Peter Molyneux Claims Masters Of Albion Will Finally Break His OverPromising Streak

Famous–or infamous, depending on your point of view–English game designer Peter Molyneux has opened up about his forthcoming and reportedly last game ever, Masters of Albion, calling it a “redemption title” for all the years that he overpromised and underdelivered.

In an Edge interview (via VGC), Molyneux said that promising his games will do A, B, and C has always led him into trouble when those promises never came to fruition, citing his previous projects like the God game Black & White and the RTS Dungeon Keeper.

“I think that line in Fable–‘For every choice, a consequence’–wasn’t delivered on well enough,” Molyneux explained. “I think the possession mechanic that we had in Dungeon Keeper wasn’t delivered on enough. The open-world freedom that we had in Black & White, I think it was good at the start, but it didn’t deliver enough at the end. And Masters of Albion is an opportunity to mix all those together. Even though one is an RTS, one is a god game, and one is a role-playing game, why the f**k can’t we mix them all together?”

He went on to say that, because Masters of Albion is his last game (primarily due to his drinking and smoking habits), the city-building God game is all about course-correcting for his decades of misleading fans.

“And I don’t know if it’s going to work,” Molyneux continued. “It’s so important to me, this game, because to a certain extent it’s about redemption. I admit now that I did overpromise on things, and said things that I shouldn’t have said about Curiosity. But I only ever did that because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. And so Masters Of Albion is a redemption title for me. But also, it’s my last game. It just is.”

With it being his last game, Molyneux kind of dipped back into his familiar bag again. Although he didn’t explicitly say that Masters of Albion will do A, B, and/or C as he’s done with his previous games, he did claim that the forthcoming strategy sim is “nothing you’ve ever played before.” Not necessarily a promise, but an indication that Masters of Albion is something special. He went long, calling the game” significant” for him:

“For me, it’s the most significant title that I’ve ever done, for sure. And I’ll tell you the amazing thing–it’s going to f**king work. It really is. It’s like nothing you’ve ever played before, but it’s still unbelievably familiar. It is Black & White, it is Dungeon Keeper, and it is Fable, but it’s a completely new genre. And it shouldn’t really work, but it does. I can’t call this a great game. That’s the wrong thing for me to say, because if I say in the press, ‘Masters Of Albion is going to be a great game,’ that’s a promise. So I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, it’s a unique experience, which is unbelievably intimate and familiar to any person who played Fable, Black & White, and Dungeon Keeper. If I turn around and say, ‘This is going to be my greatest game,’ that’s when I get in trouble.”

Speaking of getting in trouble, do you remember Bryan Henderson? It’s OK if you don’t, but the name should ring a bell because he won and never received a “life-changing” prize for conquering Molyneux’s experimental iOS game Curiosity in 2013.

In development for at least three years, Masters of Albion was revealed at Gamescom Opening Night Live in August 2024. You build up a town by day with money and resources, and you defend your settlement at night from all manner of creatures, from ghouls to zombies. It doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s coming to PC.