Fable director explains what makes the RPG a fairytale rather than a straight fantasy like The Witcher 'Fairytales are intimate, theyre small stories
about regular people... I think that is a brilliant description of what Fable really is'

Date:
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:13:54 +0000

Description:
According to Fable game director Ralph Fulton, the upcoming game will be an open-world fairytale, rather than a "grand and sweeping" fantasy story like
The Witcher or Skyrim.

FULL STORY

Playground Games general manager and Fable game director Ralph Fulton has called the upcoming game an open-world fairy tale rather than a "grand and sweeping" fantasy story that players might be used to.

Following the Xbox Developer Direct on January 22, where Playground Games finally announced that Fable will launch in Fall 2026 for PC, Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , and PS5 , Fulton divulged a ton of new information about the role-playing game (RPG) in an interview with Xbox Wire .

When asked what the essence of Fable is, Fulton explained that Playground borrowed from the original trilogy created by Lionhead Studios and decided to lean heavily into the series' classic fairy tale style.

"We came up with a bunch of things the first of which I would say we
actually inherited from Lionhead. When we started working on this project, we got a treasure trove of documents from Lionhead that had been in storage," Fulton said.

"Something that I thought was just brilliantly succinct was one of the documents, which said: ' Fable is Fairy tale, not Fantasy' which is just
super neat."

The game director explains that, with Playground's interpretation, "fairytale and fantasy probably exist on opposite ends of a spectrum", suggesting that Fable will deal with smaller "intimate" stories instead of something you'd expect from other grand fantasy tales.

"I think we all know what fantasy is its The Witcher , its Skyrim , its Lord of the Rings , its Game of Thrones . And I think tonally its quite grand, its sweeping, its geopolitical, its serious. You know, you can almost picture the color palette of fantasy," he said.

"And then fairy tale exists right at the opposite end of that spectrum. Fairy tales are intimate, theyre small stories about regular people; theyre not
grand and sweeping, theyre very personal and whimsical and ultimately, they deal with what happens when magic touches the lives of ordinary folks. And
also they have this kind of moral component to them.

"And I think that is a brilliant description of what Fable really is it runs through our art style, it runs through our world building. Weve really
executed against that fairy tale idea in every part of the game that were building."

In Fable , players will be able to explore the land of Albion, an immersive, medieval-like world with choices and consequences, reputation, and fairy tale endings.

From the new trailer, it's clear that Albion will be rich with new
discoveries, but Fulton stressed that players will still be able to take
their time enjoying the world, despite the game having stakes.

He explained that the events of the game start to unfold after an inciting incident, which he calls the "catalyst" for the story, where the player's grandma and everyone in the village they grew up in is turned to stone by a mysterious stranger.

The player is then left alone and forced to venture out into the world, and it's suggested that you visit Bowerstone, the Heroes Guild; however, the game director explained there's nothing "forcing" players to go along that path first.

"So theres a soft implication that you should head for the Heroes Guild, and maybe theres help that they can give you," Fulton said.

"But the nature of our game is that as soon as you leave your village, you
can go pretty much anywhere. Its truly open world, so the world is yours to explore. And weve written the story so that although there are stakes your grandmother, your village theres no ticking bomb.

"Theres nothing forcing you along the path, because we want to allow the
player the permission to just go and do something else in the game. You could go to the most northerly village in Albion, get a job, settle down and get married if you want. The story will wait for you, which I think is really important with the really rich side activities that Fable games come with."

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/gaming/fable-director-explains-what-makes-the-rpg-a- fairytale-rather-than-a-straight-fantasy-like-the-witcher-fairytales-are-intim ate-theyre-small-stories-about-regular-people-i-think-that-is-a-brilliant-desc ription-of-what-fable-really-is

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