Fable devs says every one of its 1,000 NPCs was handcrafted after randomization created inconsistent characters

Playground Games is taking an unusually hands-on approach to the characters populating its upcoming Fable reboot. The game’s Living Population contains around 1,000 NPCs, but rather than relying on procedural randomization, the developers individually designed each character’s appearance, personality and circumstances. Game director Ralph Fulton explained that the studio initially created a system capable of generating NPCs automatically. Although the tool could have saved the team considerable development time, it frequently produced characters whose traits did not logically fit together.…