With Playground Games taking on the beloved Fable franchise after Lionhead Studios' closure, many fans are paying close attention to where the series is headed. Playground Games hasn't revealed too much about the upcoming Fable in the two years since it was first confirmed in July 2020, but players are staying hopeful. Fans do know that it will run on the developer's in-house game engine, ForzaTech, and that it appears to be a reboot that will embrace the series' early fairytale roots. Beyond that, the rest is very much a mystery.
Despite the lack of new information, there are some things that players hope to see in the next installment. A move away from the more industrialized focus of Fable 3 will be a welcome one, and the return to the fantastical monsters and prominence of magic in the first game would be a popular choice. While there are elements of Fable 3 that most players would be happy to leave behind, there are some that the new Fable needs to build upon and offer its own version of, like the central setting of Bowerstone.
A New Focal Point
In the original trilogy, Bowerstone served a pretty important function. In the first Fable, Bowerstone was the largest town and the economic center of Albion. Here, gamers could see a lot of Fable's politics and plot points play out, as well as utilizing Bowerstone as a safe central hub. Thanks to the massive time jump between Fable and Fable 2, players found a very different Bowerstone to the quaint town they remembered. It was now a large city filled with people and potentially riddled with crime depending on how the first game turned out. Fairfax Castle dominated the city's skyline, and players could explore even more of the area through the course of the game.
Fable 3 brought the largest amount of change between titles, as the third entry replaced a lot of the folkloric and fantastical elements of the previous two with more modern features. Albion's industrial revolution had completely transformed its capital city, with factories crowding the riverside and tall chimneys clogging the skies with smoke. Bowerstone was a symbolic location in each of the titles and was used to represent the state of Albion at the time each game took place. While players could encounter people throughout Albion, Bowerstone was still the focal point of each Fable, and the upcoming title definitely needs its own version of the iconic city.
The Direction Of The Fable Franchise
Playground Games' Fable seems to be mixing things up. While the teaser trailer made it clear that the game will be maintaining the series' familiar sense of humor and its use of fairytale elements, some other aspects are seeing a more profound change. Although there were rumors of an MMO focus, an open-world setting seems to be confirmed for the new Fable after a recent job listing. The voiceover for the trailer treads familiar Fable ground, detailing how "the world is filled with stories of legendary heroes and treacherous villains. Of fantastical creatures and wondrous places." It seems the themes from the first three games are in place, but it remains to be seen how the newest Fable will be providing its own spin on them.
However the game shapes up, whether it's set far in the future, is more of a prequel, or even transposes the action to a different world entirely, fans are hoping it provides its own take on Bowerstone. No matter how large the next Fable is, it needs a hub location where players can engage with the society, get to know NPCs, and perhaps purchase property and lay down roots like in previous games. Bowerstone was a connection between the different entries in the series and was a clear indication of how the world had progressed. A version of this in the new Fable would help to deepen the world and give context to the story, as well as ground the action in a place that served as the heart of the game.
Fable is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.