Nostalgia can be a potent feeling, but by Albion did Playground Games’ Fable, aka Fable 4, trigger a dose of it during the first Xbox Developer Direct showcase of 2026. As someone who can’t remember the last time he cried, the sheer potency of nostalgia for a game I adored in my younger years almost brought a tear to my eye.
One of my first and most enduring Xbox memories was waiting for the original Fable; with the promise of a game with a world you could shape through your actions and decisions.
While the options to influence story outcomes via decisions and morality systems was nothing new, as there were plenty of CRPGs with similar systems – Baldur’s Gate 2 stands out to me as one notable example – the idea of a somewhat open world with such decision making in, for the time, attractive 3D graphics, was tantalising. I remember Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux touting how you could plant a tree in the game and, as the years passed, watch it grow.
However, when it was released in 2004, Fable lacked a lot of the dynamic features promised. Still it was far from a bad game: it had a whiff of 3D Zelda with open areas to explore and secrets to uncover, yet also mixed in some systemic elements – for example, people would react to what you did, and if your character ate too much he’d get fat.
I distinctly remember exploiting it all in fun and slightly dark ways. For example, playing as a renowned hero you could flirt with all manner of people in various villages and towns, to the extent you could ask them to follow you. I used this to lure people outside of their respective homes and villages and then murder them without alerting the guards. This would then mean their property would be put up for sale, which I’d then buy and rent out; from this I built up a real estate empire across a slice of Albion.
Other times, simply for fun and chaos, I’d buy a load of beers from a local tavern and use an emote system to give them to other punters, often ending up turning most of the village of Oakwood into staggering drunks.
All this was wrapped up in a fairy tale setting and story, rather than more traditional fantasy fare. With a big helping of very British humor on top, it made for a fresh and wonderful game back two decades ago, and I think it’s still worth playing today.
In the decades since Fable, we’ve seen some incredible games with fantastic systems and far more expansive worlds. With Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, and Red Dead Redemption 2 being just a few I could name, it perhaps leaves Fable and its sequels feeling a more basic and constrained when viewed through a modern lens.
Grounds for a reboot
But this is where Playground Games comes in. Rather than go for a sequel, this Fable is effectively a reboot, using different characters and a new story centred around being a hero.
Seeing a Fable rendered in what looks to be cutting-edge graphics and set in a proper open world – something Playground Games is adept at giving us in its Forza Horizon games – is amazing. Spotting hobbes and balverines, and heroes kicking chickens in the deep-dive video, takes me back to a time when life was a lot simpler.
However, the really exciting thing is it looks like Playground Games has the technology to actually bring to fruition the dynamism Molyneux touted for the original game.
Not only does it look like the ability to mess with villagers and townspeople is back, including a romance system and deeper insight into how they perceive you, there’s what Playground Games is calling the “Living Population” where there’s more than 1,000 unique characters with their own routines and personality; in the original Fable, such people had day-night routines, but it was somewhat rudimentary, as was the romance system.
It’s also looking like the morality system will be a lot less binary and more subjective, which should interact interestingly with the living population.
All this is very intriguing and exciting to me; while we’ve seen plenty of gorgeous open-world games – recently the likes of Starfield and Avowed – they arguably lack the depth needed to make interacting with the world engaging.
I also like the look of the combat system. It seems like it will have the straightforward approachability of the other Fable games but likely more depth for advanced players; I’m not expecting a Dark Souls or Elden Rin level of skill required, but more nuance and tools at a hero’s disposal is certainly attractive.
It’s probably safe to say the past 12 months hasn’t been a slam dunk for Xbox, with layoffs and game cancellations. Keeper gave a solid dose of creativity out of the Microsoft-owned Double Fine, but beyond that the brand hasn’t exactly galvanised the industry. But if Playground Games can nail this Fable reboot, I think it could be a fresh trailblazer for Xbox Game Studios. And the fact it’s coming out on PS5 too, could bring Fable to a whole new audience.
So I’m crossing my fingers and toes that Fable finally lives up to its promise come this Fall, as it’ll be nice to have something else other than Grand Theft Auto 6 to get me through the darker, colder months.
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