In June 2023, news emerged that the image of a girl from a future RPG game was allegedly based on the appearance of a designer at the development studio, a representative of the LGBT community who identifies as a “trans deer.” We have verified this information.
June 11 passed Microsoft's annual Xbox Games Showcase, where the company talked about its future releases. One of the projects presented was Fable, a new video game from the famous open-world Action RPG series, developed by Playground Games. In the shown trailer on the topic “What does it feel like to be a hero?” real actors took part - for example, the improvised narrator was played by a Briton Richard Ayoade. Soon after the video was released, some gamers began to criticize the appearance of the main character of the video. Then there were reports that the image of the girl from the game was copied from the non-binary level designer Willow Morris - this person is allegedly involved in the development of Fable. Due to this, some users began criticize studio for “excessive tolerance” and announced about boycotting the game.
Publications on this topic can be divided into two types: some authors only report a strong similarity of faces and hint that they are one and the same person. For example, such posts appeared on VKontakte in the public pages “Ax - storage"(566,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Geeks Empire (29,000), Marvel/DC™ (17,000) and in Telegram channels "VG - video games / Dvach" (29,000) and "I'm oppressed"(18,000). In the second type of posts, it is directly stated that the heroine’s appearance is based on a transgender person - for example, in Telegram channels “Ax 18+"(1.5 million views) and "Teledno"(26,000), as well as in public "Dvach"(76,000), "Useless"(73,000) and Dankest (35,000) on VKontakte.
Many viral posts feature a screenshot of the Twitter account of a person named Willow Morris (@WillowRoseDawn). Such page there really is on social networks. According to the profile description, Morris is from the UK and works as a level designer at Playground Games, the studio that develops Fable. Willow also indicated that she is a non-binary trans woman and is secretly a deer, which is most likely just a joke. In her avatar she is depicted with horns and appropriate makeup, and previously the owner of the profile wrotewhat is furry, that is, a fan of anthropomorphic animals in pop culture.
About Morris starting work at Playground Games, in particular on Fable, she wrote September 1, 2020 - this confirms her profile on the LinkedIn platform. Also, a page with similar information and a photo “Verified” was found in Instagram*.
Although Willow Morris did work on Fable, Verified was unable to find any evidence online that the game character was based on her.
Who was the real prototype of the heroine, found out users of French-speaking gaming forums. Apparently, the role of the girl from the trailer was played by a British actress Lily Nicole, which may be unfamiliar to the mass audience, since it is mainly plays in the theater. According to the IMDb website, the most popular film projects with her cameo appearances are the series “I hate Susie" And "Lockwood and Company Agency"from Netflix. June 11 on Nicole's Instagram posted took a few screenshots of the Fable heroine and wrote, “I loved every second of working with the epic team at Playground Games and I’m so excited to be a part of Fable 🗡️🧚♀️ Watch the trailer to see the magic.”
Another, much more important confirmation of the connection between the character and the British actress can be found on Twitter. Nicole retweeted a fragment of the game trailer, and this repost, in turn, was shared by David Springate - Technical Director of the Playground Games studio, while he wrote: "Our hero" (this appears to be a reference to the theme of the trailer). And this not isolated case of communication between an actress and a developer.
There are also clear visual similarities between the character and Nicole: they have a similar arrangement of freckles, the shape of their chin, nose and eyebrows, as well as the same eye color and teeth shape.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Verified screenshot / Xbox
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