Fable confirms full main story length and it's surprisingly low

Xbox has confirmed the full main story length for 2027’s Fable in a new Q&A at Gamescom, and the real number is a lot shorter than we were expecting.

As one of the most popular RPG series on Xbox, the Fable series’ comeback next year has been getting a lot of new details lately from Microsoft and Playground Games.

Appearing at Gamescom 2026, the publisher has spilled a few pieces of information regarding how long the game will take to beat if you’re after a main story completion, but a timeframe for side content has also been given.

How long to beat Fable (2027)

As reported by Polygon, the full main story of Fable will only take around 20 hours to complete. However, when you add side content and activities into the mix, you should be able to get another 20 hours out of it.

In addition to that, Playground Games’ associate game director Will Kennedy also cites the limitless potential of the life sim mechanics in the game, saying that “you can play them for as long as you want”.

So while 20 hours to complete the game may seem a little on the shorter side for a AAA RPG, you could squeeze quite a bit of extra juice out of this game if you engage with everything it has to offer.

Nowadays, a typical role-playing game may take you between 50 and 100 hours to complete, so having one where you can hit the credits within 20 hours is certainly a nice change of pace. And then if you want to play much more of it, you have the option to do so.

Read More: Fable Pre-Order Guide

Xbox Game Studios

And to be fair, it’s not like the original Fable games were that long either. The original Fable takes around 12 hours to complete the main story, at least according to the website How Long To Beat.

Meanwhile, the same website lists both Fable 2 and Fable 3 as taking 13 hours to finish their stories, with completionist times hitting close to 50 hours. Altogether, it looks like 2027’s Fable is going to have roughly the same experience here.

Announced way back in 2020, Fable was revealed alongside the Xbox Series X/S consoles, and received its first in-game trailer in 2023.

It was later set for a release in 2025 for PC and Xbox consoles, before being pushed back to 2026. It was then announced to be coming to PlayStation 5 in addition to PC and Xbox, before seeing one more delay push the game back from Autumn 2026 to February 2027.

It'll be the first Fable game to be released since 2012's Fable: The Journey. However, it looks like you won't need to have played the earlier games if you missed out on them, as Playground Games seems to be rebooting the universe.

Fable is now due to hit PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 on February 23, 2027.

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