Grand Theft Auto 6

Rockstar’s upcoming return to Vice City is easily the biggest open-world release on the horizon, and the perfect candidate to start off the list. Grand Theft Auto 6 promises a living, breathing world packed with dynamic NPC routines, reactive law enforcement, and an unprecedented level of environmental detail. The dual protagonists inspired by the adventures of Bonnie and Clyde look to be a promising storyline filled with several emotional moments. Of course, missions, side activities, and emergent mayhem are also important pillars of the experience – so we are definitely looking forward to this one.

“When I was watching the Fable trailer, I just felt myself tearing up”, said Molyneux. “I know that I could probably be slaughtered for saying that, but I am someone who cries frequently, and I felt incredibly emotional, and the reason I felt emotional was: F*** me. This thing that we created, it’s going to live, it’s going to carry on. This world, which we loved creating so much, and other people loved, has a life.”

Molyneux said that the fact that the Fable franchise will continue beyond his own involvement was great. His own decisions to go back to developing God games—a classic sub-genre of strategy games that were more prevalent in the 1990s—were made for similar reasons, he noted, before also praising Playground Games for its decision to reboot the series rather than make a sequel and be burdened with the original trilogy’s lore.

“And for me, the saddest thing would be to see it diminish, which is one of the reasons I’m really going back to God games,” he said. “So that was the overall emotion. I thought it was really smart of them to retell Fable 1 rather than have the burden of continuing the Fable story. I loved seeing some of those references. I thought it was super smart to have the kid’s family turn to stone. I thought that was really smart. And so those were all the plus points.”

That’s not to say that Molyneux didn’t have any criticisms of the showcase, however. Further in the interview, he mentioned that the trailer felt “antiseptic”, by which he meant that the world of the upcoming Fable reboot felt cleaner than he would have liked. He would have preferred Playground Games’ take on the world of Albion to be more chaotic.

“I mean, if I was critical, which I think you want me to be, there was a slight antiseptic feel about it,” he explained. “But I mean, they’ve got months and months to build in that character and almost that dirtiness that you want in the world. I never thought Fable as being clean and all the angles being sharp and defined. It’s more chaotic. It’s more what Old England probably used to be, which was not straight lines, the place, it’s more crinkling, and all the buckle belts on people are ridiculously large, and the boots and the hands ridiculously large because that is part of the character. So there’s a little bit more of that character, which I would probably foolishly and ridiculously ask for.”

Fable is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Since its appearance at Xbox Developer_Direct, Playground Games has gone on to reveal quite a few details about it. Among other things, the studio has spoken about its morality system, its variety of NPCs, and how the studio was influenced by classic British comedies. For more, check out our thoughts on why it might be worth the wait after all.

A new report by The Verge’s Tom Warren alleged release dates for several big titles, including Halo: Campaign Evolved targeting this Summer. Gears of War: E-Day, another 2026 release, is reportedly looking at the second half of the year. As already announced, Fable will arrive this Fall, but you can expect it sometime before November 19th, which is when Rockstar’s magnum opus finally launches.

As for Kiln, Double Fine’s pottery-meets-competitive-multiplayer title, it’s apparently launching in April – just one month before Forza Horizon 6. Based on the lack of rumors about Clockwork Revolution, State of Decay 3 and so on, it seems likely that they’ll launch next year.

In the meantime, Microsoft doesn’t just have to work out the releases for its biggest games, but also their marketing. It would lend credence to rumors of another Developer_Direct to go along with its usual Summer showcase and Gamescom presence. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it drop extensive overviews and other announcements out of the blue (like the rumored PS5 release of Starfield).

Here’s hoping that a potential price increase for the Xbox Series X/S isn’t one of them.

Forza Horizon 6

Forza Horizon 6 looks set to continue Playground Games’ mastery of open-world racing, building on one of the most consistently polished franchises in the genre. Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Japan, Forza Horizon 6 takes players across an even more dynamic map, deeper seasonal systems, and expanded social features – and of course, plenty of race events. With stunning visuals and an ever-growing roster of cars, Forza Horizon 6 feels like a dream of motorheads come true.

