Project Ego sounded like nothing I had played before. Being able to pick and choose which quests to take wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but the idea of the game taking place across the character's lifetime was intriguing. There was talk about how the character would be designed and uniquely tailored to the player's gameplay and they would be able to have children that would have a significant impact in the world. The character would receive unique scars from battle, they could plant a sapling and watch it grow in a massive tree throughout the course of the game and the NPCs would have unique reactions to the player based on their deeds to create the sense of a living world the player was truly a part of.

Peter Molyneux has created a number of legendary titles since he began making games in the '80s, earning numerous accolades and pioneering one of the most important genres in gaming history. But his ambition has become somewhat infamous over time; he’s always reaching for creative new ways to play and experience games, but almost always misses the target in some way, shape or form. And Molyneux’s eagerness to innovate is no secret (he’s admitted it himself): he’s formed a recurring theme for anything he’s made. Peter Molyneux refuses to settle in the current environment of gaming; whether it’s good, bad or in between, the Lionhead visionary has never stayed in one place in the industry. He loves the future, but can never reach it. He hates the past, but can never embrace its strengths. Welcome to the Molyneux Paradigm.

While Molyneux has certainly made this attitude a recurring (and expected) one, many of the creative ideas from him are the ones that never saw the light of day. Personally, I’m of the small camp who believe the Kinect/Natal demo Milo was an interesting idea that deserved to be investigated upon further ; maybe not with Kinect, but with the idea of simply talking to a person and developing a social relationship with them over time, similar to how you build the foundation of a city into a giant metropolis. Molyneux’s Milo project became one of the most iconic figures of the early years of Kinect, but the project was never realized, Kinect functionality or not. And quite frankly, Milo remained one of the more interesting Kinect projects. Considering the widespread disapproval of Kinect, one of the few good things to come out of it was the potential of a game like Milo . Molyneux was trying to make something cool out of something massively disliked: Milo out of Kinect.

Choosing to be good or evil was usually straightforward. Several of the main quests had an optional way to end them depending on the outcome, typically spare the foe for good points and kill them for evil. There were a couple quests where there were two available quests but they were the same event, the choice was just to determine what side the player was on which actually was a cool way of making it feel like you were choosing a side. A more fun way to rack up the evil points was to just go on a Grand Theft Auto style rampage in town and kill a bunch of guards and civilians, but again no killing children since they take away your weapons in the towns with kids. This can actually cause some problems, since you may want to go to town but end up having a massive bounty in several towns that doesn't expire for a few days.

Despite not living up to some of the promises made by Peter Molyneux during its production, Fable is a great RPG and one of the standout Xbox titles. The freedom to play as a virtuous hero or a vile hellion is reason enough to play through this title twice and as short as the main quest is, that isn't nearly as demanding of a request as it would be with some other RPGs. A year later Fable: The Lost Chapters was released which featured an additional chapter with a new area and enemies at the end of the Adventure game cheats along with some additional side quests and minor features. For the tenth anniversary an updated version of Fable: The Lost Chapters was released as Fable Anniversary for Xbox 360, which was a bug riddled mess on its initial release. It has been improved somewhat through patches but playing Fable: The Lost Chapters on the original Xbox is the recommended way to go if at all possible, though any RPG fan should experience this title in some capacity, even if Fable Anniversary is the most realistic option. Fable II was a well done follow up and the less said about Fable III the better.

The stakes don't get much higher than trying to prevent a race of synthetic beings from wiping out every last trace of intelligent life in the galaxy. That's the task that falls to Commander Shepherd in Bioware's Mass Effect trilogy, which is set a long way into the future after humanity has managed to tentatively establish itself in the hierarchy of the Milky Way's alien races. This beautiful and expansive science fiction epic captured the hearts of gamers, and with the right director on board could capture the hearts of moviegoers as w