Today GameDaily BIZ proudly presents part 1 in our 10 Questions feature with Lionhead Studios boss Peter Molyneux. Because the response to this feature was so great, we actually convinced the folks at Lionhead to answer yet another set of 10 questions, so later this week you can expect a whole other Q&A with Molyneux based on your questions [Update: You can now read Part 2 right here]. In the meantime, please enjoy this first set of 10 in which Peter discusses his early career, Fable II, the future of the Fable franchise, "Project Dimitri" and more. Thanks to everyone who sent in their questions!

1. What did Peter Molyneux want to be when he was young? What made him decide to go into game development?

Well, I always wanted to be rich and run my own company, but beyond that I had no idea what I wanted to be. At school I got the lowest marks of any boy, either before or since. I didn't really have any special talents that shone out. As for games development, that happened by accident. I had fulfilled my dream of running my own company with a friend of mine, Les Edgar. Our company was called Taurus and we specialized in writing computer databases.

One day we got a call from Commodore who were just launching the Amiga and wanted to position it as a business machine. They invited me to their offices. So off I went and they kept talking about how they wanted to see my product on their machines – and that to help us do that they would give us ten machines for free. Halfway through this meeting I realised they had called the wrong Taurus. They thought I was from another company called TORUS. I debated whether to explain their mistake to them, but in the end the temptation of ten free machines was too great. Once we had them in the office we were offered the chance to convert Druid 2 from the Atari St to the Amiga and my career in games development began.

2. When you kicked off the visual development process to the design team at Lionhead to begin working on Fable 1 and then Fable II, what were the key design philosophies and inspirations you asked them to take from when designing the world? Is the style of the characters and environments in Fable II being taken from one particular artist, or is the team drawing from a blend of movie references, books, or established style guides?

Actually I'd like to hand this question over to John McCormack, Fable IIs Art Director. JM explains the aesthetic philosophy behind the Fable franchise was our natural desire to create a world based on "fairy tales" rather than the usual "dungeons and dragons/ traditional fantasy" fare. We wanted to live in the worlds of "The StoryTeller" (80's Jim Henson TV production starring John Hurt), "The Company of Wolves," "Labyrinth," "Dark Crystal," "Jabberwocky" and "Sleepy Hollow" and carve out a little place of our own that felt like it had its own history, its own stories and was distinctly European within the RPG genre.

We wanted to create a similar atmosphere to these influences that would allow us to have some emotional polarisation in the experience whereby the player would feel safe, amused and happy with his family and all the other villagers in his little hamlet, but when he walks into the woods the tone would become very dark indeed. This became the driving force behind much of the art direction of the game along with our desire to "rethink" all the "easy" ideas for creatures, characters, abilities and locations and rebuild them from their emotional core, upwards.

When the art team were all up to speed and on board with the direction we were taking, it was then the time to face some serious challenges. Another part of the visual direction of the game was to make our little world feel alive and dynamic, so, along with adding secondary motion to much of the on screen art (the screen constantly shifts in light values, wind direction, etc), we had to develop each region, character and even prop with the ability to change over time... be that with aging, rotting or growing.

The world of Fable will always be one of colour, dynamism, humour, darkness and freedom and there are plenty of stories left to tell... and more directions and developments in the aesthetic to come, I hope.

3. How much of Fable II came from things you initially wanted to have in Fable 1, but couldn't make it? And what was the hardest feature to cut from Fable II?

A lot of what is in Fable II is what didn't make it into the original Fable. I can give also you a pretty long list of what was wrong with the original Fable, which we wanted to fix in Fable II. The story and combat weren't great, you were given all the features at once and the alignment was too simple. We have sorted all this out. But I think it's the drama, story and characters which will shine in Fable II. As for the hardest features to cut in Fable II, stealth, disguises and having the alignment of thief was hard to let go.

4. I heard in an interview about Fable 3, 4, and 5. Is this true and how will the time line progress? Another 500 years each game? Will we eventually see a modern day and futuristic Fable, with lasers and spaceships?

The reason I mentioned this was I wanted people to understand that we were thinking about a world as opposed to just one game. When we thought of Fable during our brainstorming session, we'd say, "Imagine if this or that could happen in the Fable world," (obviously I can't say what this or that is!). If you look at the original Fable, it's set in a world which believes in heroes, but by Fable II the world doesn't believe in heroes anymore. Other than that, I can't say more except that you should never expect the obvious of Fable!