Update: Lionhead has confirmed plans to release Fable Anniversary, a remastered version of Fable: The Lost Chapters, on Xbox 360 later this year. The game promises to offer an HD graphical overhaul and achievements for the first time. Lead designer Ted Timmins said: “We’re really excited to be bringing a remastered version of Fable: The Lost Chapters to the Xbox 360. It’s been one of the biggest community requests as we know how much the fans love the original game.”
Original story: Lionhead has released a teaser trailer for a HD remake of Fable. Shortly after launching new Fable forums and less than a week before parent company Microsoft's E3 conference on June 10, the English studio wrote on Twitter today: "Now wouldn't it be silly to have a new forum but nothing new to talk about? Would a new teaser help?"
The tweet provided a link to the Fable teaser trailer above, which kicks off by showing numerous tweets sent to the studio calling for a HD remake of the first entry in the RPG series, which released in 2004, or the following year's Fable: The Lost Chapters, which included additional content. Fable’s chief antagonist, Jack of Blades, then appears to say: "I have returned after an eternity away from you all. Jack of Blades is back."
We said in our original Fable review: “It's easy to undermine Fable for all the things it hasn't delivered, but isn't it better for a developer to set its sights high and fall a little short than be satisfied with mediocre ambitions? Sure, the original design has been scaled back but the love and attention lavished on every tree and sunlight-dappled glade is extraordinary. Even if you took away the interaction with villagers, the marriage and the home-building, Fable would still emerge as a robust and absorbing RPG.”
Following the completion of Lionhead’s last release, October 2012’s Kinect game Fable: The Journey, Microsoft cut "less than ten per cent" of staff at studio. The platform holder also confirmed that production on Lionhead’s next projects had begun, and over the past year it has been speculated that the firm’s working on an RPG with MMO elements.
In April, Microsoft appointed ex-Cryptic Studios and Gazillion Entertainment CEO John Needham as boss of Lionhead, assuming the role studio founder Peter Molyneux left last year.
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