Lionhead Studios is now an online-focused developer, according to head of studio John Needham.

Needham, who joined the studio earlier this year from Star Trek Online and City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios, said "every game" in future will have "connected" elements.

"Our vision is to connect players with fantastic games, so every game we do from hear on out will have great connected online layers," he told Digital Spy at gamescom.

"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."

Discussing the origin of Fable Legends, Needham said he wanted to extend the franchise's trademark interaction with characters and NPCs to real people.

"The thing we thought a lot about was [when making Fable Legends], part of what makes Fable special is the interaction with the characters and the NPCs," he said.

"But what happens if you had interactions with other real people in the same world as you? What magic would you unlock with that?

"It's a combination of things; we're inspired by games like Journey and Dark Souls, which have these really innovative online modes."

When asked whether Fable Legends will have matchmaking similar to those aforementioned titles, Needham replied: "We're not quite there yet.

"But everything that's happening with the cloud service that Microsoft's building, we're going to have some really exciting ways to matchmake with friends and strangers."

Announced at gamescom, Fable Legends is an Xbox One exclusive that will be playable with up to four people, with users able to select from multiple different character classes.

The villain, meanwhile, will be playable at the same time, and have the ability to set traps and ambush heroes.

While it is yet to be given a release date, it will have a beta in 2014.

> Fable Legends preview: First details of Xbox One co-op adventure

Watch a trailer for Fable Legends:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io