Fable series fans were first teased with actual images of Fable 4 in July of last year with a short trailer of a beautiful fantasy forest and one unfortunate fairy. Rumors surrounding the game simply titled "Fable" have been swirling for years, and early reports in 2018 revealed that Fable 4 is in development at Playground Games, who has worked on the Forza Horizon series. According to a recent job listing on Microsoft's website, Fable 4 will not only be in development at Playground Games but will also run using a further customized version of the ForzaTech game engine.
Playground Games has been staffing up for work on the new Fable game with a few different job listings and hires aimed at bringing more talent to the project. Playground Games hired Associate Chief Designer Steve Thornton earlier this year who has had experience working with the Assassin's Creed series and a couple of LEGO games, and the company has even recruited at least one graduate programmer to help work on the custom engine. The latest listing to add to the team is for a Software Engineer who will supposedly help in the process of "enriching the toolset" of the ForzaTech engine.
The Software Engineer position will reportedly assist with "3 AAA titles in development across 2 beloved Xbox franchises" (Forza and Fable) and will specifically be a part of Turn 10 studios, a supplementary development team assisting with the progression of the ForzaTech engine. In addition to helping develop tools that can be used across all games that use ForzaTech, the improvement of the game engine will also involve adding next-gen features like ray tracing that may be used in Fable 4 or the Forza Horizon series.
Another interesting aspect of this job listing is that it essentially confirms that Fable 4 will be an open world game and not an MMO. Although information from Fable 4 leakers has indicated that the game was never intended to be an MMO, it will have certain online features that could be similar to the drop-in/drop-out co-op of Fable 2 and Fable 3. This helps further to explain the incentive behind Playground Games bringing in new talent for Fable 4's development, as even though the Forza games are graphically impressive and feature realistic driving mechanics, they aren't designed in the same way as an open world action RPG.
Ultimately it seems the upcoming Fable game stands to benefit from the new addition to the Playground Games team, and fans now have a better idea of the company's vision for the project. Fable 4 still has no release date and it could be years away, but with confirmed development of the project, Fable series fans are closer now to experiencing another game in the series than they have been in years past.
Fable 4Â is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Microsoft