Yesterday afternoon, a new 30-minute gameplay demo for Fable popped up on the official Xbox YouTube channel, giving us our best glimpse yet of what to expect from the Arena Games reboot in February 2027.
You can watch the whole thing above (seriously, it’s worth it), and it’s no surprise that the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive among Xbox and Fable fans. We’ve been checking the likes of Reddit and Twitter to see what people are saying, and what not. everything good stuff, there’s definitely a lot of excitement floating around.
Here are some examples:
The folks at Eurogamer and IGN also had the following in their preview of the gameplay:
Eurogamer:
“I saw a good half hour of gameplay in progress and, although it comes with many caveats, it was really fun. Playground Games’ Fable reboot looks stupid, crass, British, beautiful, systemic, and maybe a little ambitious. In other words, it looks like a fairy tale. Indeed, few things are more fairy tale than promising the Moon, romantic 1, after all, 0000000000 NPCs! Each it has its own personality – and it leaves eager players wondering if you can pull off Playground and perhaps more importantly, if its developers like Fable enough that they need to give it a try.
IGN
“I’m very sold on the “gameplay” of Fable, which was an important part of what made the original trilogy unique and special and, therefore, important for this Legend to be right. I have to add that, seeing Fable running live on Series X, it looks great. It’s amazing to think that it’s running on ForzaTech, an engine that has powered racing games for more than a dozen years and I’m still waiting for it. I’m looking forward to a first-party Xbox game above all others.”
So what are those “small worries” we mentioned? However, most of them have to do with lip syncing in cutscenes, which admittedly needs more work. There’s obviously time to improve them between now and February 2027, but right now they’re not as consistent as we’d hoped they would be.
Another thing is the combat at the end of the demo, which is described as looking “hard” by some people. This does not concern us so much – it may seem a slowly it’s clunky at times, but still seems fun and reminiscent of the likes of Hogwarts Legacy and past Fable games.
What is your decision though? Are you also excited about Fable based on this 30-minute gameplay demo, or are some minor concerns starting to filter through? Let us know your thoughts down in the comment section below.