The teams at Xbox Game Studios and Playground Games are understandably remaining fairly silent on the progress of Fable right now, but thanks to a lead engineer at the latter, we know that it's been in development for at least four years.
Tom Gaulton took to Twitter last week to commemorate four years of working on the game since joining Playground Games in November 2017, showing off a "Congratulations" note presented to him by the studio:
This isn't actually the first time we've heard something along these lines, as Playground Games was seen to formally tweet about its "new AAA open-world action RPG" back in November 2017, which obviously turned out to be Fable.
As for when we can expect a release date though? It's anyone's guess for now. Rumours have suggested we might be looking at a 2023 window, so hopefully we'll get a glimpse at some proper gameplay footage next year.
Surprised by this? When do you think Fable will get a release? Give us your thoughts down below.
Comments 27
Could you imagine if this came out on the Xbox anniversary 😍
Next year? Hopefully they will show us at least a cgi teaser next week in Xbox 20th anniversary showcase.
Soooo, we might actually see this in the next 5 years then?!?!
So this time next year will be 5 years in 2022.
Ok so new game and studio therefore we should expect 2023 fall release.
Fable and starfield as fall games next year would be quite a big deal (provided they live up to their promise), perhaps even comparable to Xbox’s fall this year with Forza and halo.
But I don’t mind if both those games are further away than that, next years already packed.
2023 sounds about right. as long as it's well made, i can wait a bit.
I'm interested to see how this turns out, I loved Fable 1-3.
You had me at fable !!!
We already know that graphically speaking, it will just be glorious.
And I'm trusting them for everything else.
It's so exciting to see a team that talented giving a take on this franchise !
Seriously can’t wait for new Fable.
@IronMan30 It lacks Peter Molyenaux. It's automatically the series high point.
@Zag_Man Realistically FH is an RPG where you play as car.....I'm not worried.
@NEStalgia I always looked at his attitude as confidence. If you think your game sucks, why make one and try to sell it?
Of course, it's hard to ignore that he does get very carried away.
@IronMan30 If Molyenaux sold toasters, the advert would talk about how it has the finest mincing capability for even hard vegetables, and creates spot-free, streak-free shine of glassware, including crystal.
The actual product would make toast. Burn it most of the time. And the eject would jam.
@SplooshDmg Todd needs him now more than ever.
The new improved Skyrim, bigger than ever, with half the calories, immerse yourself in a pseudo virtual reality living breathing shared online metaverse where you become a dragon, shack up with local townsfolk, includes full nudity, pays you in TESO currency to play, makes you fit!
(Actually, it's just Skyrim with some bonus DLC)
@NEStalgia Are you really expecting realistic visuals?...I'm really hoping it doesn't have similar character models to Forza tbh. They don't have to be realistic...but would be nice if they didn't look like something from kinect shovelware.
@Bleachedsmiles Oh I didn't mean realistic visuals, I meant the realistic point of view is that FH is an RPG more than any other genre. Maybe action adventure.
I think the trailers give us a clear idea of the actual art style of the game, even if we've only see the fairy.
With the amount of fun activities packed around the map, I think Playground would be be a great fit for making a platformer, like Banjo or Conker.
Anyone else sick of Peter Molyneux hating? He created the series everyone loves along with heaps of others and all he gets is hate. Same with the guy who created Ultima which was the first AAA rpg series as far as I can tell.
Just my guess. 2022 Starfield, 2023 Fable, 2024 Avowed, 2025 Inxile's FPS RPG (Purely guessing here that they are working on a Fallout game), 2026 Elders Scrolls 6.
My predictions may not come true but they have enough studios under their belt to produce 1 rpg a year.
Exciting times to be an xbox fan
Looking forward to hearing more about this game. 😀
I honestly miss Peter Molyneux. Though he 100% couldn't get away with what he did nowadays in this 24/7/365 news cycle and trial by media society.
Yes he constantly over promised, and thus under delivered. But he threw enough ideas out there that many stuck. He genuinely did innovate at Bullfrog with games like Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper, not to mention Black & White and Fable at Lioinhead. He just never innovated as much as or as profoundly as he thought or promised. He was his own worst enemy, almost as if he was singlehandedly trying to destroy his own legacy.
But he was never afraid to try something new, or attempt the 'impossible'. Even if when aiming for the stars he 'only' ended up dancing in the clouds that was better than 99% around him still on the ground.
He had the sort of vision, ambition and passion that is sorely lacking in many team leads today. Yes it's a different world with bigger budgets and more risk but I wish there were a few more Peter Molyneux's in the development world!
Back on topic. Extremely excited for Fable and to see what the extremely talented folks at Playground can do.
Will need to improve their writing and comedy from Forza though!
Hope they at least give us a demo in 2022, if its not coming out next year. I wanna little taste of what the game is like.
@NEStalgia be amazing if it looked close to the trailers art style...but I don't believe it. I reckon it will end up more cartoony.
I just hope the character models are better in fable than they are in Forza - least in facial animations. But yeah, I kinda wish they didn't show that teaser as, like avowed...or even the original halo infinite teaser, will just set expectations too high.
I just hope that this year they drop Xbox one base...and focus on pushing the new hardware from next year. Leave cloud support for Xbox one.
@Bleachedsmiles It's hard to tell from a prerendered trailer years before release, but, OTOH, it's Playground, so we know where their expertise in graphics leans in general, so it's not unbelievable, especially for a game that doesn't have to cater to X1.
Haha, yeah, human models in Forza are terrible. I assume/hope that's only because the engine isn't meant for humans, and humans are an extremely tiny part of Forza so it's just not optimized for that. There's probably no mocap or anything, it's all just hand animated as low res assets, I assume.
I don't think they'll stick to X1. Ironically, they planned to and Sony's noise about "generations" made them drop X1 quickly. Then we found out Sony's actually doing PS4 forever and ever, and "generations" just meant charging more for the new one. Halo, FH, etc are games that were in the pipeline already and they promised X1 support in the near-term, but I think most of what we saw at E3 is Series only.
@NEStalgia That's the only thing that worries me is that I think it will be the same engine - which is silly to say as we know the amazing visuals they're getting out of it. But like you say, character models it seems to struggle with...or maybe it's just not the priority. I also know that different characters with their own animations take alot more memory than cars do (particularly the animations). I can't imagine fables world being as big as a Forza map..so maybe that's how they'll handle memory and trailer quality visuals.
Either way, playground have proven they're talented so I definitely look forward to what they show outside of racing games!
Hope we don't have to wait too long.
@Bleachedsmiles Yeah, it really comes down to just how flexible the engine they're using is. "Forzatech" was made for racing, and I believe is a joint effort by Playground and Turn10. It was built for cars... but RPGs are as much about landscapes and urban areas as FH, and Forzatech excels there. I could see them using the existing Forza landscape capabilities but bolting on new middleware for character animations.
Then again....we do remember what characters looked like in Fable1-3? LOL
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