Uh oh, could this be the first sign that Fable II is on the road to under-delivering like its predecessor?
Microsoft has announced over on the Gamerscore Blog that Fable II will not ship with the much-hyped feature of online co-op. Don’t get too crazy, though, as local co-op will be in there and you’ll still see and be able to trade and chat with your friends as orbs floating around the game world. But online co-op, it still needs extra tweaking and therefore won’t be available right out of the box when the game ships October 21st. Lionhead and MGS are aiming to get a patch released within the first week of game launch to add the online functionality, however, so good news is the wait shouldn’t be long.
The delay itself isn’t a huge problem as long as it makes it out in short order, but given Molyneux’s track record of promising more than can be delivered, particularly with the original Fable, this is somewhat of a troubling development. Remember back to E3? First thing Molyneux said upon taking the stage during Microsoft’s press conference was that Fable II was finished. Ummm… guess not.
Fable II – Almost There [Gamerscore Blog]
That really doesn’t look good … and since gaming has become ‘short attention span theater’ and this is released during the holiday rush … two weeks delay for a key feature might mean commercial death.