(Image credit: Playground Games)

Microsoft has announced a delay to the Playground-developed Fable reboot, which had been scheduled for this year but will now arrive at an unspecified date in 2026. The publisher did provide a sweetener of sorts by also releasing a brief new look at the game, which Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan says will be “definitely worth the wait”.

The pre-alpha footage isn’t a trailer per se but shows off various locations and confirms that, yep, this is a very pretty looking game indeed. The clips include some combat and spell-casting as well as the main character walking through a magnificent city, riding a horse through the open world, booting a chicken, and frying up some sausages before fighting a werewolf attracted by the smell.

The weapons shown include a small sword and a big sword, a Monster Hunter-style hammer, and the spell is your standard fireball. There isn’t much to glean about the game itself here, other than that it’s going to be gorgeous.

“I just want to start with, really excited about progress,” says Duncan. “Really excited about where Playground are. We previously announced the date for Fable as 2025. We are actually going to give Fable more time, and it’s going to ship in 2026 now.

“While I know that’s not maybe the news people want to hear, what I want to assure people of is that it’s definitely worth the wait. I have unequivocal confidence in the Playground team. If you think about their history and legacy for Forza Horizon [and] the last few games: Critically acclaimed, 92 Metacritic, award-winning, beautiful, play great.

“And just what they’re bringing to Fable as a franchise, just think of the visuals of what you expect of Playground games plus amazing gameplay, British humor, Playground’s version of Albion. So inspired by what’s gone before with the franchise, but their take, in quite frankly the most beautifully realized version of Albion you’ve ever seen.”

It’s been some wait for the new Fable. The game was initially announced in 2020, though we didn’t get our first proper look until a 2023 trailer starring Richard Ayoade, which was followed up with another look in 2024 featuring Matt King (Super Hans from Peep Show).

Both hit all the right notes for me, with the 2024 trailer also following the adventures of a girl “who made all the wrong choices” narrated by a character called Humphry (King), rambling on about how she’s fumbling the role despite his magnificent mentorship. The real question with this is not going to be whether Albion’s looming “dark threat” is terrifying and evil enough, but whether it can deliver the laughs of Lionhead’s original trilogy.

This will be the first mainline Fable game since 2010’s Fable 3, which seems astonishing. Phil Spencer has previously said we’ll be playing it before The Elder Scrolls 6, which is also due next year: I suppose then we’ll find out if it was worth the 16-year wait.