Fable’s always been a franchise that isn’t afraid to lean into humor, a unique, whimsical tone, and a world that doesn’t subscribe to tried and tested fantasy tropes. It’s a franchise that, like the Hero it puts you in control of, isn’t afraid to go its own way. It was a delight, then, to hear of a reboot way back in 2020 when it was first announced.
But the intervening years have seen the game hidden away behind a veil of mystery. Yes, there were trailers that tried very hard to tell us that the upcoming title was Fable as we always remembered it, but there’s only so much they could do in the absence of a good look at what its RPG ambitions were going to look like once they were in the hands of its players. But the latest showcase of the game has changed that.
Yes, the reboot’s bringing a very interesting combat system, a version of Albion that we can’t wait to explore, and environments that might be hard to explore when you’re stopping to admire the sights so often. But while those are all great things to have in an RPG of this scale, they’re also present in several other of the game’s competitors. Fable needs something to set itself apart, and the latest showcase has demonstrated that Albion itself might be the ace up its sleeve that it needs to stand toe-to-toe with the genre’s greatest titles.
A World That Makes Life Itself Extraordinary
The glimpse of the game that we’ve been given does show off how exploration and combat have been woven into the experience. There are quests for you to take on, of course, and a lot of the humor and unique tone that gives the franchise its identity. They’re all welcome additions, to be sure, but they’re not what we’re here to discuss in this one. Instead, we’re going to focus on how Albion seems tailored to respond to you in ways that you can predict, and in others that could have you quite surprised at their complexity.
To us, the most exciting facet of Fable isn’t that you’re going to be taking on enemies and monsters as a Hero whose abilities continue to grow and evolve as you engage with Albion. It’s in how that world remembers who you are as a person, and the kind of Hero you’ve been that has us very eager, impatient even, to get our hands on a copy.
A world in which NPCs feel sentient definitely stands out. We’ve seen games filled with hundreds of nameless characters that are largely relegated to the background, acting as a sort of decorative presence to present the illusion of worlds that are alive. Yes, some of them are vendors, or perhaps quest givers, but they’re largely nameless crowds who have no real bearing on the outcome of your adventures, or even your actions other than to present surface-level responses to what you do in their presence.
Even the ones you can interact with are limited to serving their intended functions, and not much else. A blacksmith, for example, isn’t going to be interested in much else beyond helping you upgrade your gear and weapons. Granted, they might have a bit of dialogue to make them feel like they’re responding to you and your presence in their smithy, but they don’t know you beyond the fact that you’re the main character in a story where they’re playing a small, and rather negligible part. They’re nothing more than a map icon for when you need the game to help you fulfil a specific function.
But Albion looks like it’s built around the very NPCs that other games often neglect. There are actual systems guiding their actions, and the subsequent interactions you have with them. Jack the Beggar responds to your kindness, and actively forms an impression about you when you behave charitably towards him. While that’s impressive on its own, that very same act of kindness drives the local tailor to forming a more disdainful opinion of you, her personal morals giving her the impression that your actions do not address the root cause of why Jack was in his dire straits.
Every NPC has their own routines, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and the ability to think for themselves, and those opinions form a complex web of opinions that you’re then left to navigate as you see fit. You could buy their businesses and homes, choosing to disrupt their lives and face the consequences of their displeasure, or use your new purchase to help make the lives they live better. And they remember it all, and either help or hinder you based on what they think of you. If Playground pulls this off on a scale that covers the entirety of Albion, its NPCs might be more important than its map size, and that’s a welcome deviation from a rather predictable script in the open-world RPG genre.
Playing to Its Strengths
Of course, those of us who’ve played the original Fable know that the Morality System and your Reputation were important parameters that influenced the trajectory of your story. The franchise may not be known for RPGs that are mechanically deep, but they’ve definitely been remembered for the funny, often exaggerated ways that their worlds have responded to our actions in-game. There was a personal touch, a feeling that the world around you was actually in sync with what you were doing.
You could be loved or feared, celebrated or mocked for who you were, exalted as a hero or reviled as a diabolical villain, or infamous as a morally grey individual whose unpredictability was the only certainty when you entered the room. The world made your choices feel visible, and presented tangible responses to them to make your time with any of the franchise’s offerings feel special. Fable was at its best when it (conveniently) forgot that you were the chosen one who would shape the trajectory of its world, and instead chose to treat you based on the merits of your actions. You could be a benevolent landlord, loved by your tenants, or a menace to be reviled by the locals.
