The new Fable has the unenviable position of bringing the series to a contemporary audience. After all, it's been 16 years since Fable 3, the last mainline entry. Playground Games is taking that responsibility seriously, with combat that merges new school and more classical mechanics.
"When we're talking about being faithful to the classic franchise, we thought about how there was an approachability to combat there," Will Kennedy, associate game director, explained to TechRadar. "And we knew that we wanted to be able to capture some of that for our game as well. But at the same time, we're making a game for gaming today."
It's a tricky balance. Fable has a lot of fans who've been waiting around for another installment - myself included - and we want this sequel to feel like the other games. But game development has evolved, and you don't want to alienate newcomers for the sake of making sure it still feels like 2009 to our old, decrepit hands.
"We wanted there to be breadth and depth to it, so we landed on wanting to have style-weaving combat," he says. "We wanted to be able to move from move to move really smoothly and easily, and that combined with the level expression that you've got."
The system Playground Games created is all about versatility. You can edit your loadout from the top down, and you have four spell slots to tinker with to see what works for you. Kennedy notes that you won't be playing long before "you have a really broad, deep, rich suite of options to choose from."
He adds the team is "really proud" of how "satisfying" the RPG feels. "We've landed somewhere that is still approachable but has that depth that we want and so therefore is faithful but works in gaming today as well for players, which is sometimes to be proud of," he finishes.
We'll see just what he means when Fable arrives in February 2027.
