Fable Devs Hand-Crafted 1,000 NPCs Instead of Using a Randomizer Tool

The upcoming reboot of the fantasy franchise Fable has about 1,000 NPCs in the Living Population, and it's remarkable that the studio opted for hand-crafting them instead of using a randomizer tool.

In a talk with GamesRadar+, game director Ralph Fulton said that the developers decided to individually create the design for every NPC because such an approach made more sense, despite that using the randomizer tool would save much time:

"We individually picked everything about every NPC to make it into an NPC that you could read, that made sense top to bottom. We originally had a tool that would randomize it, and just 'roll' an NPC, and that would have been a massive labor-saving device. That would have saved us so much time, but what we found was, they just didn't make as much sense."

The result, reportedly, was characters with absurd contradictions in their personality, occupation, and appearance. The tool could, for example, produce a vegan butcher or a hairdresser with a plain haircut.

Apart from a name, a job, and a routine, NPCs will also notice your achievements and react to your reputation.