Arknights: Endfield

Arknights: Endfield represents a major shift for the franchise, expanding its tower-defense roots into a full-fledged action RPG. Real-time combat, squad-based mechanics, and large-scale environments are just a few highlights of the experience, but there’s a lot more to get excited about as well. Despite the stark change, the game retains its distinctive art style and emphasis on world-building. Arknights: Endfield already received great critical and commercial reception on PC, and it is definitely worth checking out.

He noted that, ultimately, it’s up to Rockstar Games to “do what they’re going to do,” and his job is to focus more on what Xbox Game Studios can do in the service of the games being released under its banner.

“I mean, it’s more that they’re going to do what they’re going to do,” said Duncan. “My job is to do what we should do for the best of our games. So yeah, we don’t… there’s always other games, and there’s always other things we have to consider.”

Xbox Game Studios is also focused on making sure that its various releases don’t crowd each other, which eventually lead to them cannibalizing each others’ sales. Rather, the company is focused on spacing out its releases.

“I think that we ideally want to space things out and make sure games have their own, as we like to call it, oxygen in those moments,” he explained. “It’s just super busy. Our own release schedule is one thing, but then you have everyone else’s release schedule at the same time.”

Generally speaking, there is also the fact that there aren’t many windows where games can come out this year and not instantly be crowded with other releases, be they games, movies or music. “There are very few windows and there’s more and more games, and more competition for a player’s time,” he said. “There’s also movies, music, and all this other stuff as well that gets packed in. So the learning was this: let’s not put stuff on top of our stuff, and I think we have done that. Let our games have a bit of oxygen, even though it’s always busy and there’s never really a free time to launch something.”

Duncan’s thoughts on the release window of Fable comes on the heels of new details about the open-world RPG being revealed. Among these details is the fact that the title will have 1,000 hand-crafted NPCs populating its world. Just last week, studio founder Ralph Fulton spoke about how there were discussions about procedurally generating these NPCs, “but we abandoned that idea quite a long time ago because we wanted to craft every one of these NPCs from their name, to their appearance, to their personality traits, to that moral worldview that I talked about, to where they work and where they live and what their family unit is, because it’s important to the player that they can get to know unique crafted NPCs.”

Incidentally, this also led to creating a lot more work for the environment art team, since every one of these NPCs has a schedule, which means that they also need beds that they can go to when it’s time for them to sleep.

For more on Fable, check out why its world will be smaller than that of a Forza Horizon game, and why your character’s body won’t morph as a consequence of your moral choices.

But lo and behold, Playground knocked it out of the park.

Currently set to launch this Autumn for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PS5, Fable isn’t necessarily a reboot or a remake so much as a new beginning. It’s the development team’s take on Albion with the core fantasy of “go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.” Role-playing is such a fundamental core of the franchise, but its particular brand – that of living in a fairytale – exists in a different stratosphere beyond other greats. And yet Playground Games didn’t just execute on the appeal of the originals – it’s evolving the formula in some meaningful and genuinely innovative ways.

Take the morality system, for instance. For decades, video games have followed the same principles – do something good and people love you, but do something bad, and you’re scorned. Between completing missions to build a reputation, there have been morally grey decisions which teeter on the edge of choosing the lesser evil or committing sins for the greater good. With Fable, the development team decided that morality isn’t a “sliding scale” but what others think of your actions.

Going around and assailing chickens, a franchise staple, earns you that unique title if at least one person sees it, but that doesn’t mean everyone will disapprove. In Fable, morality is in the eyes of the beholder – having a reputation for one thing could make you well-liked in one place and despised in another. It sounds simple at first, but with over 1,000 handcrafted NPCs, there’s a whole lot of variance in how the world perceives you.

But what if you gain a reputation for other things? What if you’re a thief in one settlement and a gentleman (or lady) in another? Well, people will perceive you differently, allowing you to carefully curate multiple identities based on your actions, just like in the real world. And once again, not everyone may like you, even if you’re the nicest, most benevolent landlord in town.

That’s another aspect which has me so tickled. If you’re looking to be a hero for hire, slaying cockatrices and Hobbes, maybe spend some time blacksmithing, go right ahead. But you can also become a landlord and just buy up all the properties. Walk into a business, and they’ll address you as “boss.” You can also own a house that someone rents and then evict them. So while several people will echo your greatness and generosity through the streets, there’s that one guy who hates your guts because you evicted him for fun. Maybe that reputation will spread as you wrong others, but slip a few coins to the town crier to sing your praise, and it won’t really matter.

