One thing also emerges clearly from the new trailer for Fable released at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024: Playground Games seems to have hit the right spirit, recovering the typical British humor and using the epic action RPG structure to also poke fun at the clichés of the fantasy genre. From this point of view, the game seems perfectly in line with the classic tone of the series, and this is no small thing, if we also consider how often, in the current videogame panorama, there is very little space for ironic digressions, especially in large-scale productions. caliber like this. The fact that such a technical prodigy is put at the service of a rather original idea, or in any case outside the classic patterns of the epic pushed to paroxysm or “Marvel-style” dialogues, is already a very convincing element, a pity that even from this new trailer makes it difficult to understand anything else about the actual game.
If nothing else, the video has finally associated a time window with the title in question: vague, obviously, but at least existing. Now we’re talking about 2025 as the release year, which also entails the need to talk about it again before too long, and possibly exploring in more detail how the game works. For the moment, in this slow approach, we can be satisfied with the way in which Playground and Microsoft have decided to progressively present Fable to the public, that is, joking about it a bit, but at the same time shooting at the public at zero point with extraordinary power in terms of of technique. The graphics that also shine through in the new trailer are absolutely impressive, and demonstrate how this title is one of the most important productions of the entire Xbox Game Studios galaxy.
Albion’s greatest hero
This latest video also continues with the fantasy comedy tone that we saw appear for the first time in the teaser and then structured in a way already codified in the last trailer.
After seeing the giant Dave with his passion for horticulture, in this case Let’s meet Humphry, aka “the greatest hero Albion has ever known”, now retired. While the former seemed like a sort of incidental presence in the story of Fable, perhaps a boss or in any case an element somewhat external to the main story of the protagonist, Humphry seems to be a more important figure in the narrative of the game, destined to play a role of a certain importance, if only for something that the great hero seems to have done in the past and whose consequences are reflected in the events told in this new chapter.
Played by British actor Matt King, known for the Peep Show series, Humphry seems like a sort of mentor to the protagonist, but his story about a girl full of talent but who has made “all the wrong choices”, cleverly edited into images of the exploits of the main heroine of the game, actually refers to another person, who apparently “has returned” and seems destined to bring chaos to Albion: in all likelihood, this mysterious figure will be the main villain of this chapter, or in any case a serious danger to face. The “old” hero is therefore forced to return to action, accompanied by the protagonist, to stop this looming threat.
Heroes or villains, the choice is yours?
It is not easy to glimpse the characteristics of the gameplay even in this new video, partly because it is built to be above all a narrative piece and partly because the quality of the graphics in some cases is so high that it is not entirely understandable where the cutscenes and you start the actual game part.
It had already happened with the previous trailer on Dave, with the developers even having to intervene to explain that what was shown in various phases actually represented the gameplay of the game, and even in this case the boundary is not easily identifiable. However, at this point we can begin to discern things a little, seeing how the phases with the typical third-person shot behind the protagonist are perhaps taken from the actual action.
The exploration in the city is certainly a familiar element, as are the dialogues with the inhabitants and their different reactions to our presence, which closely resemble the continuous chatter that accompanied us on walks in the village in the first chapters of the series. The dualism between hero and villain, with the various nuances in between, seem to be fundamental elements in this case too, with the trailer which seems revolve around the concept of “choices” (wrong, above all, as regards the mysterious nemesis that hovers in the story).
One might think that this is a cardinal point of Fable, in line with its tradition, on the other hand: the basic concept of the entire series, since the first elaborations of Peter Molyneuxit was always the idea of an adventure that led us to explore the consequences of our actions, with decisions that would have a profound impact on the evolution of the character, leading him to become a good hero or an evil figure.
The objective has only been partially achieved in the past, but the idea is that this central core has also been preserved for this new chapter and the trailer published last week delves further into this aspect. For the rest, it can be understood that the gameplay both the classic fantasy action adventure, with phases of exploration and dialogue, a substantial narrative base and fights involving the use of sidearms, long-range weapons (bows and arrows emerge several times in the trailers) and also magic, as per tradition .
Between classic and modern
The classic elements of the series begin to be easily identifiable in the latest Fable trailer, considering that to the ironic tone and fairy-tale setting we can now also add the possibility that there is a certain space reserved for choices to be made on how to continue on our journey .
The gameplay structure also seems close to the traditional one, with the action framed in third person behind the protagonist and a combat system that allows you to use various types of weapons and probable magical abilities to learn. Obviously there is still a lot to understand, because so far Playground Games has decided to focus everything on the atmosphere and the story in its first published glimpses, to immerse us in the bizarre world built first of all through the narration and the amazement resulting from the wonders staged , as befits a real fairy tale.
Everything else is still to be evaluated, and it’s the biggest part of the game, to be honest. For the moment we can say that Fable is perhaps one of the most graphically impressive games seen recently, with the developers who seem to have managed to bend an engine specialized in something else like ForzaTech to the very different needs of an action adventure.
A complicated mission that must have weighed heavily on the team’s resources, but as a result it brought the aesthetic aspect of the game to an impressive level of quality. In the meantime we have learned that the release is scheduled for 2025, and some rumors point to the end of the year, although a possible postponement to the next one would not surprise us: there is still a lot of time left, but at least Fable has an increasingly concrete form and more and more beautiful.
