'Fable' Development Team Includes Former 'GTA V' And 'Arkham Knight' Staff
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Featured Image Credit: Microsoft
Despite finally being announced at the Xbox Series X event last week, the new Fable is an enigma wrapped in a riddle, swallowed by a toad. Beyond the fact that it's being developed by Playground Games (which we all kind of already knew anyway), the brief reveal trailer gave nothing away.
What we got at the Xbox event was so vague, in fact, that it wasn't long before rumours surfaced claiming that Fable was to be an MMO, and not a traditional RPG. These rumours were swiftly squashed, but the point remains: We need to know a little bit more about what Playground Games is cooking up. This is a studio best known for racing games, after all. Don't get me wrong, they're excellent racing games... but an open-world RPG is a very different beast.
As it turns out, Fable looks to be in very safe hands indeed. VGC recently did a little digging into some of the developers who are confirmed to be working on the new title, and Playground Games has acquired some real top-shelf talent. A number of industry veterans are working on the RPG reboot right now, including developers who previously worked on titles like Batman: Arkham Knight, Hellblade, and a little game called Grand Theft Auto V.
A good chunk of the writers who put together the excellent Arkham Knight story are scripting Fable. The game's narrative director is Martin Lancaster, who was the lead scriptwriter on the last Batman game. He's been joined by Craig Owens, who was also a script writer for Batman developer Rocksteady. Fable's cinematic director, Mark Tan, also comes from Rocksteady.
Will Kennedy, who worked as a level designer on GTA V, brings his expertise to Fable as chief designer. He's joined on the design team by Juan Fernández de Simón (Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice) as principle game designer. Meanwhile, Adam Olsson (The Division 2) is on board as lead environmental artist.
Playground Games started hiring for staff to come to the studio's Leamington Spa HQ back in 2018. At the time, all listings were simply for an "open-world AAA RPG", although it was widely assumed that the mystery game was to be a Fable reboot. The Fable team is expected to grow to around 200, although it's unclear how far into development the project is, or when we can expect to see more from it.
Topics: Xbox Series X, Fable, GTA V
