Microsoft's first-party line-up is still a little lacking, and one of its most anticipated titles, Fable, is still nowhere to be seen. Heavily leaked in the year building up to its official announcement in 2020, Fable is set to be a brand-new beginning for the tongue-in-cheek fantasy franchise. That new beginning also extends to Fable's developer, Playground Games, which is making quite the departure from its usual resume to create this game.
Founded in 2010, Playground Games is a developer located in England most famous for its extensive work on the Forza Horizon series. Naturally, there's quite a big shift between Forza and Fable, and while Microsoft is confident that the studio can finally pull off the long-awaited Fable franchise revival, fans still aren't too sure. But if it does manage to pull it out of the bag, then Playground Games could soon be known as one of the industry's greats, right alongside the likes of Bethesda, which is about to undergo its own big leap.
Fable Is An Ambitious Next Step for Playground Games
After opening in 2010, Playground Games was soon approached by Xbox to create a spinoff to the mainline Forza series named Forza Horizon. For the next decade, Playground Games exclusively made Forza Horizon sequels, going all the way up to Forza Horizon 5's release in 2021. For a studio's very first game, Forza Horizon is an incredibly impressive title, featuring some excellent racing gameplay and technical features that are still impressive over a decade later. As the years went on, and Playground became more experienced, the Forza Horizon series only continued to grow in popularity and quality, even filling in the sizable gap left by the lack of a mainline Forza game.
But while the Forza Horizon series is incredibly impressive, and Playground Games is clearly a very talented studio that's only gotten more talented with age and experience, taking on the Fable license might be biting off more than it can chew. On a purely surface level, Forza Horizon and Fable are two very different games. One game is a sandbox racer, while the other is a sprawling fantasy RPG with third-person combat. For some developers, translating skills across genres isn't the easiest task, and there are few genres as different as racing games and RPGs.
It also doesn't help that there's a lot riding on this Fable reboot. To many fans, the Fable franchise peaked with Fable 2 back in 2008, with the game offering a plethora of different combat options, customization features, and a ton of compelling content. Though Fable 3 was still a solid entry, it lacked a lot of what made its predecessor so beloved, and as a result, the mainline Fable series has been on hiatus since 2010, with only Kinect games, remasters, and card games coming in between. Xbox is really relying on Fable becoming one of its core first-party franchises once again, and that might put quite a bit of pressure on Playground Games, which comes on top of all the pressures associated with developing a game in an unexplored genre.
Though it isn't quite as much of a leap, Bethesda's Starfield might be going through a similar development process to Fable's. While Starfield looks to be carrying over a lot of the same systems present in previous Bethesda games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls, it's also adding its fair share of new mechanics, some of which have never been explored by Bethesda before. Starfield's ship flying and customization mechanics, for instance, seem completely new for the developer. And, of course, there's a lot riding on Starfield too.
Fable 4 is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.