One of next year's most anticipated games is undoubtedly Fable. The fantasy RPG franchise originally created by Lionhead is returning fifteen years after its previous mainline installment, and fans are understandably excited.
Since IP owner Microsoft canceled Fable Legends and subsequently shut down Lionhead in 2016, they had to pick a new studio to reboot the series from the ground up. As we've known for a few years, that studio is Playground Games. The British team has crafted some stellar games in the Forza Horizon IP, but that's a racing game; could they deliver the same level of quality with an RPG?
That's certainly the biggest question mark at this point. According to Windows Central's Jez Corden, though, there's not much to fear. Speaking in the latest episode of the Xbox Two podcast, he claimed to have seen some footage of Fable that looked fantastic, featuring combat modeled after The Witcher series, probably due to Playground having hired some former CDPR employees.
I very recently saw some Alpha gameplay footage from Fable. I have no idea when it was from, I don't know if it was earlier in development or if it was recent, but it looked fantastic. You can tell that this game has CD Project Red DNA. Playground Games picked up a bunch of developers, I believe they picked up the combat designer and you can kind of tell. I'm not saying it's 100% one-to-one with The Witcher because it's not, but you can kind of tell with that melee combat, the pirouettes, the dodging, the seamless hack and slash into an execution, which looks really cool. All that stuff is there; it looks super polished, super good. If this was early gameplay, then it probably looks even better now.
Beyond that, there was a lot of mixing in of different weapon types. There was pulling out a bow and arrow and also dropping spells I saw a spell that lifted a group of dudes off the ground and slammed them down. I also saw some enemies, like a giant chicken, for example. It actually just looked like a chicken with that sort of comedic angle but also not. Like, it looked like a dangerous scary chicken. Also, I saw werewolves. There was a scene where they lured a werewolf out of its lair with bacon and eggs and sausages.
It looked really great. The combat looked really tight. I saw a variety of weapons. I saw a big mallet thing which was being used to swing around and hit multiple enemies at once. My hype level went up a lot from seeing that stuff, so that's why I'm so bullish on Fable now.
To be fair, The Witcher 3's combat was one of its few criticized gameplay elements. Then again, the developers of this new Fable might have simply been inspired by the foundation while polishing it even further. We'll have to wait until we see proper gameplay to tell. With The Game Awards coming up, maybe Microsoft will show a new trailer.
Corden also reported to have heard back at Summer Game Fest that Fable would allow character selection, probably between a male and a female option, which will be good news for those who didn't fancy the character seen in the trailers so far.
Fable is currently slated to launch next year, probably toward the end of 2025, for PC and Xbox Series S|X.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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