It's a comfort to know that though Fable 3 (launching today on PC) may have represented a downturn in quality from Lionhead's previous game, the studio's talent for utter delusion is as robust as ever.

Combat lead Mike West starts out well enough, detailing for Eurogamer some improvements in the PC port, like control schemes optimized for mouse and keyboard and a beefed-up graphical engine that supports higher resolutions and 3D effects. But when West starts defending Fable 3 against critics, things get ... weird. Here's a sample.

"[Fable 3] is a better game than Fable 2."

... That's not a good start, but keep going.

"Fable 3 wasn't very buggy - it was pretty polished. It all fitted together very well and as a product it was very good."

If you'll remember, as with all "pretty polished" games, Lionhead had to solicit bug reports from the community after the game's release.

"People saying the story wasn't very good was unfair. It's an interesting situation of you gather people together and then defeating the main bad guy."

Umm, Mike? ... Hey Mike? That last thing you said? That's not really what happens in your game. Well, it's what happens in the first half. ... Oh, wait, did you only play the first half? Not that we blame you of course, but it would explain so much.