Xbox’s big Fable reveal confirms ‘truly’ open world, and Xbox and PlayStation release this Autumn

Xbox and Playground Games have debuted the first deep dive into Fable, which is confirmed for release on Xbox, PC (including Steam), and PlayStation 5 in Autumn 2026.

During a Developer Direct, Playground promised British humour, moral dilemmas, and a “truly” open world, with the freedom to go wherever players want. Players will be able to customise their player character and their playstyle across melee combat, ranged weapons, and spells.

Playground also promised a range of activities alongside questing and combat, like side jobs, romancing, housing, and the ability to chat with NPCs.

Game director Ralph Fulton said: “Fable is Playground’s first open-world action RPG, and we couldn’t be more proud to be carrying on the work of the legendary Lionhead Studios, the original creators of the franchise. And although our game is a new beginning, I think what we’re making is really faithful to the spirit of the classic Lionhead trilogy that we all love.”

Notably, according to Playground, each NPC in Fable will have a unique name and job, and players will be able to follow them around and monitor their actions as they go to work and later, head home for rest in their own house.

Playground calls these NPCs “a Living Population”, which includes over 1,000 characters, each with roles, personalities, and routines. Fable also features a reputation system, and NPCs will react to you based on your actions in the game.

“So if a person sees you kicking a chicken, you will start to get a reputation as a ‘Chicken Chaser’ – and if enough people see you do it, or you do it a lot, that reputation will become one of the things you’re known for in that settlement,” explained Fulton. “And people will react to you based on what they think about that particular reputation.

“But, crucially, different people will view that reputation in different ways. Kicking chickens isn’t objectively good or objectively evil in a way everybody will agree on – it comes down to the unique worldview of the NPC what they think of you because of it.”

In classic Fable fashion, players begin the game as a child growing up in the sleepy rural village of Briar Hill. It’s here that your heroic powers first emerge, and you discover that you’re Albion’s first hero in a generation.

“But not long afterwards, disaster strikes, and the people of your village, including your beloved grandma, are turned to stone by a mysterious stranger. Suddenly alone in the world, you’ll set off on an adventure which will change Albion forever.”

The rebooted Fable will feature many familiar locations and characters from the original Lionhead games, but Playground says it’s ‘not beholden’ to the timeline of those games and, narratively, the game represents “a new beginning” for the series.

However, Fulton said Playground’s version of Fable has a clear connection to Lionhead’s overarching design, and revealed the project started with the team reading through old design documents that had been kept in storage.

“Something that I thought was just brilliantly succinct was one of the documents, which said: ‘Fable is Fairytale, not Fantasy’ – which is just super neat,” he told Xbox Wire.

“I guess our interpretation of what that means is that fairytale and fantasy probably exist on opposite ends of a spectrum. I think we all know what fantasy is – it’s The Witcher, it’s Skyrim, it’s Lord of the Rings, it’s 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 picture the color palette of fantasy.

“And then fairytale exists right at the opposite end of that spectrum. Fairytales are intimate, they’re small stories about regular people; they’re not grand and sweeping, they’re very personal and whimsical and ultimately, they deal with what happens when magic touches the lives of ordinary folks. And also they have this kind of moral component to them.

“And I think that is 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 fairytale idea in every part of the game that we’re building.”

Microsoft’s Fable reboot, the first since the closure of original developer Lionhead in 2016, has been in development for some time.

The project was first announced back in 2020, with British Forza Horizon studio Playground Games confirmed to be developing the game with a new team. Things then went quiet until a cinematic trailer starring Richard Ayoade was premiered in 2023.

It would be another full year before the game was seen again, in a second trailer confirming that the game would star Matt ‘Super Hans’ King from Peep Show, and had a 2025 release window.