Ex-'Fable' Developer Explains Why The New Game Is Taking So Long

You know what I'm getting a little tired of? Games being announced way too early. It seems to happen so often these days that we'll get a teaser for something far sooner than we really needed to, and the result is sitting on a CGI trailer, or worse, a simple logo reveal for years on end. I'm looking at you, Metroid Prime 4.

Remember the Fable reboot that's happening? I'd certainly hope so, it's a pretty big deal. Announced back in 2020, it's being developed by Playground Games, y'know, the team behind the Forza Horizon series. People were already a bit perplexed by this - to change devs is one thing, but to hand over an open-world RPG to a team best known for their racing games? It's a strange one, to say the least, and it may be part of the reason why it's taking so long.

In case you missed it, check out the reveal trailer for the Fable reboot below.

As reported by TheGamer, ex-developer Juan Fernandez recently explained in an interview with Vandal (and translated by wccftech) that in his time at Playground Games, progress on Fable's development was slow, and that there weren't enough people working on it who really have the knowledge to pull off the gameplay properly.

"They're very smart and they know what they're doing. They wanted to branch out with something different[,] and they thought that what they do well is open-world racing games, [but] they lacked people with the knowledge of how gameplay is done," he said. "In an open world, how you control a character and the actions are very different from what you have in a racing game."

So that's...slightly concerning? We've still not seen anything of the game beyond that CGI reveal trailer almost two years ago, which was already pretty telling in terms of the state of its development. Then again, the same seemed to apply to Hogwarts Legacy, but as I'm sure everyone on the internet will be acutely aware by now, that got a colossal gameplay footage trailer last week. So, a long wait isn't necessarily indicative of a game's doom, but if the devs "lack knowledge" for the game they're making, that's at best questionable, and potentially disastrous.

On the back of all that, as you'd expect, there's currently no release window for Fable, other than the fact that it's apparently set to come out before The Elder Scrolls VI. Which doesn't help a great deal, as that's also probably years away, but it's something, I guess.

Topics: Xbox, Xbox Game Studios, Fable, Playground Games