Yesterday I got to see a full quest from Fable being played live. That demo largely focussed on the city of Bowerstone, the characters in the capital, and the choices that can be made within each mission. While there were a couple of flashes of combat within what I saw, I wanted to reserve judgment on the action until I got hands on with Fable myself. Well, now I have, and I’m pleasantly surprised by what I played. While there’s joy to be found in the devastating thud of a giant hammer, what impressed me the most is how each of its varied magic spells work in harmony with the foundational melee systems. And that’s all before we get to the chickens. It wouldn’t be Fable without chickens, after all.
Although story, world, and characters power a lot of Fable’s charm and will remain just as significant to Playground’s reimagining as they were in the original series, there will be no escaping the rigors of combat here. You’re a hero, after all, and no matter how good you are at talking your way out of sticky situations, you’ll need to get your hands dirty regularly.
“Heroes are sort of humans plus plus, right?” Fable’s game director, Ralph Fulton, tells me. “They’re special, stronger, more charismatic, all that kind of stuff. So combat, and obviously the ability to wield control and wield magic is another thing that sets you apart from the regulars. Combat feels like the place where you’re going to show your differences most effectively. The golden line will have combat throughout it. I wouldn’t say absolutely every quest features a combat beat, although I would say most do.”
When it’s time to get stuck in, Fable doesn’t want to limit your combat options. Unlike more rigid RPGs, there’s no class system to lock into, nor any other species or job parameters that dictate what sort of experience you can have. Instead, you’re encouraged to experiment with all options in pursuit of a loadout of magic abilities that complement your chosen playstyle. To showcase how this works and redefines the experience, I got to play through a mid-game mission called Mud and Death twice. Both times I was equipped with the same massive two-handed hammer and ranged bow, but the selected spells were different on each run: One included, a lightning strike, fireball, animal-transformation, and stealth-shift move behind an enemy’s back in its spellbook, whereas the other had the same lightning strike, a levitation spell that can turn into a ground pound, magical blades that hover before attacking multiple targets, and force push-esque magical shove (in the full game you’ll be able to switch in and out your loadout of spells and weapons on the fly, but for the purposes of this demo it was locked in for me.)
The mission itself was simple, but provided me with plenty of enemy fodder to play around with. Reanimated skeletons stumbled towards me, Ray Harryhausen-style, with the aim of sinking their swords into me. Although they initially seemed a simplistic foe to be unthinkingly batted away, plenty of interesting touches emerged from each I fought, such as how some produce a wailing wraith from their crumpled bones upon striking them down. The most fun thing to play around with, however, is how these undead react to the damage you inflict on them. For example, send an arrow into their knee, and they’ll fall down and start crawling along the ground toward you. Manage to knock their skulls from their spine? They’ll lose the ability to aim and end up firing their crossbow bolts in all sorts of directions.
Lopping off those heads feels great, too. Sharpshooting with a fully drawn longbow is accompanied by a satisfying “ping”, and while rattling a full magazine of repeating crossbow ammunition into exposed cheekbone didn’t give me quite as much gratification, it by no means felt bad. By far the best mode of undead beheading that I got to try out though was swinging that big hammer in a calcium-enriched game of croquet. Both light and heavy attacks are available, and if you hold in their respective buttons, you’ll get charged up versions. I particularly enjoyed the hammer’s charged heavy option, which proved great for crowd control as my hero spun around several times, knocking down anything in their path.
It’s worth noting just how many waves of enemies I faced during these encounters. I initially wondered if this was purely for demo purposes to allow for the breadth of combat options to be shown off completely, but later confirmed with Playground that this is genuinely the number of foes that will appear during this mission in the final game. Anyone who has played Lionhead’s Fable games will recognise this approach, and Playground sees this as a continuation of the original trilogy’s ability to make each encounter feel like a heroic event.
