Little is known about the newest Fable title, so much so that fans are calling it Fable 4 despite no official title having been announced. What is known is that the title is being developed by Playground Games, the developers of another of Xbox's first-party franchises, Forza Horizon. Regardless of how little is known about the title, fans are eagerly awaiting any news on Fable 4, and what they can expect when they return to the world of Albion.
The Fable series is well known for allowing players a high amount of customization with their characters. Players can fully customize heroes, purchase property and stores, have families, and work smaller jobs like woodcutting or barkeeping. The series is also well known for giving players a variety of decisions to make throughout its many questlines that shape their character, the world, and the narrative of the game. Along with many other questions regarding Fable 4, fans are also wondering what changes will come to Fable's iconic morality system.
Fable's Morality System
Fable's morality system is centered around measuring how good or evil a hero is based on their actions and decisions throughout the game. This includes some quests having two versions that players can do, like choosing whether to help protect a farm from bandits, or help the bandits during the raid. Many quests also have impacts on Fable's world based on a player's moral decisions, like Fable 2 players deciding whether Oakfield flourishes or becomes destitute. A hero's morality can also be swayed by a player doing good or evil acts like donating money or committing crimes.
As a hero's morality leans heavier into either good or evil, players can start to notice physical changes in their heroes. Good heroes receive a halo over their heads, while evil heroes sprout horns and reddened skin. NPCs around Albion will also react differently depending on a player's morality, with them running away and screaming from evil heroes and thanking or praising good heroes.
The first Fable game even gated certain spells behind morality, so that evil heroes could leech health from enemies while good heroes could conversely cast a healing spell on themselves. However, Fable 3 did start rolling back the physical changes a hero's morality had on their appearance by introducing a new morphing system that only showed the larger impacts of a hero's morality, such as horns when they did charged attacks.
How Fable 4 Could Improve the Morality System
One of the biggest areas that Fable 4 could improve in the morality system is by adding more nuance to the system and decisions that players make. In previous entries, players are presented with choices that are very clearly good or evil, like whether or not to kill innocents. With RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect showing how impactful more nuanced decisions can be, it would be great to see Fable 4 try to make the game's decisions more complicated than simply picking which alignment players want their hero to fall under.
It would also be interesting if Fable 4 allowed a hero to have different standings within the factions of Albion. Having a hero that is feared by some, but hailed as a hero by others, would add a lot to the variety of impacts that moral decisions could have. This could also lead to players being able to have particular bonuses or negatives for their relationship with the factions, such as a town that loves providing better discounts at stores.
It would also be great to see Fable 4 make sure a hero's morality has a larger impact on them physically. Of course, bringing back the constant appearance changes of Fable and Fable 2 is a great start, but expanding it to further impact how a hero plays would be even better. Fable 4 could bring back the series' feature of morality requirements for some spells, but expand it so that a hero can only get certain melee, ranged, or social abilities if they're evil or good as well. Fable 4 could even put certain weapons behind morality requirements, such as only evil heroes being able to wield a cleaver.
Either way, it will be very interesting to see what fresh take on the series Playground Games will give fans with Fable 4. Hopefully, it is something that fans can be excited about, as they have been waiting for more than 10 years for a new entry in the series. It is possible that players will learn more about the game at Xbox's E3 presentation this year, but hopefully it will make some big, iterative improvements on what makes the series so beloved.
Fable 4 is currently in development.