Fable
About the game
Fable is the return of Xbox's fantasy role-playing series, this time in the hands of Playground Games, the studio behind Forza Horizon. It's a third-person, open-world action RPG set in Albion, the series' storybook realm: British humor, moral choices and heroes whose endings are never guaranteed. You begin as a child who discovers hidden powers and then jump to adulthood in the village of Briar Hill, where a huge, seamless map opens up to explore at your own pace.
A world that reacts to what you do
Combat blends melee, magic and ranged weapons, built so you can chain all three fluidly instead of committing to just one. But what defines Fable is how the world answers back: over a thousand individually voiced NPCs, a morality and reputation system that shapes how people treat you, romance and marriage, houses you can buy and buildings you can actually enter. Series creatures return —Hobbes, Balverines and Trolls— alongside brand-new foes. It's a strictly single-player affair with no online component, designed as a long narrative adventure.
Where it stands and what you pay
The game is still in development. It was announced in 2020, shown in more detail in 2023, and dragged through several delays: from a 2025 window to fall 2026 and, finally, to a firm date of February 23, 2027 (Xbox blamed a crowded 2026 slate). Playground Games is developing it with support from Eidos-Montréal, Third Kind Games and Blizzard, and the footage shown so far is still pre-alpha: there's no public beta and no reviews yet. It launches on Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC, the first time a Fable reaches a Sony console; on PC it lives on its Steam page.
The model is full-price Buy to Play: the Standard edition costs USD 69.99. Above it sit the Premium (USD 99.99), which adds 5 days of early access (February 18, 2027), the Order of the Hero expansion, a premium content pack and a digital artbook + soundtrack; and the Collector's (USD 199.99), with a Jack of Blades statue, physical artbook, steelbook and a Guild pin. The key point for many: it hits Xbox Game Pass on day one (console, PC and Ultimate), so subscribers can play it without buying it separately.
Who it's for (and who it isn't)
If you're after a narrative single-player RPG with moral choices, humor and an open world to get lost in on your own, Fable aims squarely at that: it's not a live-service game and has no co-op, and that's the pitch, not a shortcoming. The flip side is uncertainty: it's a project carrying long delays, footage that's still pre-alpha, and no reviews, so its final shape is yet to be seen. The real bet is whether Playground can carry the series' identity —that British storybook tone and choices that actually matter— into a bigger, more modern world. Until it ships, the sensible read is to treat it as a very promising promise, not a sure thing.