You could be a spouse that was devoted to their loved one, or a local fool who couldn’t be trusted to achieve even the simplest of goals. The world you were exploring had a soul of its own, and it was one that you had to work to capture, and subsequently keep satisfied if you wanted things to go in a direction you decided. That’s precisely what the reboot is trying to recapture, and we must say that it’s doing a reasonably great job at that if that preview was any indication.
Think about how you have even a stable hand being entirely indifferent to your presence when you first enter a town. You’re a nameless entity, and one that its denizens have no reason to trust or hate since they’ve never seen you before. But one set of decisions, of all things, and you were then a person who was interesting enough for NPC to sit up and take notice of. The aforementioned Jack the Beggar, and his subsequent new lot in life as a local bartender, all stem from you.
Of course, word travels fast and while some find you to be compassionate and kind, others might think you’re naive, and yet to see the bigger picture of a world that allows systemic inequalities to exist between the people in it. But it’s those inequalities that allow you to shape lives by becoming a landlord or business owner, offering employment and housing to those who need them, and earning their trust and benevolence in the process.
It’s a world in which people aren’t afraid to show their pleasure or displeasure to your face, with tangible reactions on the visual front, and systems that can help or hinder you based on who you’re interacting with, and what they think of you. A sense of sentience permeates the very air of Albion, and its one that’s always watching what you do and responding to it in ways that mimic what a Hero would face in the real world.
Fable isn’t just giving us a reactive story next year, but a reactive society, which is a distinction that automatically sets it apart from other titles. It’s a recipe for some truly chaotic outcomes the more we think about it. You could be a landlord whose tenants cannot stop singing praises of, while being a Hero whose actions aren’t necessarily in the best interests of the people you’re fighting for. You could be kind and compassionate, being revered for it even as that very kindness ruins local economies.
It’s a great way to ensure that no two playthroughs of the game are going to look alike. Playground has realized that Fable doesn’t need to be a serious RPG, but an interactive fairy tale in which every Hero can walk away with absolutely ridiculous stories. And with player agency being as central to the experience as it is, the potential for a title that players keep coming back to of their own free will is right there.
A Positive Influence
When you think about the kind of experience that it offers from the perspective of other open-world games, it’s easy to see why we’re quite hooked on the idea of a world that isn’t judged on its scale, the length of its questlines, the density of markers on its map, its loot and crafting systems, upgrade trajectories, or cinematic presentation. That’s not to say they aren’t a part of the experience that Fable’s offering, but they’ve taken a backseat to a world that makes the little moments matter.
Where other games could have you already thinking about where you want to go next after you conduct your business ina town, Fable aims to have you staying back to try and learn more about the population. It makes you wonder if the people around you truly know you for who you are, and whether your presence can enrich their lives, or ruin them entirely. You’re given the power to shape their destinies, but how you do that is completely up to you, and there’s enough unpredictability to make your efforts succeed, or fail so spectacularly you’re going to have to work to understand how your plans unravelled.
It’s a far more interesting pitch than having yet another massive world full of lifeless interactions to explore, to be sure, but we must consider the possibility of the effort backfiring, just as how your attempts to be a Hero for the ages can lead your people to ruin. Can these systems continue to have an impact across the entire experience? Can they remain meaningful – and compelling – once you’ve spent about twenty or thirty hours in Albion?
We’re a tad worried that it can be too easy for NPCs to get you if you have enough money to bribe town criers, giving you a way to get a clean slate in a given town that seems too convenient for an experience like this one. We would have liked to see the preview visit how your criminal actions at the end of it affected your relationship with the owner of the general store, whose last interaction with you was one of familiarity and goodwill considering all the good things you had done up until that point.
Is the sheer amount of player agency you’re offered going to have actual consequences to your decisions, or is it just a way of letting the game amuse you with funny reactions from the people you’re engaging with? Fable’s systems worked well in the demo, but we’re wondering if they worked too well in the curated slice of a larger pie that we were allowed to see.
But concerns aside, that demo gave the upcoming reboot a sense of identity that it sorely needed over the past few years. Fable isn’t trying to be a big fantasy RPG for the Xbox, but a world that makes Albion feel social, reactive, messy, amusing, and most importantly, personal. It puts you at the front of the experience, and lets its world draw you in by giving you a life that’s full of the chaos and joy that such a world would offer.
It’s a recipe that could have you wanting more if it succeeds, or otherwise leave a bitter aftertaste. But like any journey worth undertaking, we’d say that the effort must count for something.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.