“What the original Fable games did, which was often putting you in one-to-many combat scenarios, felt like that was a great way of shining a light on your capital H heroism,” Fulton explains. “Rather than it being sort of an equal duel, oftentimes it’s you against a bunch of enemies. And that seems like a forum for you to be able to go and express yourself and feel like a hero because that’s ultimately the fantasy of the game.”
The traditional weaponry feels good with its modern action game approach of dodging, blocking, a parrying incorportated, but it’s when slinging those spells that Fable’s combat fully came alive for me. Across my two playthroughs I accessed sorcery ranging from levitating multiple enemies into the air and sending them crashing back down to the floor, summon lightning strikes down upon them, and unleash fireballs. There’s some great synergy to be found in combining spells and attacks; for example, I could lift a bunch of skeletons into the air, but before sending them down to the ground, I could hit them with the lightning spell which made their brittle bones burst into pieces in middair.
By far the best combination, though, involved a series staple creature.
It just wouldn’t be Fable without chickens. The Befowl spell lets you turn an enemy into a little clucker, and when fully upgraded, will allow you to multiply that effect onto others. But lend this fate to a skeleton warrior, and you won’t just get any chicken. You’ll get an undead chicken trotting around the place, glowing green and looking far from tasty. That can changed, though. Send a fireball in its direction and they’ll transform into a freshly roasted chicken, ending them as a threat completely. It’s these sort of experimental actions – and the comedic results that can be conjured from them – that make me most excited about the possibilities Fable’s suite of spells could lead to.
“We knew we were going to get humor in lots of areas of the game and the big question mark was, ‘Is combat meant to be funny? Should it be funny or should it be an inherently serious pursuit?’ says Fulton. “As it’s turned out, and again, game development’s often like this, we’ve found the funny in combat down the line. The chicken spell is funny in and of itself, but the team really ran with it, which I love.”
Some enemies are, sadly, resistant to such foolishness. My demo ended with a boss fight set in the confines of the foggy Wraithmarsh. Waiting for me there was an entity called the Lantern Keeper, essentially a twisted mesh of twigs with branches for limbs and a glowing green lamp for a head. Its beefy health bar posed a challenge, and while its dry and woody frame wasn’t a fan of my searing fireball spell, I couldn’t repeatedly target it with flame due to a relatively restrictive cooldown placed on each incantation. That’s where my bow came in handy, and firing arrow after arrow into its head proved a very viable tactic — turns out having your weak point light up and stick out like a sore thumb through thick mist isn’t the smartest idea.
That didn’t mean it was a simple fight, though. The Lantern Keeper has a few big attacks up their sleeve, as well as the ability to spawn wraiths. Though annoying in numbers, these spectral mobs are easy to take down, and at times it became vital that I did so. Let the boss deal big damage to you, and you’ll naturally find yourself in need of a health boost. The only way to refill your potions, though, is by collecting green orbs that fall from enemies once you’ve killed them – a system that pays homage to the original games without directly cloning. I love this approach to action in games, as it encourages you to play on the front foot, and while Fable’s version is nowhere near as fast or as well-oiled a machine as the systems the power the likes of Doom Eternal or Control Resonant, I’m always a fan of attack being the best form of defense.
The action is promised to develop over the course of the main quest, too, with both complexity in boss design and new ways to take them down introduced throughout. “There are a couple of skills that you can acquire. One is called Return to Sender, which is where you can sort of grab projectiles out the air and return them,” reveals Fulton. “You can do that to a lot of magical spells as well. So some of the boss fights that you will encounter later in the game almost become sort of like this trading. Any spell that you cast is probably coming back at you and vice versa. So they become much more tactical at that point.”
My overall takeway from finally playing Fable for myself was that the fluidity of its combat systems feels great to wield, and, I promise you, as is often the case, better than just watching it. There’s a great sense of flexibility in the tools at your disposal and how best to combo them to create chain effects and increased damage. The more standard side of combat — dodging, blocking and parrying with a physical weapon — is smooth if not groundbreaking. But throw those stylish spells into the mix, and you’ve got a fantastic translation of the original Fable’s combat into the modern age. Just don’t try eating the zombie chickens.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
