Xbox closed out its 25th anniversary FanFest in Seattle with a fresh look at one of its biggest upcoming games. CEO Asha Sharma shared four minutes of new quest gameplay from Fable, Playground Games' long-in-development revival of the fantasy RPG series, captured from a work-in-progress PC build running at Ultra settings.
The footage follows a quest titled Something in the Water. The Hero of Briar Hill has entered the depths of Deepwood alongside Arden, a local Hero, to investigate why strange magical happenings have been troubling the people of Oakshire — and, as Xbox describes it, the pair cross a threshold where the natural magic of Deepwood appears corrupted by an outside force, discovering hints as to who or what could be responsible.
Watch the quest gameplay here:
The trail leads toward Isabel, who allegedly attacked a village and turned its inhabitants to stone. Arden, voiced by Susan Wokoma, is a Hero who rejected her heroic calling and now works as a cobbler, and the walkthrough mixes conversation and exploration with fights against undead enemies and a mysterious cavern filled with supernatural phenomena.
Combat gets its own showcase, built around three styles — melee, ranged and magic — that players can freely switch between mid-fight. FanFest attendees went hands-on with the game the same night, and Xbox is breaking the footage down further with Playground Games on the Official Xbox Podcast.
The reaction since has been split. Some fans praised the combat, while others complained the gameplay leans heavily on walking, talking and cutscenes, that Arden delivers a lot of exposition, and that the movement looks stiff. The biggest debate is the look: where the first three games wrapped Albion's dark fairy-tale edges in bright, colorful whimsy, this corner of it looks bleak — though the sequence is set in a forest twisted by dark forces, and the previous trailer looked noticeably brighter.
The original trilogy, released between 2004 and 2010, built its reputation on choice-driven storytelling in which the Hero's actions visibly shaped both Albion and their own appearance, all wrapped in a storybook art style. Playground Games, best known for the Forza Horizon series, is stepping outside racing for the first time with the revival, and the new game does not follow the established timeline of its predecessors — giving the studio a clean slate for its own version of Albion.
It is the first game in the series not developed by Lionhead Studios, which Microsoft closed in 2016, and the revival has been a long time coming — reports of a new Fable first emerged in 2018. "It's been a long road to bring this franchise back, and I'm proud of the work Playground Games is doing," Sharma said.
Fable launches on Tuesday, February 23, 2027, for Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5 and PC, following a delay out of its original fall 2026 window.
Source: Xbox
