industry scrambling to climb out of the massive hole they've been smugly digging for nearly a decade. get fucked.

She was the narrative lead on Control (and worked in plenty of other games). Seems unlikely she was a virtue hire given that resume

 

[TIGERCOOL]

Oh damn. She was the narrative lead on Control. I’ll have to keep an eye out on impressions of Fable then.

Control's creative director was Sam Lake, writer of Max Payne and Alan Wake. It's his brainchild, and his fingerprints are all over that story.

 

[phant0m]

if you're the narrative director on a game that's still pretty far from release, it is not the "right" time to move on. you were either shown the door or you think the rest of your team is so incompetent you don't want to be associated with whatever the final product is looking like.

my bet is on the former.

 

[ConcealedBlaze]

Control's creative director was Sam Lake, writer of Max Payne and Alan Wake. It's his brainchild, and his fingerprints are all over that story.

Sure, but that is still a excellent thing to have on your resume. It makes more sense they hired her for that experience (and experience in games like Dishonored DOTO) than that she was some token hire. Also most of her Twitter is narrative game design stuff so it seems like she’s pretty highly engrained into that field. This isn’t just some random woman that they hired.

 

[Silent Viper]

So the narrative work is done then?

She replaced. She not the only one in team

 

[Silent Viper]

I don’t even know why this is news

This is anti Xbox article. So we have to post it on gaf to turn this into conspiracy theory.

 

[Ansphn]

Here we go again. It never stops.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I don’t even know why this is news

DC

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Control's creative director was Sam Lake, writer of Max Payne and Alan Wake. It's his brainchild, and his fingerprints are all over that story.

Really? Thats awesome. I had no idea. Havent played it but the aesthetics are really cool.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Oh damn. She was the narrative lead on Control. I’ll have to keep an eye out on impressions of Fable then.

Also sounds like she tends to operate primarily as a gig worker and the reason she’s leaving is the narrative work is at a good point with Fable (from her follow-up tweet) and now she wants to do something else. Having known a few people that work as free-lancers it doesn’t seem like a particularly strange thing for her to do.

Loved control, interested to see how they work the magic on Fable.

Also, your second paragraph won't work with the narrative that will quite probably form in this thread...

Hehe

 

[The Pleasure]

 

[Syphon Filter]

dam damage control here already on the first page.

 

[TIGERCOOL]

Sure, but that is still a excellent thing to have on your resume. It makes more sense they hired her for that experience (and experience in games like Dishonored DOTO) than that she was some token hire. Also most of her Twitter is narrative game design stuff so it seems like she’s pretty highly engrained into that field. This isn’t just some random woman that they hired.

I have no doubt that she was hired for the narrative lead role with Fable because of her resume. That resume was likely misleading. When Sam Lake is the CD the narrative lead position is essentially superfluous, probably filling in dialogue for his story beats and coordinating other writers to do the same. It's basically a management position. Her jumping ship from Remedy was telling, and now "stepping down" from her position on Fable makes for an awful lot of smoke.

edit: to elaborate a bit, from experience, these types of hires are not selected at random. They are often competent (usually unremarkably so), but the nature of this vetting for "under-represented" individuals at every level means they are granted positions and opportinunities above their capabilities and level of experience. I also don't think it's her fault.

 

[ConcealedBlaze]

Loved control, interested to see how they work the magic on Fable.

Also, your second paragraph won't work with the narrative that will quite probably form in this thread...

Hehe

Yeah apparently the only two options are that Fable is doomed or she was fired. No possibility she just wanted to do something else after like 3 years. Honestly this stuff is becoming more and more common in games as development times stretch out into 4+ years.

 

[Fuz]

Kind of not related to her, but why the hell they always announce their departure (or firing)? This is the only industry that does that, to my knowledge.
Are gaming hires more narcissistic than anyone else?

 

[adamsapple]

Kind of not related to her, but why the hell they always announce their departure (or firing)? This is the only industry that does that, to my knowledge.
Are gaming hires more narcissistic than anyone else?

It's a signal that they're open for more work and contact from studios. Her work on this project was probably complete.

 

[Fuz]

It's a signal that they're open for more work and contact from studios. Her work on this project was probably complete.

Ok (and again, not talking specifically about her, it just came up to me after seeing Major Nelson too), but - and maybe it's just my knowledge limited so correct me if I'm wrong - I don't see it from any other entertainment industry. You'd think TV and movies hires would do the same.

 

[YukiOnna]

Kind of not related to her, but why the hell they always announce their departure (or firing)? This is the only industry that does that, to my knowledge.
Are gaming hires more narcissistic than anyone else?

I was wondering this too. I'm not sure why someone should care if you had a wonderful time or not.

Move on and apply like normal, no?

