An English folklore character who mums use to teach their kids why to only make promises they know they can keep.

I couldn't say it better myself Lucky Red you are spot on...

It's a reference to the renown British video game developer and designer; Peter Molyneux. He was known before for the game Black & White, but his rise in popularity truly came with Lionhead's Fable title for the Xbox. However, during that time (E3 2003) he made a lot of silly promises about the game, which the gamers believed. Some of Peter Molyneux's promises were around the grounds of "a living world" or "real-time growing trees" and that's the joke. Bungie claiming to be creating "a living world" is Bungie going full Molyneux into making such a huge promise that they won't likely keep. (Due to development time and resource constraints) Peter Molyneux is a brilliant designer alright, but what he pulled with Fable at the time was so big that his name is pretty much stuck with this calamity joke. Perhaps, if he stopped looking at his work with too much grandeur and come back to planet Earth he could fix this reputation. Therefore, it's normal for veteran gamers not to trust any developer's promise unless there's solid proof of the game's development at that point which can solidify those promises. Whereas, Bungie didn't show much of "a living world" and might create some obvious controversity in the fanbase. Peter Molyneux's Wikipedia page; [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux[/url]