Two years after the shutdown of Lionhead Studios, Microsoft is bringing back the nostalgic, long-awaited Fable as an Xbox One exclusive. It has designated the task to British developer Playground Games, who was also behind Forza Horizon 3. According to Eurogamer, Microsoft is said to have been inspired by none other than the PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn, more for its single-player, open-world concept than anything else.
While it’s still in early development, with Playground Games having hired more than 200 people to work on the game, it’s been said to be an open-world, story-driven RPG. Thus, the hype is growing among fans everywhere.
The Fable series became something of a hit back in 2008, when Microsoft released Fable II through the hard work of Lionhead studios, and it went on to become one of the biggest RPG bestsellers for Xbox 360. Although it had been a rather plot-less, incoherent game, what it lacked in story it made up for with the fantastic world in which players found themselves.
Unfortunately, Lionhead Studios was closed down by Microsoft in 2016, while the developers were knee-deep in Fable Legends and conceptualizing Fable 4. Rumors from Kotaku UK claimed that Microsoft had refused to sell the rights of the franchise to potential big-name investors of the studio, and therefore shut it down, canceling both projects abruptly.
Now it seems Microsoft wants to do some good for the Xbox One community, and what better way to achieve that than by bringing die-hard fans back to the platform to explore Albion once again.
