OK, Microsoft, we admit it. We were nervous about the return of Fable after so long, especially since we hadn’t seen it in a while. With the latest gameplay reveal at the Xbox Developer Direct 2026, however, it’s clear that this could just be the return to form we’ve been begging for over the last two console generations.
From a PS5 release to thousands of NPCs, here are the most surprising things we spotted in the Fable gameplay reveal (which, coincidentally, you can watch below in case you missed it).
The Escapist recaps
- Fable is a series reboot that’ll launch later in 2026.
- There’s no release date, but it does look as though it’ll capture the same British wit and whimsy that made the original trilogy so beloved.
- The game will launch on PC, Xbox, and PS5 and was announced in 2020.
The Living Population
This point encompasses a whole bunch of gob-smacking details. Fable’s population is intended to feel ‘alive’, and as a result, they’ll continue to exist whether you’re there or not.
They have names, relationships, schedules, and perhaps most impressively of all, voice acting.
Playground Games explained during the presentation:
“There are more than a thousand of them, and every single one is unique. Each of them has a name, a role, a daily routine, and their own personality. You could follow any one of them for a day and just watch them live their life.”
This all helps them feel as though they react to just about anything you do, bringing us nicely to your Reputation.
Reputation
Depending on how you act around NPCs, you’ll get drastically different reactions from them. If you’re hiring people for your local businesses, they’ll call you boss and be more polite. Evict them from a home you own, and you’ll see them on the street cursing your name.
It’s worth noting that, as things stand, your appearance won’t change based on your actions. That’s a shame, given that it was a big part of the original games, but in an interview with IGN, Playground’s founder and general manager, Ralph Fulton, explained that it’s due to a less binary view on morality.
“We talk about how our morality system is more about shades of gray. It’s more about the subjectivity of morality that honestly we see in the world today. There’s no objective good, there’s no objective evil. You couldn’t get everyone in the world to agree that something is evil or something is good. That just doesn’t happen. That diversity of opinion I think is really clear these days.”
Romance and more
You could marry characters in the classic Fable games, but just a quick look at the 2026 version is enough to say, “My, how courting has changed”.
Looks like we’ll be heading off on dates and buying gifts, before settling down and, uh, going out and potentially starting more families. We won’t judge (OK, maybe we’ll judge a little), but we’re curious to see how far this goes.
Could your offspring grow old enough to become heroes in their own right? Will they be added to the huge cast of NPCs? Or do they stay the same age throughout? We’ll find out.
Working 9-5
You’ll be able to make money your way in Fable, meaning you can try buying up houses to rent them to townsfolk, try your hand at smithing, or invest in local businesses.
The breadth on offer is impressive, and there will doubtless be ways to min/max your cash flow. One example in the gameplay reveal showed a player buying every house in the town – that’s some nice, passive income that could only come from a fantasy game, because buying a house in real life is a never-ending nightmare.
Character Customization
Character customization has been at the core of the Fable series since its inception, but with so many pre-release trailers focusing on one particular character model, we had worried we wouldn’t be able to change much of their appearance.
Oh, how wrong we were. The game will offer a wide range of character customization options, including customizable heads, clothing, tattoos, and scars. And, with the jump in visual fidelity since the Xbox 360 games, it’s much more detailed than ever before.
That PlayStation 5 Release
With Microsoft’s release schedule on PS5 being increasingly regular, and even Halo making the jump this year, it perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Fable will debut on PlayStation 5.
Unlike Forza Horizon 6, which launches in March and will come to Sony’s console later in the year, it looks as though Fable will be day-and-date between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Given how shiny the PS5 Pro made Forza Horizon 5 look, we’re hopeful of some Pro enhancements for Fable, too.
Ask The Escapist
Fable will launch on Xbox, PC, and PlayStation 5 in ‘Autumn’ 2026 – so we still don’t have a date just yet.
Yep! Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC subscribers will be able to jump into the game as part of their subscription.
Sadly, Fable’s 2026 reboot is going to be a single-player only title, as confirmed in the game’s official Discord, which says, “Fable is a single player open-world action-RPG.”
The first Fable launched on the original Xbox in 2004, but the series hasn’t been seen since Fable Fortune – a card game that launched in 2018 but was discontinued in 2020.
References
The post The best things we saw in the Fable gameplay reveal, from buying houses to having kids appeared first on The Escapist.
