As Fable fans eagerly await more information about the hotly anticipated reboot, Jez Corden of Windows Central has shared his thoughts on a pre-release build that he managed to get a look at, and his comments are optimistic. Apparently, the new Fable is shaping up to be a “fantastic” entry in the series—a sentiment that may come as a surprise to many of those following the game.
There’s been quite a lot of hand-wringing about Fable since its initial reveal back in 2020. While some criticism has been based on bad-faith arguments and disappointing fervor about inconsequential matters like the female player-character’s appearance, other concerns are a bit more well-founded. For one thing, developer Playground Games is new to not only the Fable series, but to action-RPGs as a whole, its biggest projects up to this point being the Forza Horizon racing games. Then, there’s the lack of any real, extended looks at Fable‘s gameplay, coupled with reports of development issues at Playground, which paint a bleak picture. Corden’s impressions run contrary to these perceptions, with his claims that the new Fable has “CD Projekt Red DNA” being particularly illuminating and exciting.
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What Having “CD Projekt Red DNA” Could Mean for Fable
CD Projekt Red Is One of the Best RPG Developers of the Past Two Decades
Though certainly not perfect (Cyberpunk 2077‘s abysmal state at launch is enough to prove that), CD Projekt Red has proven itself as a thoroughly ambitious studio brimming with talent. Other AAA RPG developers like BioWare and Bethesda have essentially spawned their own subgenres, with games often being described as “BioWare-like” or “Bethesda-influenced,” so it’s about time that CDPR itself started spawning these sorts of comparisons.
The new Fable may be taking inspiration from The Witcher 3‘s combat system, according to Corden. Unfortunately, he was not very specific about the implications of this comparison, though he did note that Witcher 3 combat staples like “pirouettes and the dodging and the dodge rolling, and the seamless hack-and-slash into an execution” seemed to be present in Fable, which sounds promising. Corden also noted that the Fable team has looped in some CDPR veterans, intimating a greater degree of similarity between it and the likes of The Witcher.
Hopefully, Fable Has More Than Just Combat In Common With CD Projekt Red’s Portfolio
Good combat is always welcome, but Fable is much more than just fighting, and the same can be said about Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher. In fact, it can be argued that combat is actually one of the least important parts of the equation in these games: elements like storytelling, world-building, and quest design are far more crucial to the experience.
Needless to say,
Fable
shouldn’t be The Witcher 2.0, but it wouldn’t hurt it to have some CDPR-influenced aspects.
In light of this, one can only hope that Corden’s comments about “CD Project Red DNA” extend beyond Fable‘s combat framework and into some of the aforementioned elements as well. For instance, one of the most disappointing parts of Fable 3 was how it streamlined its RPG systems, becoming a far more linear game, so learning from CDPR’s open-world design may help this new Fable incorporate more freedom without feeling like it’s moving backwards.
CD Projekt Red also excels at mature and nuanced writing—something that is an unfortunate rarity in the world of AAA gaming, which can lean toward milquetoast characters and PG-13 dialog, even in games targeted at adult audiences. Mixed with Fable‘s famous emphasis on crass humor, borrowing from this approach to storytelling could yield terrific results.
