Fable 1's art team was wasted

Just reading on Kotaku about how Fable 1 didn't really know what they were doing because things weren't planned out too well.

For a start there was apparently no concept art so the modellers didn't know what they were making in the first place. And then the artists couldn't put the models into the engine and thus submitted the assets blind without knowing what they would look like. According to the article 40% of the games assets had to be scrapped. I guess from either taking too much work to redo or them being far too far from what they were going for.

Fable II knew about this and completely changed it all and had a better way of working and only wasted 2-3% of assets.

It's strange how important concept art is. But then which parts of the game need concepts? Just main areas? Big areas? Atmospheric areas? General areas? I'm a bit cnfused but it does make sense. Doing the work for the group project I couldn't really see how my assets would work in the unreal engine unless I submitted them. They could use work after but it woulda been nice to know before hand.

So there we go, even the industry can make mistakes like this sometimes. Gotta know whats happening and how to do it effeciently.

Picture unrelated, it's Kite 3D model from .hack