The fact that there are over 1,000 handcrafted NPCs, each with their own backstories and fully voiced conversations, is already impressive enough (and yes, they actually have schedules, getting up at set times to go to work). But being able to interact with them on this scale, forging not just a single heroic legacy but multiple, based on how they view you, is awe-inspiring. These alone explain why Fable took so long to develop.

And yet, there’s even more.

There is a set path – a hero’s calling, if you will – where the player awakens their powers and pursues a mysterious individual after their grandmother and village are turned to stone. You’re told to seek the Heroes’ Guild in Bowerstone, and yet, you can forego that entirely to just go anywhere. From the very moment that you set out, the entire world is open. No restrictions. It’s effectively about the kind of story you want to write for yourself, and how to go about achieving that.

If that means subjugating entire settlements by becoming a tyrannical landlord, then so be it. However, it could also mean dealing with that giant on the outskirts of town, and deciding whether he should live or die, thus highlighting yet another classic: Actions have consequences. I can see myself earning a reputation as a “giant slayer” for taking him down. It’s also possible that others will view me as a nuisance because now his big, fat corpse is littering the countryside (and I don’t even want to imagine what the smell will be like). Will there be violent disagreements over whether I was justified or not? Time will tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Granted, there’s still a lot that’s yet to be revealed in terms of balance, since Playground didn’t want player level to inhibit where they go. I also need to see more of the combat, but right now, the fact that enemies can accidentally hurt each other is already promising. Just like the rest of the game, you can choose a fighting style that best fits already has me intrigued. Based on what we’ve seen, combat looks crunchy, although some additional polish is definitely needed when it comes to overall animations.

And yet, that doesn’t diminish how beautiful the world of Albion looks. Throughout the years, hearing that Fable would take cues from The Witcher 3 in terms of its combat had me somewhat worried. Was the development team going to ape all aspects of fantasy from CDPR’s classic, and slap the Fable name on it? Much to my relief, no. Fable embraces the fairy tale aspect of the franchise with aplomb – from the art style and the events to the humor and the personalities.

As much as I would like another massive open world to explore, 2026 already has me covered on two fronts with Crimson Desert and Grand Theft Auto 6 (assuming the latter isn’t delayed). Microsoft needed Fable to really stand apart and justify pulling others in – a day one launch on PS5 is nice, but it needed even more. From a skeptic who side-eyed this game for years, wondering if it grew too ambitious for its own good, I think it’s safe to say that Playground Games has pulled it off.

There are still so many ways that it could go wrong or end up falling short (or even cause a delay). For now, though, Fable looks to be living up to the years of hype around it. In a way, it’s great that the team held off on really showcasing everything until it was good and ready, and the fact that we’ve seen all this without knowing anything about where the story could go, who the big bad is (if they exist) or what other stories await is as enticing as it is scary. Even character creation, a staple of every game in the franchise, was only lightly touched on, but the results are impressive enough.

I won’t go as far as to say that Xbox is saved or anything, but one thing is for sure: Fable is back, and Playground Games may finally deliver on its ambitious premise.

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.

“We talked about how it kind of felt like some games had moved on in a more sophisticated way to discuss morality,” Fulton explained. “And certainly, when we looked at the world, there’s no objective good, there’s no objective evil. I think there’s nothing you could do in the world that would unite everybody in the belief that it was good or evil, right? It’s entirely subjective, and I think that’s also really interesting. It’s certainly interesting as a game system, and that’s kind of what we’ve pursued.”

When it comes to nuanced morality systems, games have largely opted for more binary representations of actions that are good or evil. However, there have been some notable exceptions, especially in the RPG genre. BioWare’s Dragon Age series, for instance, has often focused on having its morality system revolve around the thoughts and opinions of your companions.

“We’ve pursued a much more shades of gray approach to morality, where the things you do are the things you do, and if you do them enough, or if enough people see you doing them, you’ll gain a reputation in that particular settlement, that particular area of the world, for doing that thing,” Fulton continued. This reputation-based morality system, he noted, “is more probably representative of how morality exists in the world that we live in today.”

Fulton had previously noted that Fable wouldn’t be using a “sliding scale” for its morality system. Just last week, he described the in-game system as being “anchored around the actions you do.”

