Peter Molyneux has had a divisive career. On the one hand, he’s celebrated as the creator of the god game and for making classics like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable. Whereas on the other hand, he’s been derided for overexaggerating promises related to mobile game Curiosity and crowdfunded game Godus, and for getting involved in NFTs with a game unironically called Legacy. Backlash pushed him away from the public eye, but in late 2024 he returned to announce Masters of Albion, a return to form, he hopes – a blend of all he’s been celebrated for.
Masters of Albion comes out this year, and quite soon, on 22nd April, and seeks to give us a dose of Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable all in one. The player controls a god hand and uses it to slap people, throw together buildings, and spread godly influence across a land. We can possess creatures and grow our own heroes, taking them underground where our godly powers don’t reach. Humour, sandbox freedom, eccentricity: Masters of Albion is as Peter Molyneux has been saying for a while, a culmination of his life’s work. But a more dramatic claim is this will be his last video game – a claim I’m keen to press him on when we speak in a video call.
“Here’s the reality, Robert,” he says. “I’m 67. It takes an enormous amount of life force to create a game and an incredible amount of time. I said to myself, ‘Right this is going to be the last game.’ I can’t just think it goes on forever. And because I said that to myself, it gave me an additional amount of oomph to really make this a special game.”
However, there is a slight asterisk to the claim.
“When the game comes out on the 22nd of April, I’m not going to be walking out of the office and into the sunset,” Molyneux says. “I’m going to be absolutely fascinated with what people do and the way they play the game, and we’re going to continue to enhance it – we’ve got a plan for three main chapters of this game. This is the first chapter. And I’ll be involved in that. So if anything, it’s going to be a very long goodbye.”
There’s a bit of clarification needed here. Masters of Albion will be an early access game when it releases on 22nd April, Molyneux confirms, which means there’ll be several more months of development – “I’d be disappointed if we were in early access for longer than a year” – before it’s considered a finished game. However, those “chapters”, they’re a bit of a red herring, because they’re not being added to this specific game. They are, in fact, games of their own. “When I said chapter, what I should have perhaps said is Masters of Albion 2,” Molyneux explains.
Therefore, he has a plan for three Masters of Albion games already, and though he’s saying he’ll only be involved in the first of these, I wonder how true that will be.
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Masters of Albion | Extended Gameplay Trailer
A very recent extended look at Masters of Albion in action.Watch on YouTube
Returning to the stage in August 2024 to announce Masters of Albion was an emotional moment for him. Our former editor Tom Phillips wrote a wonderful interview-led piece with Molyneux exploring this and his trepidation in speaking to the press again. Emotions were running high – there were a handful of moments during the conversation where Molyneux was apparently on the verge of tears, though as I discover, that’s far from a rarity. “I am a very emotionally driven person,” he tells me. “I can cry at the drop of a hat. You just need to show me a puppy and I’ll be emotional.”
Molyneux carries on: “When I walked out on that stage, I didn’t know what the reception would be like. You kind of build all these scenarios up in your head: maybe I’ll be booed or something like that.”
“I’m never going to go back to the old times where, basically, I was rolled out like some half-mad relative to speak on everything from VR to whatever”
Did he really think he’d be booed, I ask. “Well you just don’t know Robert. Because to a certain extent, after the last 10 years, I’ve really stopped doing a lot of press because I thought it was a net negative, and I’m not sure people wanted to hear from me.
“I’m never going to go back to the old times where, basically, I was rolled out like some half-mad relative to speak on everything from VR to whatever in the industry. I’m not going to go back to that again.”
He’s still nervous about talking to the press, he says, and there is a more guarded sense about him, as though watching his words to ensure he doesn’t say anything too outlandish. Nevertheless, from his perspective, the Gamescom reveal went well, though he confesses he doesn’t have the stomach to read public comments any more. “For me it’s like looking into the jaws of hell,” he says.
“What I really want,” he adds, “is Masters of Albion to be the title that proves that I’m a worthy designer, really. I think people should judge me on the work that we produce rather than just the past catalogue.”
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Masters of Albion.
A year-and-a-half ago, Molyneux said Masters of Albion was nearly done, which leads me to wonder what’s taken so long for the game to appear since then. Finesse, he tells me, and polish. Things like adding unobtrusive tutorials to the game: “One of my passions is not to have a separate tutorial, but that learning to play the game is the game,” he says. Things like implementing this storyline and populating the world with things to do and with humour. “The craft is mixing those bits together in a way that keeps people entertained and but also doesn’t over egg it,” he says. “It is very tempting to be dramatic about these things but for me, there is as much drama in the silences between the dramatic moments as there is in the dramatic moments.”
A year-and-a-half ago, there was also talk of the game seeking a publisher. This was one of the main reasons Molyneux announced the game so publicly, on Geoff Keighley’s Gamescom stage. But it doesn’t have a publisher now. “The fundamental problem when presenting ideas like god games to publishers,” he explains, “is they quite understandably have to look at the financial rationale. And if you look at the pie chart that makes up our industry and the games that make money [..] god games are this tiny little sliver.”
“The fundamental problem when presenting ideas like god games to publishers is they quite understandably have to look at the financial rationale”
Nevertheless, his studio 22cans did apparently explore being published with “a number of people”, he says, but ultimately decided it was better off self publishing so it could be more adaptable to audience feedback and to concentrate on actually making the game rather than pitching. “Whether this works or not, Robert, I have no idea. When it comes to publishing, we’re complete novices, so I’m sure we’re going to make some horrendous mistakes.” But at least now they can focus on making the game rather than pitching.
A year-and-a-half ago, 22cans also talked about Masters of Albion being a PC and console release, although you’ll note it’s only releasing on PC on 22nd April. It turns out the console version is somewhat TBC. “We’ve got the game working on consoles,” he says, “but the problem is the controller. It can’t just feel like a clumsy conversion. You’ve got to really think about that controller. And indeed we’re doing that on the Steam Deck as well, thinking about the smoothness, the fluidity. We’re trying to get rid of all those things that make you feel uncomfortable so it feels like a delightful experience.”
Otherwise, everything else we were promised about the game 18 months ago is, it seems, still part of the plan. The core promise – that core mix of god-hand manipulation, character possession, and freeform building – hasn’t changed.
“What we’re releasing on the 22nd is a full first chapter of this overarching story. It’s got a beginning, it’s got a middle, it’s got an end. And you’ll be exploring the first part of Albion that we’re unleashing, and that will be a complete world. And all the mechanics that we’ve talked about and shown will be fully functional and refined as best we can refine them. So it’s going to be a full game. It’s just that at the end, there is going to be a cliffhanger that we’ll explore in the second chapter.”
Will this be the game that restores Peter Molyneux’s reputation? Will he, in going back to his roots, reestablish himself and produce something he can hang his hat on as he rides away into a sunset of some kind? That we’ll have to wait and see.