 

[Jack Videogames]

When the main responsible for the story bails mid development is generally THE worst possible sign

 

[adamsapple]

Ok (and again, not talking specifically about her, it just came up to me after seeing Major Nelson too), but - and maybe it's just my knowledge limited so correct me if I'm wrong - I don't see it from any other entertainment industry. You'd think TV and movies hires would do the same.

For actors, they have agencies who do that job for them, they wouldn't have the need to put themselves out in public like this (unless its a passion project like Batista asking publicly to play Marcus Fenix)

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

xbox's track record strikes again.

 

[Robbinhood]

I don't know if thats cause for concern but...this game was revealed years ago and all we got was 1 second of gameplay and not even a release YEAR. 2024 if we lucky.

FH is a racing game and has mediocre racing so I'm hoping they can transition genres and stay focused.

 

[Calverz]

If a buinch of people start leaving then this will be another Halo Infinite

 

[intbal]

Now fire the character artist.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

I don't know if thats cause for concern but...this game was revealed years ago and all we got was 1 second of gameplay and not even a release YEAR. 2024 if we lucky.

FH is a racing game and has mediocre racing so I'm hoping they can transition genres and stay focused.

Forza Horizon is the best arcade open world racing franchise on the market, and FH5 is probably the best first party game Xbox has released in years.

 

[Robbinhood]

Forza Horizon is the best arcade open world racing franchise on the market, and FH5 is probably the best first party game Xbox has released in years.

I disagree, well the competition has thinned out but the racing almost takes a back seat to the "exploring" and driving through fields. I put 6-10 hours I'm not sure but I bailed after that. Nothing will top the PGR series for me.

Btw "open world racer" is the worst genre. Just give me great tracks, the rest is a waste of time.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

I disagree, well the competition has thinned out but the racing almost takes a back seat to the "exploring" and driving through fields. I put 6-10 hours I'm not sure but I bailed after that. Nothing will top the PGR series for me.

Btw "open world racer" is the worst genre. Just give me great tracks, the rest is a waste of time.

I'll respectfully agree to disagree. I've put 100+ hours into it and it's probably the most fun I've had with an arcade racing game since FH3. I just love the sandbox and all the mindless shit that you can do in it, plus all the cars you can collect and fool around with. Anyway, it's kinda offtopic so I'll leave it at that.

 

[Kurotri]

Xsisters...it's over for us AGAIN!
In all honesty I don't think there's much we can take away from this "news". Personally I liked what they seem to wanna do with their vision and it's Playground Games, they know that it needs to hit like Starfield as Fable is one of the biggest pillars Microsoft can have, so I'll stay optimistic until there's something more substantial.

 

[March Climber]

dam damage control here already on the first page.

No damage control from my end as I'm honestly a bit confused as to the replies here. There's two ways to look at this.

Scenario A: She was fired.

Scenario B: Her writing work was already laid out and done, and she has been there doing nothing but getting a free paycheck from Microsoft and writing books on the side since that moment. She has decided to leave due to this.

For some reason, due to the very little amount of context given, many here have already decided that Scenario A is the only possible outcome.

 

[TropicanaTwista]

Kind of not related to her, but why the hell they always announce their departure (or firing)? This is the only industry that does that, to my knowledge.
Are gaming hires more narcissistic than anyone else?

Don't think this is really true. Sports writers/journalist do this a lot on Twitter, which seems like an industry with a ton of turnover recently. That's pretty much my main demographic on there outside of people I know and I feel like I see multiple types of these tweets weekly.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

She was the narrative lead on Control (and worked in plenty of other games). Seems unlikely she was a virtue hire given that resume

You do realise that she's a woman and therefore some people on this forum will fail to see any value in her work ever.

 

[Pelta88]

It's a sad state of affairs that when a dev lead leaves a high profile XBOX studio, gamers be like...

Infinite has induced PTSD. To the point where seeing parralells. Hopefully we're wrong. But collectively, our spider sense is tingling.

 

[Raven117]

I kinda can't stand when twitter people say yall that aren't from the south...they don't even use it right...feels forced.

 

[Umbasaborne]

What a great sign for a game that they could barely show gameplay for after so many years

 

[RoboFu]

It is possible that the job is done. I mean the trailer looked pretty far along.

 

[BosmerCulter]

if you're the narrative director on a game that's still pretty far from release, it is not the "right" time to move on. you were either shown the door or you think the rest of your team is so incompetent you don't want to be associated with whatever the final product is looking like.

my bet is on the former.

To be fair, she not the Narrative Director. The Narrative Director of Fable is Martin Lancaster, former lead scriptwriter from Rocksteady on Arkham Knight. He's been working on the game since 2018, i think he is more the "leader" of all the story and writing part of Fable.

Still not a good sign.