Xbox boss says Fable fans should take confidence from Playground’s Forza Horizon work

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has provided a brief update on Fable 4, which is in development at Forza Horizon studio Playground Games.

Microsoft announced in July 2020 that a new Fable game was in the works for Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Playground has been staffing up for an RPG project for several years and in total some 200 people are understood to be working on Fable at its Leamington Spa studio.

The developer’s next release, Forza Horizon 5, was one of the stars of Xbox’s E3 2021 showcase earlier this month, ahead of its November launch, but Fable didn’t appear at the event.

Microsoft’s head of gaming was asked to provide an update on the project during the latest Dropped Frames podcast.

“The only thing I can really say about Fable is, seeing the pedigree of the team and Playground, and where they set the bar for themselves in building a game—I think that showed with the Forza Horizon 5 preview that they had—I think people should just take confidence in that [studio director] Gavin [Raeburn] and the team there have that same level of focus on doing something amazing with an IP that we know is really important to a lot of Xbox fans, so we can’t wait to get to show more, but the team is just amazing.”

Further reading

Analysis: Who’s working on Fable 4?

Playground Games will officially reboot the RPG series, with AAA veterans behind the scenes

Veterans from Rocksteady, Ninja Theory, Gearbox and BioWare are working on Fable, according to VGC analysis.

The writer behind Control joined the Fable 4 development team as lead writer at Playground Games earlier this year. Anna Megill reports into Fable 4’s narrative director Martin Lancaster, who was previously the lead scriptwriter for Batman: Arkham Knight.

Will Kennedy, a level designer who worked on Grand Theft Auto V and its Online component, is the chief designer of Fable. He’s joined by lead quest designer Hunter Wright, who previously worked on the Borderlands franchise at Gearbox.

And Forza Motorsport studio Turn 10 could be assisting with development of the new Fable, according to the LinkedIn profile of the company’s design architect, Bill Giese, who is one of the most senior designers at the studio having acted as creative director for its past three titles.

Spencer also discussed the possibility of Microsoft bringing back the Killer Instinct series on Wednesday. “It’s in our hearts and in our minds that we want to continue to do something with KI,” he told Dropped Frames.