🎮️ Fable Is Back... and It Actually Looks Good?

Good morning!

It’s been one of those weeks in gaming. The kind where half the industry is on fire, the other half is arguing about AI, and somehow your backlog just tripled because everything is 90% off. Nature is healing.

In this edition, we’ve got:

• Massive game deals that are basically financial irresponsibility in disguise

• A skeptical (but cautiously excited) deep dive into Fable’s big comeback

• Studio drama, layoffs, AI debates, and the usual corporate chaos

If you’re here for smart takes, light roasting, and the occasional optimism… you’re in the right place.

Here’s everything you need to know this week in the world of gaming.

Want your game in front of 14,000+ passionate gamers and industry decision makers? Get in touch.

💸 Gaming Deals of the Week

The “why is my backlog growing” edition.

• Save 92% on STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order (Steam) - $39.99 → $3.19

• Save 88% on STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor (Steam) - $69.99 → $8.39 🔥 Historical Low

• Save 90% on Green Hell (Steam) - $24.99 → $2.49 🔥 Historical Low

• Save 90% on A Way Out (Steam) - $29.99 → $2.99

• Save 75% on Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition (Steam) - $44.99 → $11.24

• Save 67% on DOOM: The Dark Ages (Steam) - $69.99 → $23.09 🔥 Historical Low

• Save 87% on Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch) - $39.99 → $4.99 🔥 Historical Low

• Botany Manor (Epic Games Store) - FREE - $24.99 → $0.00 🌱 100% Off - Historical Low

TOP STORY

A Skeptical (But Low-Key Hyped) Look at Fable

Fable is back. Yes, that Fable, the old-school British fantasy RPG where you could be a saint, a menace, or a landlord-shaped war crime. It popped up at the Xbox Developer Direct looking way better than most of us expected, which immediately triggered the internet’s natural defense mechanism: “Okay but what’s the catch?”

Here’s the vibe, condensed and slightly cockier than necessary.

Who’s making it?

It’s Playground Games, aka the Forza Horizon people. Which sounds like asking a Formula 1 team to make a fairy tale RPG… until you remember studios can evolve, hire specialists, and generally surprise everyone.

They’ve reportedly built a dedicated RPG team for Fable (not “the racing guys winging it”), and they’ve even brought in talent from heavy-hitters like The Witcher 3 / Cyberpunk 2077 combat teams. So no, it’s not “Forza but with swords.” Probably.

The “1,000 NPCs” claim

They’re saying there are 1,000 handcrafted, voice-acted NPCs with routines, people who live somewhere, work somewhere, do their little fantasy errands, etc.

Sounds fake… until you remember games have already done big NPC sim systems. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (the hardcore medieval life simulator where joy goes to be replaced by realism) pulled off huge NPC scheduling/simulation tech. So the idea isn’t impossible, it’s just ambitious.

My expectation: most NPCs will be flavourful, not deep. Like: name, voice, routine, basic reactions to you… not “every villager has a 12-hour emotional arc and a dissertation.”

Still: if it works, it’ll make the world feel properly alive, which is very Fable.

Property + businesses = classic Fable nonsense

Buying property and businesses is apparently in, and if you’ve played old Fable, you know this is where the game quietly turns into Fantasy Capitalism Simulator.

This stuff matters because Fable always had that “game within the game” energy: sure, you could go save the realm… or you could become a shady real estate goblin and roleplay a whole life. That’s the sauce.

Morality system changes

Old Fable morality was gloriously unsubtle: do good → halo, do evil → horns. You basically turned into a walking PowerPoint slide titled GOOD or BAD.

The new approach seems more local reputation based: different towns/communities react differently depending on what you’ve done there. That means you can be adored in one place and hated in another, instead of the whole world instantly going “oh great, here comes Mr. Horns.”

Is it a loss of classic Fable silliness? A bit.
Is it also a smarter system for a world with more NPC simulation? Yeah.

