T
he more we think about it, the grumpier we
get. Halo aside, this should have been the
big talking point at the end of Microsoft’s
show, the kind of ‘one more thing’ reveal that sets
Internet forums and social media platforms abuzz
with excited chatter. It really wouldn’t have taken
much. And somehow Microsoft delivered even
less, with a teaser trailer that told us precisely
nothing of any use about one of the worst-kept
secrets in videogames.
We’ve known Playground
Games has been making a next-gen
Fable for a while, well before it
started hiring for an unnamed
“AAA Open-World Action RPG” last
year – by which time, most people
could take an educated guess as
to which dormant franchise that
might be referring. Surely we’d
get something of substance, we
thought: certainly more than a so-called ‘world
premiere’ under a minute long that would give
us a title and, well, not much else.
The name alone raised more questions than it
answered. Is this a remake of the first game?
A series reboot? Does it not have an official title
yet? Does head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty
have something against the number four? A brief
glimpse of a distant city for its final shot was
equally unrevealing. Is this Bowerstone? Maybe
not. It would, at the very least, need to be scaled
up significantly to become the kind of sandbox city
to which we’ve grown accustomed in the ten years
since the last numbered entry.
Yes, it’s been a decade since Fable III, and
since then Microsoft has already cancelled one
Fable project, effectively dooming its developer.
Some ex-Lionhead staffers are working at
Playground on the new game, we understand, but
with that history in mind, the publisher is asking
players to ignore the sour taste that
left and put a lot of faith in very little.
Besides, who knows how far off it
is? Covid-19 has made everyone
wary of putting dates on anything,
but this could be years from
completion. Blockbuster videogames
already take a long time to make,
and more powerful hardware is
unlikely to speed things up.
Ignore the context, and this CG
snippet is an accomplished piece of work,
following a cheerful fairy as she flits about a sun-
dappled forest. She trails her hand through a clear
stream as fish race beneath the surface, before
pausing by a flower, only to be quickly snared by
the prehensile tongue of a nearby toad and
promptly gobbled up. The Fable III teaser similarly
featured an unwitting creature coming to a sticky
end, mind, so even this wasn’t much of a surprise.
“Not every story has a happy ending,” warns the
narrator. Nor every software showcase, it seems.FABLE
Developer Playground Games Publisher Xbox Game Studios Release TBAIs this a remake of
the first game? A
series reboot?
Does Xbox have
something against
the number four?