The new Fable trailer almost brought a tear to my eye — could it finally be the game that was promised two decades ago?

Nostalgia can be a potent feeling, but by Albion did Playground Games’ Fable, aka Fable 4, trigger a dose of it during the first Xbox Developer Direct showcase of 2026. As someone who can’t remember the last time he cried, the sheer potency of nostalgia for a game I adored in my younger years almost brought a tear to my eye.

One of my first and most enduring Xbox memories was waiting for the original Fable; with the promise of a game with a world you could shape through your actions and decisions.

While the options to influence story outcomes via decisions and morality systems was nothing new, as there were plenty of CRPGs with similar systems – Baldur’s Gate 2 stands out to me as one notable example – the idea of a somewhat open world with such decision making in, for the time, attractive ...