Kristan Conforti

Leading up to E3, the Game Rant team put together a pair of lists of our most anticipated confirmed games E3 2011 and our most anticipated rumored games . Several of the rumored games did end up being showcased at the annual Los Angeles event, but were our hopes and anticipation justif Online is an integral part of video games in the modern age. For better or for worse, the last generation of console was dominated by online gaming with competitive matchmaking becoming a norm for most AAA game titles, helping make the eSports culture more mainstream. The popularity of series such as Halo , Call of Duty and FIFA meant that for many gamers, online play was the main reason to keep playing a game. The consequences of this were that several publishers became slaves to the trend, putting (forcing?) in needless multiplayer modes that took away from certain game as a wh That criteria is consonant with a Lionhead job listing which surfaced last year, brimming with suggestive language related to next-gen engine/graphical design. There are some curious distinctions, however, present in the animation director description that point directly toward work on the Fable franch The nominations were decided by all 11 of the Game Rant staff in attendance for E3 and are based upon our previews, demos and hands-on experiences with all of the available titles at the event this y Talking further, he said that while they hadn't quite figured it out, the team is trying to use the Xbox One's cloud servers to matchmake players with friends and strangers. Although he didn't explain how this would work, he did alluded to influences that the team are drawing f In an interview with Digital Spy , Head of Lionhead Studios John Needham explained that this new online direction for the studio isn't going to be exclusive to Fable Legends . Following the departure of Peter Molyneux , Needham - who has an MMO pedigree - took over the studio in his stead. With that pedigree, he said that all future games from the studio will boast "connected" aspects. Being candid about his roots, Neeham said, "We're online game guys, that's the studio. We love online games, we love interaction with real people, and we want to bring that magic to Fable" . He explained that interaction between characters and NPCs is what made the world of Albion a special place to play in. The goal of Fable Legends is to experiment with that dynamic and see what would happen if you substituted those interactions and brought in real players to the E3 has always been **THE ** industry event prime for showcasing new hardware, services and of course games. Microsoft is not new to the showcase, remaining strong contenders since the announcement of the original Halo on Xbox in 2001. From the tech demo of Halo 2 in 2003 to the appearance of the first HD Gaming console in 2005. However, it is practically universally agreed that the Microsoft conference at E3 2010 had very little appeal to the fan base that the Xbox has worked so hard to amass. Alienation to some and sacrilege to others, the star of the show was Kinect; a motion control dev Over the years, especially after the success of the studio's first console title, Fable strategy|https://Fablelegendary.com/ , back in 2004, Molyneux has become a fan-favorite figurehead for the gaming industry - similar to the "celebrity" of similar designers like Cliff Bleszinski, Hideo Kojima, or Gabe Newell. As a result, there's little doubt that fans of the Lionhead brand will see the departure as a potential death-blow to the studio - despite Molyneux's co-founder, Mark Webley, sticking around to run the stu One of the franchises that came out largely unscathed by excessive multiplayer capabilities was the Fable series. While Fable III did boast co-op capabilities, Lionhead Studios has never done anything quite on the scale of what it is attempting with the newly announced Fable Legends . The franchise's next-gen debut, an Xbox One exclusive, is an ambitious online jump for the series, allowing up to four players the opportunity to work together in order thwart another player taking on the role of the vill "It is with mixed emotions that I made the decision to leave Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, the company that I co-founded in 1997, at the conclusion of development of Fable: The Journey [...] I remain extremely passionate and proud of the people, products and experiences that we created, from B lack & White to Fable to our pioneering work with Milo and Kate for the Kinect platform. However, I felt the time was right to pursue a new independent ventu As mentioned, Molyneux makes it clear that, while he is leaving the studio, he'll continue to oversee the upcoming casual but hardcore-friendly Kinect title , Fable: The Journey (slated for release in 2012) as a creative consultant - even though he's moving on to start another studio, entitled 22 C Welcome to the first day of Game Rant's E3 2010 coverage. The first big event of the show, Microsoft's press conference, is scheduled to begin at 10:30 AM Pacific Time. No doubt there will be a ton of information on the newly named Kinect . But what else? Will we see the rumored Xbox 360 Slim ? Any new news on Halo: Reach or Gears of War 3 ? And what surprises are in st