New Fable Rumor Debunked by GamesIndustry.Biz

Yesterday’s new Fable rumor has now been debunked by GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring.

A thread popped up on the ever-credible 4-Chan boards yesterday, claiming that development on the next Fable had been restarted internally as the game’s most current build was said to be considered unplayable by the team. As such, it was claimed that the team started working on a new version of the game in Unreal Engine with the Forzatech version of the game being ditched. Interestingly enough, the post also mentioned that, although the development has now been restarted, the game’s new target window is the 4th quarter of 2024. The rumor quickly gained traction, and although the source is highly questionable, Windows Central’s Jez Corden chimed in by saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if the rumor turned out to be true.

I know it’s 4chan but I legit wouldn’t be surprised if this is true.

— Jez (@JezCorden) January 2, 2023

We already figured that releasing a game such as Fable in less than two years after development was restarted was, well, rather quick, but the Head of GamesIndustry, Christopher Dring, has now also said this ‘rumor’ simply isn’t legit. On Twitter, Dring simply wrote: “This is not true”. No further details were shared by Dring.

This is not true https://t.co/vCx8G05Boq

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) January 2, 2023

The new Fable for Xbox Series and PC was officially announced back in 2020. Using the ForzaTech engine, the title is in development at Forza Horizon developer Playground Games. Unfortunately, since the game’s reveal more than two years ago, we haven’t seen much from the reboot. Recent rumors claim that development on the title is slow due to Microsoft insisting on using in-house engines. On the other hand, Microsoft’s Matt Booty recently said that progress on the new Fable is really encouraging.

“There’s stuff I wish I could share and show because some of the things I’ve seen are just so encouraging”, the Xbox Game Studios head said in an interview back in November of 2022.”There’s a danger sometimes, that you don’t want to [have] the RPG team go make a racing game or vice-versa. You don’t want the shooter team to make a kid’s building-block game. You can get in trouble there. But [Playground has] a great technology base, they’ve got a passion for the IP, and they’ve just got such a demonstrated commitment to craft and quality.”