An extended trailer for Fable 4 was revealed at the Xbox Showcase in June, and it's clear that the new studio have understood their assignment; they've hit the sweet spot between wit, charm and sincerity that defined the tone of the original games. Understandably, fans are feeling hyped again, for the first time since the unfortunate release of Fable 3.
Playground Games, who are most famous for their work on the racing franchise Forza, have taken the reins from the now defunct Lionhead Studios, and are stepping into new territory with Fable 4. But, despite it being an entirely new genre for the studio, the trailer looks incredibly promising.
Long-term Fable fans seem almost unanimous in their assessment that Playground Studio understand the tone of the franchise they're now responsible for. In other words, they've found a way to blend distinctly British humor, with a charming open-world (that never takes itself too seriously), and a genuine sense of heroism. And in fact, they confirmed this fairly well with last year's trailer as well.
There has been a lot of talk about the female hero from the trailer not being attractive enough, but that's a ridiculous thing to focus on for a franchise that starts you out in the first game as a country hick called "Chicken Chaser". Anyway, to the trailer.
Fable 4 Trailer Captures Tone Of Original Games
We're returning to the Albion of the first game in Fable 4, where heroes were common. Here is the (retired) hero Humphrey giving us an explanation of heroes in the most recent trailer from the 2024 Xbox Showcase:
Fans of Peep Show might find that voice recognizable. It is, indeed, Super Hans (Matt King). Clearly, the devs have been watching a lot of the best Channel 4 comedies, with Richard Ayoade appearing in last year's trailer as a Giant.
Legacy Fable Fans Are Ignoring The Protagonist Controversy, And You Should Too
Unfortunately, much of the current conversation has been focused on how the main character looks in the trailers. Before we get into why you should ignore this discussion (which is a non-issue for most actual Fable fans), first take a look at the character certain types on Twitter/X have been calling ugly:
We could probably leave it at that, and you would understand why this whole conversation is ludicrous. But it's worth mentioning that when we get off the cesspit of Twitter/X and take a look at what the more dedicated fanbase on r/Fable are saying, we can see that legacy fans understand this isn't a franchise about "hot" characters anyway. They seem instead to agree that it looks "genuinely f****** superb".
The only aesthetic issue that those fans seem concerned about is whether being evil or good will affect how we look, as in the original Fable trilogy you would get scars and even horns if you did evil, or a visible halo if you were exceptionally good. We expect this to return again, although we haven't seen evidence of it in the trailers.
And as a final note, if you really are concerned about looking like the women pictured above, you will almost certainly get a choice of whether you are male or female (as we did in previous Fable games), and we are also fairly confident you will have access to a full character customization system, just like Playground have developed for their other games. The fact that they've used the same MC for all the trailers revealed so far isn't even an uncommon practice. So relax, and enjoy the hype again, Fable is back.