No dog companion (apparently)

Fable 2’s dog was iconic. The devs say the dog is cut for “development reasons,” and even some of the team are mad about it.

Dealbreaker? For me: nah.
For dog people: the mourning period may be significant.

Would I bet there’s still a dog in a quest somewhere? I would, actually. Feels like the kind of thing they’d sneak in just to stop the internet sobbing.

Combat: still a question mark

The combat shown was very chopped up, short clips, not enough to really judge how it feels. Some people think it looked clunky. Others think it looked fine but “show me more.”

This is the big “wait and see.” Combat can look mid in trailers and feel amazing in hand (and vice versa). The reassuring bit: they’ve got experienced people behind it. The honest bit: we still don’t know.

Open world: also a question mark

We saw pretty vistas, forests, caves, the usual “look, we have terrain” tour.

But open worlds live or die on what happens between destinations. Random encounters? Side quests that grab you? Things that make you go “wait what’s that?” instead of sprinting in a straight line like a delivery driver with a sword?

No clear answer yet. Could be brilliant. Could be a scenic jogging route. TBD.

Yes, people argued about the male character’s… walking animation

This is real. People stared directly at the male character’s butt and concluded his walk looks too feminine, therefore: conspiracy.

I hate that this is a thing. I hate that I read it. I hate that now you’ve read it too.
But honestly? If the game rules and the biggest issue is “my hero has too much swagger,” we’ll survive.

Performance concerns

Some footage looked a bit wobbly (frame dips), and there were moments that seemed conveniently slowed down, which is always a spicy little trailer trick.

But it’s still in development. Performance is something to judge closer to release, when the “it’s not final” shield stops working.

Verdict (for now): cautiously excited

Fable looks like Fable. That’s the key.
Not “soulslike grim misery with Fable branding,” but actual Fable energy: quirky, playful, and full of little systems that let you mess around and live a life in the world.

Should you get wildly hyped and preorder based on vibes? No.
Should you be interested and keep an eye on it? Absolutely.

Because if they stick the landing, we might be eating good, and possibly evicting entire towns for profit. For roleplay purposes. Obviously.

LATEST NEWS

QUICK LINKS

🏢 Industry & Business

• A Veteran Assassin's Creed Designer Leaves Ubisoft After Two Decades

• UK co-development house Sumo Digital announces redundancies

• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds blasts past 1m copies sold, Sega expects another million this fiscal year

• Nintendo keeps Switch 2 forecast as device sales pass 17 million units

• Roblox reports significant growth for 2025, hitting $4.9bn in revenue

• AMD suggests the next-gen Xbox will arrive in 2027

• Exclusive: OpenAI is unsatisfied with some Nvidia chips and looking for alternatives, sources say

🎮 Game Updates & Development

• Helldivers 2 gears up for its own “star war” as Automatons steal plans for a planet-killer

• Disney Dreamlight Valley is finally getting a free Switch 2 upgrade next month

• Apex Legends for Switch shutting down this year, but Switch 2 edition lives on

• Fallout 4 Switch 2 Release Date Revealed

• Nikita (Buyanov) confirms COR3 isn’t related to Escape from Tarkov or Battlestate Games

• Loss Prevention is out now on Steam

• ‘Morels: Out of this World’ on Steam, relaxing alien mushroom exploration & photography (Steam link not provided in your paste, if you want, send it and I’ll swap this to the exact page.)

Freebies

• Alone in the Dark: The Trilogy 1+2+3 (GOG)

• Botany Manor (Epic)

• Poison Retro Set (Epic / Pixel Gun 3D)

⚠️ Controversies & Censorship

• NetEase denies reports of stopping GenAI use in games, “full steam ahead”

• KCD2 director calls gen-AI “an opportunity,” but concerns remain about the RPG’s “special sauce”

• Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney backs $900m Steam lawsuit, calls Valve’s cut a “junk fee”

• Google Project Genie shakes gaming: AI that generates worlds

💥 Studio Drama & Hot Takes

• Ubisoft fires dev who criticized the company’s return-to-work mandate