Yesterday, Microsoft held their long-awaited Xbox Series X showcase event, featuring a host of new game announcements and trailers. Among the new reveals was a brief teaser trailer for an all-new Fable; something which some gamers have been hoping to see for years. However, it now seems as though the game might actually be a Fable MMO, not a standard RPG.
Is the New Fable a Fable MMO or Not?
The Fable franchise began in 2004, and its 2008 sequel Fable II won critical acclaim as an RPG. Fable III (2010) also won high praise from critics and gamers alike, and many RPG fans have plenty of nostalgia towards the series. However, after years of financial difficulties, developer Lionhead Studios was closed down in 2016. Fable Legends, the next planned Fable game, was cancelled. Some of the studio’s key staff went on to found Two Point Studios.
Microsoft, who were the owners of Lionhead Studios, own the rights to the Fable franchise, and rumours of a new Fable game in development at Playground Games have been around since late-2018. As of yesterday, fans now know that those rumours were true. Playground Games is the studio behind the Forza Horizon series; this new Fable will be their first RPG project.
However, while initial reactions to the Fable announcement yesterday were very positive from fans, a new development has caused some concern. Ahead of yesterday’s event, a French journalist tweeted predictions of the show’s entire lineup, with information gathered from various different sources. His prediction proved to be entirely correct, even accurately predicting totally new IPs or DLC announcements. However, his list included the entry; “Fable MMO.” He has since doubled down this claim, stating, roughly; “A game in the world of Fable. But in MMO (sorry, not Fable 4).”
This is definitely a possibility. More and more games are moving towards the ongoing service model which has proven so profitable in recent years, and Microsoft may see an MMO as a safer bet than a traditional RPG. However, if this proves true, it’s unlikely to be popular with the franchise’s core fan-base and may prove detrimental in the long-run. Neither Microsoft nor Playground Games have yet confirmed one way or the other.