Fable is a fantasy action role-playing game series originally created by Lionhead Studios and later developed by Playground Games. The series is owned and published by Xbox Game Studios. Set in the fictional land of Albion, the games focus on player choices, systems that show how decisions affect the story, and a humorous, fairy-tale-like version of British folklore. The main series follows different heroes across many centuries of Albion’s history, with each game showing a more advanced time period, from a medieval-style society to an industrialized nation. In addition to fighting and completing quests, players can also engage in activities like owning property, forming relationships, raising a family, trading items, and interacting with other characters.
The series began with Fable (2004) for the original Xbox, followed by Fable II (2008) and Fable III (2010). After Lionhead Studios closed in 2016, Playground Games revived the series and announced a new version in 2020. A new Fable game is planned for release in 2026. The series has also expanded into spin-offs, mobile and arcade games, and a collectible card game. It has inspired a novel titled Fable: The Balverine Order and other promotional and collaborative projects.
Setting
The Fable series is set in the fictional country of Albion, a place made up of many independent cities with large areas of countryside and wild areas between them. The setting originally looks like Medieval Britain, with some European influences. The name Albion is an old name that is still used for Great Britain. As the games progress, the time period changes. In Fable II, Albion has advanced to an era similar to the Age of Enlightenment. By Fable III, the country has become a single kingdom ruled by a monarch and is going through an "Age of Industry" similar to the real-world 18th-19th-century Industrial Revolution.
In the first Fable, players take on the role of a boy who must become a hero after bandits attack his village, kill his father, and kidnap his sister. The choices players make change how other characters in Albion see the Hero and alter the Hero's look to show if he has done good or bad things. In addition to the main story about the Hero's family, players can also complete optional tasks, such as trading, exploring, playing games, boxing, or stealing.
Fable II happens 500 years after the first game. The world looks like Europe during the late 1600s and early 1700s, a time of highwaymen and the Enlightenment. Science and new ideas have reduced the importance of old religion and magic in Albion. Towns have become cities, and weapons are starting to use gunpowder. People's lives in families, work, and money have more options and challenges. The game adds more to most or all parts of the experience from the first game but keeps the same basic way to play. The world of Albion is bigger, but there are fewer places to visit. The places that remain are more detailed. Instead of following set quests, the story grows based on where and when the player is. This gives the game a stronger sense of player involvement than the first title.
Fable III takes place 50 years after Fable II. Albion is going through an Industrial Revolution, and society is like the early 1800s. In all versions of the game, the Hero's choices between good and bad actions are central. This includes personal feelings and politics, as the goal is to overthrow the king and protect Albion from outside attacks.
Gameplay
The Fable series of role-playing video games helps create the growth of a main character controlled by the player. This growth depends on how the character interacts with the game world. A large part of this interaction involves how the character engages with other people in the game, including talking, telling stories, learning, trading items, playing mini-games, forming relationships, and fighting.
The player can guide the character’s development based on traits like magic, strength, and social skills. The player also decides the character’s moral choices, allowing skills to grow in both positive and negative ways.
In addition to these choices, some versions of the game include specific missions that help the character grow and reveal parts of the game’s story.
Fable II and Fable III allow cooperative gameplay, where two players can control separate characters and work together to complete tasks.
History
The first game in the Fable series was announced in 2001 by Lionhead Studios. Peter Molyneux, a lead designer and co-founder of Lionhead Studios, said the game would offer a unique experience and change the way role-playing games (RPGs) were made. Fable was released for Xbox on September 14, 2004. At first, many people did not like the game because it had fewer features than promised, and Molyneux later apologized for this, which received more media attention.
Although Lionhead Studios received offers from large companies like Electronic Arts, the high costs of developing Fable and overestimating its sales left the studio with limited resources and debt. To get more funding, Lionhead signed a deal with Microsoft Game Studios. An expanded version of the game, Fable: The Lost Chapters, was released for Windows and Xbox in September 2005. Feral Interactive later released the game for Mac computers on March 31, 2008. This version included new content and, with Microsoft’s support, became both critically and commercially successful.
Fable II was released for Xbox 360 on October 24, 2008. It also became a critical and commercial success. The game included a related title called Fable II Pub Games, available on Xbox Live Arcade, and an online flash game called Fable: A Hero's Tale, which let players unlock a secret chest in the main game.
A third game, Fable III, was released for Xbox 360 on October 29, 2010, and for Windows on March 17, 2011. This game also included a related phone game called Fable Coin Golf.
On May 2, 2012, Fable Heroes was released for Xbox Live Arcade. Although the game is different from others in the series and received mixed reviews, it became popular among fans because it included some favorite elements from earlier games.
Fable: The Journey, a spin-off in the series, was released in October 2012 in North America and Europe. The game used the Kinect attachment for Xbox 360. Peter Molyneux left Lionhead Studios in 2012.
In February 2014, Lionhead Studios released a remake of the original Fable game, including The Lost Chapters, called Fable Anniversary. This version received mixed reviews. A compilation called Fable Trilogy, which included Fable Anniversary, Fable II, and Fable III, was released in February 2014.
Fable-themed card games were added to the Microsoft Solitaire Collection for PC on March 4, 2014, and a Fable Anniversary theme was added to the Microsoft Jigsaw collection.
In August 2013, Lionhead Studios released a teaser trailer for Fable Legends, an Xbox One game set during the "Age of Heroes," long before the first game. The trailer showed that players could choose to be the hero or villain in a multiplayer experience. Microsoft canceled the project in March 2016, and Lionhead Studios closed shortly after.
In May 2016, former Lionhead developers started a Kickstarter campaign to fund Fable Fortune, a free-to-play collectible card game. The game was previously developed at Lionhead before the studio closed. It was released for Xbox One in February 2018.
In January 2018, rumors suggested that Playground Games was working on a new Fable game and hiring 177 people for an open-world RPG. During the Xbox Games Showcase in July 2020, a new Fable game was announced for Xbox Series X/S and Microsoft Windows, with no specific release date. The game will use the ForzaTech engine from the Forza series. In November 2021, Eidos-Montréal joined as a co-developer. By March 2023, the game was in early production. On June 11, 2023, Playground Games showed the first in-game trailer of Fable at the Xbox Games Showcase, featuring actor Richard Ayoade. Another trailer with actor Matt King was released in July 2024.
The game was originally planned for release in 2025. However, on February 25, 2025, Craig Duncan, head of Xbox Game Studios, said the release was moved to 2026 to improve quality and fix technical problems. Some people thought the delay allowed the game to launch on PlayStation 5 at the same time, but Microsoft denied these claims.
On January 8, 2026, Xbox announced that the game would be presented in detail during an Xbox Developer Direct event on January 23, 2026. During the event, Playground Games confirmed the game would release simultaneously on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows in autumn 2026. This will be the first Fable game to release on a non-Xbox home console and a PlayStation console.
Novel
Fable: The Balverine Order is a fantasy novel written by Peter David as part of the Fable series. The book was published in North America and Europe in October 2010. It included a special code that allowed readers to unlock a unique weapon in Fable III.
The story is told from the perspective of a king in an unnamed country who listens to an unnamed storyteller in the Fable universe. The events take place between Fable II and Fable III. The main plot follows Thomas Kirkman, a wealthy young man whose mother’s death leads him on a journey to find a balverine. His manservant, James Skelton, is a child from a large, poor family. Together, the two friends travel into the wilderness to search for a balverine responsible for killing Thomas’s brother, Stephen.