“So, if the things you do are seen by one or more people, you’ll start to earn a reputation for that thing. Obviously, we always use the chicken kicking example, because kicking chickens is classic Fable,” he explained. “It’s a more potential-filled system for you to go play with, because you are juggling the things you do, and you’re juggling who sees you do it. You’re deciding whether you’re OK with walking around the town with people thinking that you’re that.”

Fable is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is set for release this year. For more details, here’s how the RPG will feature 1,000 handcrafted NPCs in its world, how that meant the environment art team had to make beds for all of them, and why its world will be smaller than a Forza Horizon game. Also check out why the new reputation-based morality system will no longer morph your character’s body, unlike the previous entries in the Fable franchise.

Granted, there’s still plenty of time for skepticism, especially with its launch scheduled for Fall 2025, but it certainly has Xbox Game Studios lead Craig Duncan buzzing. The former head of Rare told GamesRadar+ about Playground and its “relentless pursuit of excellence” after taking on the Fable franchise.

“When I think about Playground and their history with the Forza Horizon franchise, and their desire to take on Fable as a franchise, I think it’s really about this relentless pursuit of excellence. We all know what that means in Forza Horizon; we’ve all seen that franchise get bigger and bigger every year, but what does that mean for Fable?”

Apparently, an experience that makes Duncan’s brain pop. “I have played a bunch of the game, I’ve messed around with the combat and the Living Population, and it’s just mind-blowing. I’m so excited that we talked about it in the Developer Direct, because it’s something people wouldn’t expect.

“There were some really special ideas in the original Fable trilogy, but what I think Playground has done is take some of these ideas and modernized them – my brain pops every time I think about the Living Population, how it works, and what it adds to the overall game; it’s an incredible invention, and Fable is going to be an incredible RPG. It will be amazing to see what players do with it, and it’ll be massively shareable.”

High praise, especially for a game that still has a ways to go (and plenty of ways to slip up). Thus far, Playground has certainly been making all the right moves. The world design, for example, doesn’t crib from Forza Horizon – it’s smaller with “tons to explore,” and where players can enter every building. Its Living Population required no short amount of consideration because everyone needs a bed, a way to get to work and adequate city planning to ensure neither takes up much time.

Fable is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC at launch alongside Game Pass. A day-one launch on PlayStation is certainly odd, given that Forza Horizon 6’s PS5 version is out later this year instead of May but Duncan and his crew are aware.

Considering the fact that Fable’s NPCs will follow full-fledged life-like schedules, like going to work during the day or going back home for the night, this also meant that artists had to make homes for all of them.

“They’ll get up, they’ll go to work, they’ll have some leisure time, they’ll go back to their home, and they’ll go to bed,” he said about the NPCs.

“And immediately, you know when you hear that, certainly as a developer, you start going, ‘Oh, okay, so every NPC, and there’s more than 1,000 of them in the game, needs a bed.’ And you have that conversation with the environment art team, and they’re like, ‘they need what now?’ Which is, it brings you to a very different way of building a game, because it needs to be functional as well as beautiful.”

This also indicates that NPCs will have more than just copy-pasted identical housing. Rather, the fact the environment art team was shocked at the number means that we might see more of the personalities of these NPCs start shining through thanks to things like how they decorate their homes and bedrooms, and what their preferred style of furniture might be.

This would fall in line with the fact that the NPCs will also be handcrafted rather than being procedurally generated. Fulton had previously spoken about trying the latter, but he said that “we abandoned that idea quite a long time ago because we wanted to craft every one of these NPCs from their name, to their appearance, to their personality traits, to that moral worldview that I talked about, to where they work and where they live and what their family unit is, because it’s important to the player that they can get to know unique crafted NPCs.”

“And like I said, there are 1,000 of them in the game. You can go and speak to every single one of them in fully voiced conversations. You could marry…it’ll be a bit of work, but you could marry them all. You can have kids with them, you can hire them, you can fire them. They are just great fun.”

Fulton has also previously hinted at how big Fable‘s world will be. Bringing up a comparison with Forza Horizon, he noted that Fable‘s worlds will be smaller, since “Horizon worlds are designed to be experienced at 250 miles per hour. So, you cover the distance far faster in those games than you do in ours. In our game, you move at the speed of a horse at most.”

Fable is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release later this year.