"Project Ego," Fable’s working title throughout its early development, was hyped from the beginning as being the most open-ended game in history, with an incredibly vast array of gameplay and character customization options, and also with an incredibly dynamic world, where every single thing players do could change the outcome of the game.
In a GameSpot preview for "Project Ego," dated April 19, 2002, several features of the game were listed, including:
* Admiring townsfolk who mimic the character's dress and style
* Competing heroes who can actually beat the player to a quest
* The ability to carve the character's name into a tree
* A heroes guild in every town
* The ability to vandalize all manner of public and private property (the example used was a sundial)
* The ability to have children
* ...and more
Other features mentioned in other previews and interviews included..
* Finding a unique item called the "Singing Sword" by Peter Molyneux in an interview a few weeks before the game was released (the game had already gone gold)
* The ability for players to have their own personal unique weapon that could be upgraded and enchanted as to make it more powerful as they played through the game
* NPCs with other NPC relatives (a given example by Peter Molyneux was a tester of the game had married the daughter of a rich town mayor. The player then killed the mayor secretly and ended up inheriting the mayor's wealth)
* The ability to become a were-balvarine
* A vibrant, living world where NPCs didn't have strictly scripted actions to perform each day (somewhat like the 'Radiant AI' found in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)
* Freedom of exploration throughout the world of Fable, often labeled as "If you can see a place in the distance, you can go there", this was likened to the world exploration found in games such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Few of these features appeared in the final game, and those that did were only vaguely similar to the original features mentioned.