The upcoming reboot for Fable, the fantasy role-playing game of British chortles ‘n’ chuckles, has been delayed until next year, says head of Xbox Game Studios Craig Duncan. Developers Playground Games need “more time” to create the world of Albion, it turns out, but Xbox has offered a sparse sprinking of of game footage as compensation for the delay. There’s nothing particularly mind-blowing among it. Some combat, some vistas. But it’s something.
“We previously announced the date for Fable as 2025,” said Duncan in an interview during the Official Xbox Podcast. “We are actually going to give Fable more time and it’s going to ship in 2026 now. While I know that’s not maybe the news people want to hear, what I want to assure people of is that it’s definitely worth the wait… I have unequivocal confidence in the Playground team.”
Duncan goes on to talk over some pre-alpha footage of the RPG. There are scenes of the player character walking through a city, riding their horse, and fighting what looks like various fantasy staples such as werewolves and goblins. At one point the player is being accosted by a giant violent chicken, which fans of the old games will undoubtedly welcome with feathery fondness (the humble chicken is the butt of many jokes, basically a series mascot). At another point the hero is using sausages in a frying pan as bait in a bear trap. I can cofirm this is how the British aristocracy spend their time ever since fox hunting got banned.
Playground Games are best known for their work on the Forza racing games, which are often hyper-realistic and glistening with The Graphics. Which would be why Duncan reassures prospective players that their RPG will be “the most beautifully realized version of Albion you’ve ever seen”. That werewolf’s hair is very detailed, to be fair. But as ever we’ll reserve judgement until we get our hands on the beast ourselves.
The Fable reboot was officially announced in 2020 but there had been rumours about it as far back as 2017. We’ve seen a couple of cinematic trailers since the announcement, starring the likes of comedy actors Richard Ayoade and Matt King. But now it’ll be a whole other year until we see if their jokes land.