Playground Games finally unveiled Fable at the recent Xbox Developer_Direct and to say that it was impressive would be an understatement. Aside from the morality system and how your reputation differs based on those observing you, it offers 1,000 handcrafted NPCs to interact with. “Handcrafted” is the keyword because they have their own identities, from jobs and family units to schedules and personality traits.
Studio founder Ralph Fulton reaffirmed this in an interview with IGN. “Yeah, so they are handcrafted. There are a lot of things about the way we have built the living population, which I think you could be forgiven for saying is just nuts.”
Interestingly, Playground Games “maybe once thought” of procedurally generating them, “but we abandoned that idea quite a long time ago because we wanted to craft every one of these NPCs from their name, to their appearance, to their personality traits, to that moral worldview that I talked about, to where they work and where they live and what their family unit is, because it’s important to the player that they can get to know unique crafted NPCs,” said Fulton.
“And like I said, there are 1,000 of them in the game. You can go and speak to every single one of them in fully voiced conversations. You could marry…it’ll be a bit of work, but you could marry them all. You can have kids with them, you can hire them, you can fire them. They are just great fun.”
Beyond messing around with their day-to-day lives, they’re also “sort of a Greek chorus” that reminds you of your choices. “So, as you walk around, that’s classic Fable, isn’t it? People catcalling you in the street, telling you what they think of you. It’s a brilliant thing in our game as well, but it’s a great way of tracking how popular your decisions have been, your choices have been,” he said.
But again, that varies from settlement to settlement. Gaining the reputation of Chicken Chaser, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will hate you for kicking chickens. Conversely, it could mean everyone looks at you weirdly for this seemingly bizarre activity. In the same vein, being rich and owning multiple establishments may attract more than its fair share of criticism, even if you’re generous.
Fable launches this Fall for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC while also being available on day one for Game Pass. Playground Games promises to showcase even more (including the story) in the coming months, so stay tuned for more details in the meantime.
