One of the fall’s biggest games will be shipping without one of its most-hyped features, as Lionhead Studios have confirmed that the online co-op aspect of Fable II won’t be ready when the game ships late next month. According to the developers, some last-minute tweaks are needed in order to get the cooperative gameplay working properly, so rather than delay the whole game a bit longer, they are going to ship the title with this aspect merely gimped instead.

I say gimped because while you won’t be able to play with friends right away, Lionhead is promising that you’ll still see the glowing orbs that represent them, and you’ll still be able to chat and trade across games, just not invite them in for any tag-team-style looting and pillaging. Also, the studio is promising that it won’t be a long wait, promising that co-op will still be a "week one" experience, so gamers won’t be left waiting for an eternity to invite friends into their world to cause double trouble.

It’s worth noting that Fable II is the second high-profile game in a week to announce a major feature will not be available at launch. Last week, we learned that LittleBigPlanet would not include its much-hyped multiplayer level editing on the retail disc.

While I’m glad Lionhead is taking the time to sort out whatever troubles are plaguing co-op, isn’t this the sort of issue that should have been sorted out a long time ago? I mean, wouldn’t a week one patch fix things like minor graphical issues and load times rather than, I don’t know, one of the single biggest selling points for the game?