Fable Reaches a New Milestone

Microsoft are having a busy year so far, but the ghost of all those long-announced but distant games still massively linger. Perfect Dark, State of Decay 3 and, yes, Fable. Well, good news for those who are waiting for information on the latter.

Fable has hit its ‘flighting’ phase. Considering rumours not that long ago that there was barely any game, the fact that tests are going ahead is good news.

A LinkedIn update revealed the news, as shared by Idle Sloth and found by @Hill_bury. It said the developer had been involved in “Performing & Developing Test cases for Smoke Testing, Animation & Flighting Testing”.

https://twitter.com/IdleSloth84_/status/1650101739004080128

Fable was first announced in 2020, although rumours had been circulating that the game was being developed at Forza developer Playground since as early as 2018. That is five years that we’ve at least suspected this project existed. And we’ve seen nothing of it yet.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite concerns about the early reveal and lack of new content, it’s not unusual to leave things secret for as long as possible. When you have a long list of content on the horizon – and Xbox does – it’s not worth watering down the marketing too much by sharing information from games that are years out. And Fable probably still is years out. It would surprise me if it wasn’t any sooner than the end of the last year. A pleasant surprise, however. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was later.

And that’s fine. I’d rather we had information about Redfall, Starfield and Forza before we get bogged down in other games. Hell, even Hellblade 2 is still a bit of a mystery, and will probably release first.

The Future of Fable

And while five years isn’t too long in game development terms, fans of the Fable franchise have been waiting much longer.

The last main game in the franchise was released in 2010. A collectible card game spin-off, a remake and a Xbox Arcade game have been released since. Each got mixed reviews. Fans usually weren’t much happier. Lionhead’s next game was canceled and, shortly afterwards, so was the studio.

And so there’s a lot of pressure on the team at Playground. They’re not competing with the franchise itself – which had more misses than hits overall. But they’re competing with people’s memories of the games they liked. And that problem becomes more and more acute with each passing year.

This isn’t a unique problem in this industry. You only need to look at one of my Silent Hill articles to see that this is something that applies there just as easily. In an industry that doesn’t always look after its biggest and most popular IPs, the legend becomes bigger than the games themselves. And with increasing development costs and times, higher expectations and rabid discussion online, publishers just can’t take the risks they used to. That’s true even when the risks feel like a safe bet, with Metal Gear for instance.

But in the mean time, it’s nice to see Fable is progressing nicely. I, for one, can’t wait to see it.