- Fable game director Ralph Fulton says the game is an adventure story, explaining that “adventure and fantasy probably exist at opposite ends of a spectrum” for Playground Games
- The game is open-world, but Fulton stresses that ‘there’s no ticking time bomb’ players need to worry about
- Fable will have stakes, but players can explore the open world and there is “nothing forcing you” along the main path
Playground Games general manager and Fable game director Ralph Fulton has called the upcoming game an open-world adventure rather than a “big and sweeping” fantasy story that players may be used to.
After the Xbox Developer Direct on January 22nd, where Playground Games finally announced it Fable launching in fall 2026 for PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PS5, Fulton revealed a lot of new information about the role-playing game (RPG) in an interview with Xbox Wire.
When asked what the essence of Fable is, Fulton explained that Playground borrowed from the original trilogy created by Lionhead Studios and decided to lean heavily into the series’ classic adventure style.
“We came up with a lot of things—the first of which I actually inherited from Lionhead. When we started working on this project, we got a treasure trove of documents from Lionhead that had been in storage,” Fulton said.
“Something that I thought was just brilliantly succinct was one of the documents that said:”Fable is Fairy tale, not Fantasy’ – which is just super nice.”
The game director explains that with Playground’s interpretation, “adventure and fantasy probably exist at opposite ends of a spectrum”, suggesting that Fable will deal with less “intimate” stories rather than something you’d expect from other grand fantasy tales.
“I think we all know what fantasy is – it is The Witcherit is Skyrimit is The Lord of the Ringsit is Game of Thrones. And I think tonally it’s quite grand, it’s sweeping, it’s geopolitical, it’s serious. You know, you can almost imagine the color palette of the imagination,” he said.
“And then fairy tales exist right at the opposite end of that spectrum. Fairy tales are intimate, they’re little stories about ordinary people; they’re not grand and sweeping, they’re very personal and whimsical and ultimately they’re about what happens when magic touches ordinary people’s lives. And they also have this sort of moral component to them.
“And I think that’s a brilliant description of what Fable really is – it runs through our art style, it runs through our world building. We’ve really executed against that adventure idea in every part of the game that we’re building.”
Look at
IN Fableplayers will be able to explore the land of Albion, an immersive, medieval-like world of choices and consequences, reputation and adventure endings.
From the new trailer, it’s clear that Albion will be rich with new discoveries, but Fulton emphasized that players will still be able to take time to enjoy the world, despite the game having stakes.
He explained that the events of the game begin to unfold after an inciting incident, which he calls “the catalyst” for the story, where the player’s grandmother and everyone in the village they grew up in are turned to stone by a mysterious stranger.
The player is then left alone and forced to venture out into the world, and it is suggested that you visit Bowerstone, the Heroes’ Guild; however, the game director explained that there is nothing that “forces” players to go down that path first.
“So there’s a soft hint that you should go to the Heroes’ Guild and maybe there’s help they can give you,” Fulton said.
“But the nature of our game is that as soon as you leave your village, you can go pretty much anywhere. It’s really open world, so the world is yours to explore. And we’ve written the story so that even though there are stakes—your grandmother, your village—there’s no ticking time bomb.
“There’s nothing forcing you along the path, because we want to give the player permission to just go and do something else in the game. You can go to the northernmost village in Albion, get a job, settle down and get married if you want. The story is waiting for you, which I think is really important with the really rich side activities that Fable game included.”
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