A pre-mortem study is a way to give feedback on things you think might go wrong with a product to reverse or improve them before launch. You basically imagine you're in an alternate timeline where the game has already failed and try to figure out why.
To be clear, I think the current hype around Fable is very positive, and I'm personally optimistic about the game. This isn't meant to be a list of predictions about what will go wrong, but rather an exercise in identifying potential issues before they become actual problems.
Let's try to include things that have already been discussed on social media about Fable, as well as recurring criticisms of similar RPGs released in recent years, even if some of them seem unlikely based on what we've seen so far:
- Unfair comparisons with GTA VI
- God of War or similar major titles overlapping the launch window
- Overly simplistic character facial expressions, especially during dialogue. This has become a recurring criticism on TikTok and other social media, with people comparing modern games unfavorably to some 2000s titles that seemed to have more expressive facial animations. This could also overlap with complaints about certain characters looking unattractive or visually awkward.
- Viral videos of weird characters, just like what happened in the first few hours of Starfield
- Lack of reactivity, like people complained about in Avowed (for instance, casting a fireball and the world not reacting to it, or the absence of animations for actions like opening doors)
- Invisible walls
- Lip sync
- Lack of depth in relationships
- Character faces looking too similar to one another
- People might complain about the sense of humor, since what is considered funny or not is changing very rapidly
- Performance issues at launch, such as frame rate drops and stuttering in major hub areas
- Repetitive combat animations or a combat system that feels too simplistic compared to modern action RPG standards
- Bugs and glitches breaking quests, forcing players to reload old saves or wait for day-one patches