Fable’s Relationships And Life-Sim Elements Create A Compelling Sandbox
Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher:
Xbox Game Studios
Developer:
Playground Games
Release:
The Fable franchise has always been about making choices and living with the consequences. These consequences ranged from reputational damage to actual physical changes. While the physical changes are a thing of the past with Playground Games’ 2027 interpretation of the long-dormant franchise, player choice and consequence seem just as integral with this new entry.
In the behind-closed-doors demo, I don’t see anything about the story and very little regarding combat. Instead, I watch the developers toy around with the various systems at play in Fable. The hands-off demo I watch takes place entirely in Oakshire, one of the six regions in the open world of Albion. This region is heavily inspired by the British countryside and features several settlements, but the session is centered on Silverbrook, a peaceful farming town.
“It’s a life-sim where you can start relationships and have families; it’s a social sim where you can play with the people of the world to your heart’s content; and it’s an economic sim where you can build wealth, create an empire, and manipulate the economic fate of entire settlements,” associate game director Will Kennedy says.
Over the course of the 30-minute demo, I watch as the hero, controlled by the developer, toys with the emotions of this peaceful village. After saving a talking pig from slaughter and handing some money to a down-on-his-luck beggar, the hero tries to romance the shopkeeper, Megan. He flirts with her, and she responds positively, but the hero doesn’t quite stack up to what she’s looking for. Since she’s an “ambitious commoner,” she has high standards: She wants a partner who’s an entrepreneur, who wears fancy clothes, and owns their own home in Silverbrook.
“We have over 1,000 handcrafted, fully voiced NPCs for you to interact with,” Kennedy says. “They have their own relationships, routines, homes, jobs, and memory. It’s not scripted; it is emergent behaviors powered by real-time systems. They go to work, they go to bed, they have hobbies and families. Sometimes, they just want to spend time in the pub. Albion feels alive because its people have lives.”
To meet the entrepreneurial requirement, the developer goes to a nearby pub and drops a hefty amount of coins to purchase it. Once he owns it, he can adjust prices and hire new employees to manage profits. To round out the pub’s efficiency, the hero hires the beggar he had donated to earlier. These businesses generate passive income, which can be collected from any owned business.
The hero’s next stop is the clothing store, where he buys the fanciest clothes on offer. Then, he picks up a blacksmith job to earn enough money to buy a house. With all the qualifications for Megan’s heart satisfied, the hero returns to her and takes her out on that date. They seem to have a great time, but suddenly, the dev decides to go down the route of cruelty. Without warning, the hero breaks things off, shattering Megan’s heart and leaving her wanting nothing to do with him.
From there, it’s a tour de force of meanness, including attacking civilians, resulting in the town’s security forces getting involved. As you take these actions, you accumulate distinct reputational qualities. These qualities follow you throughout the region, but if you go to another part of Albion, you get a clean slate.
“Every action you do, every choice you make generates a local reputation,” Kennedy says. “You become known for the reputations that you build, and everyone will judge you on them through their own moral lens. That’s really what’s at the heart of our updated, complex-yet-nuanced take on morality. Just like in real life, one person’s good is another person’s evil, and even being merciful could divide opinion.”
I love the life-sim elements I’m seeing of Fable, but there’s still so much to learn about this highly anticipated return of one of the original Xbox’s most exciting franchises. Playground Games is coming off one of the top-rated games of the year with Forza Horizon 6, and if Fable shapes up as well as it looks, the studio could further prove to be Xbox’s most valuable.
