After years of teaser trailers and short previews, Playground Games has finally shown what the new Fable actually looks like in practice. And if the latest gameplay showcase is anything to go by, the studio is not just trying to create another fantasy RPG.
It aims to create a world that will live on even without the player.
The biggest star of the new showcase was not the combat system, graphics, or main story, but a system called Living Population, which powers over a thousand inhabitants of Albion. And no, these are not generic NPCs standing in the same spot and repeating two or three lines. According to lead designer Dan Greer, each inhabitant of the world has its own personality, job, home, daily routine, and life that unfolds regardless of whether the player is watching or not. What makes the whole thing even more impressive is the fact that none of these characters are procedurally generated. Playground Games revealed that during development they attempted to use procedural systems, but the results were not convincing enough. As a result, each NPC is handcrafted, including personality traits, activity schedules, and interactions with other inhabitants of the world.
The result is over a thousand unique characters. And you can do almost anything you can think of with them. Want to meet someone, befriend them, fall in love, marry, and start a family? You can. Want to rob them, deceive them, or kill them? You can do that too. Playground confirms that it is possible to kill any adult NPC in the game, and their death remains permanent. If you decide to wipe out an entire village, the inhabitants may eventually resettle, but the consequences of your actions won't disappear overnight.
And this is where the new Fable starts to sound like a blend of classic RPG and life simulation. For example, if you buy a shop, you will be able to set salaries for employees. If you mistreat them or underpay them, they might quit or even lose their home. The decisions you make during quests also affect the development of the settlements and their inhabitants. One of the examples shown during the presentation involves the giant Dave, voiced by Richard Ayoade. Depending on whether you choose to spare him or kill him, the entire settlement can develop in completely different ways. In other words, your decisions will not only change dialogues or the ending of the story but also the daily lives of the people around you.
For all of this to work, Playground had to do a massive amount of work behind the scenes.
According to studio director Ralph Fulton, more than 150,000 lines of dialogue were recorded for Fable, and just this year several studios worked in parallel on voice recordings for over a thousand hours. That’s a figure we usually see only in the largest projects in the industry. Of course, the question remains whether such an ambitious system can really function over dozens or hundreds of hours of gameplay. The history of gaming is full of grand promises of "living worlds" that ultimately did not materialize. But unlike many other projects, Fable at least for now shows something concrete.
If Playground manages to deliver on what it showcases, Albion could become one of the most vibrant and convincing fantasy worlds we have ever seen in the RPG genre. And that might be the best possible news for the return of one of the most beloved Xbox franchises.
