Any time a franchise is getting rebooted or revived after a long hiatus across all media, it faces the challenge of retaining the essence of its predecessors, while also introducing new elements and ideas to take things forward in interesting ways. Microsoft’s recently announced (and relentlessly leaked) Fable, too, will have to figure out what sort of a balance to strike between those two.
According to Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, developers Playground Games are more than up to that task. Speaking recently with The Guardian, he compared the challenge Playground are facing to making a new Star Wars movie.
“With any kind of franchise like that, where you’ve had existing versions, there’s always that balance between what you’re going to bring forward, what still stands up, and what you want to add that’s new,” Booty said. “It’s like the challenge of making a new Star Wars movie – there’s stuff that everyone wants you to bring along, but then you’ve got a responsibility to take that to new places and I trust Playground has a good vision for that.”
Booty also said that Playground’s experience with the Forza Horizon series and the attention to detail those open worlds have always exhibited – along with their strong vision for what a new Fable game should be – gives him confidence that Fable will be a “very high-quality release.”
“I just look at what Playground has done with the Horizon series – that attention to detail, the ability to represent these naturalistic landscapes,” he said. “They also have a real passion for the IP and a unique point of view on what’s core to Fable. Everything I’ve seen as the game progresses tells me this is going to be a very high-quality release.”
Fable is currently in development for Xbox Series X and PC, but doesn’t yet have a release date. Some recent rumours were suggesting that the game would be an MMO, but reports since then have refuted those claims.
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