The delayed reboot is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC on February 23.
Xbox has shared a lengthy gameplay video for Fable, which shows off what the developers at Playground Games are calling the Living Population system. This concerns the more than 1,000 non-playable, fully voiced characters in the action RPG, and how your interactions with them (and your actions in the broader world) affect how they perceive and react to you.
Playground says these NPCs each have their own personalities and day-to-day lives, all of which the studio designed by hand. Your character (who others refer to simply as Hero) can interact with all of the NPCs, including by making friends with them, hiring them as employees, romancing them and turning them into enemies.
Unfortunately, we can’t embed the video here due to age restrictions Xbox put in place. However, you can check it out on YouTube. It’s our most in-depth look yet at the fantasy world of Fable. The video highlights the consequences of the choices you make in the branching dialogue system, such as how they affect your reputation in a certain settlement.
It features the Hero saving a talking pig and buying a pub before picking up a job to earn more money to purchase a house and impress a love interest. Committing crimes and causing chaos will impact your reputation as well, of course. It’s also possible to pay off the town crier to say something nice about you and sway other characters’ perceptions of the Hero.
It seems to be an interesting, complex system that’s made me more intrigued to try Fable. The game looks lovely, too, as you might expect from the studio behind the Forza Horizon series. After some delays, Fable is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC on February 23.
