Remember those mockumentary-style interview sections in the original reveal trailer for Fable? Well, those will actually be in the game, and they’re inspired by an unlikely source — The Office.
Fable is a distinctly British video game series, and one where comedy has always been allowed to thrive. Both deadpan and absurdist British humor were at the centre of Lionhead’s original trilogy, and it’s great to see that ethos carrying forward into Playground Games’ 2026 reboot, which we recently got an extended look at during January’s Xbox Developer Direct.
Speaking to Xbox Wire, Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton mentioned a handful of classic 21st-century British sitcoms as touchstones for Fable’s tone. “We were inspired by the incredibly rich variety of British comedies that have been around over the last 20 years, like Peep Show, The IT Crowd and so many others,” Fulton revealed. “We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well.”
“Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularised, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humour which really appeals to us. And the actors who have been in a lot of these shows — and indeed some of whom are in our game — they’re known all over the world.”
It isn’t just the style of humor from these comedies that Playground is taking inspiration from, but filmmaking techniques, too. “The other cool thing about The Office is something we’ve kind of nicked,” Fulton revealed. “You’ve maybe seen in our trailers that we have a sort of mockumentary interview style. I think a lot of people assume we just did that for those trailers, but it’s actually a device we use throughout the game.”
“I’ve never seen it in games before,” Fulton continued. “But it allows you a way to really neatly tell a joke or drop a little bit of character detail in a way that would feel really clunky in a dialogue, but suddenly feels entirely natural when you do it to ‘camera’.”
This can be seen in the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase trailer for Fable, above, in which Peep Show’s Matt King speaks to us straight down the lens as Humphrey the Golden, Guildmaster of Albion. It’s a sitcom technique pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the original BBC version of The Office, before, obviously, making its way overseas for the likes of Pam and Jim to take full advantage of with their knowing looks to camera in its U.S. edition. This mockumentary-style has spawned dozens of similar TV shows since, but, as Fulton said, it’s something we’ve never really seen in a game before, which makes for an intriguing proposition.
You can check out our own big interview with Ralph Fulton about Fable here, as well as learning about how you can marry each and every one of its 1,000 NPCs.
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.
