It’s been a long time since players got a new adventure in the land of Albion, but now thatFableis on the way, things are looking up for the series' fans. The game is certainly cryptic for now, though. After a couple years of rumors and leaks, the most concrete thingFableplayers have to go off of is a short trailer from this year’s Xbox Games Showcase. It doesn’t reveal much about the game, but it’s at least confirmation that something is on the way. In a time when the fantasy RPG is alive and well, a newFablegame will be a welcome addition to the market.
That said, after this extended absence,Fableand Albion might have some adjusting to do to keep up with the competition. There’s plenty of other high profile games in the genre coming up— fans need tolook no further thanAvowed,Obsidian Entertainment’s RPGthat turned heads at the Xbox Games Showcase as well. There’s a crucial difference between these games that might weakenFable,though:Fablehas a habit of leaping through the timeline between games, causing lore to change vastly.Avowedis mysterious, but it looks like it’ll be rooted in some very stable lore.Fablemight be wise to take a page out of that book and change how it approaches its own setting.
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Albion and Eora
For those who don’t know,Avowedwill take place in Eora, the medieval fantasy world that Obsidian first brought to life in thePillars of Eternitygames. Thanks to that first appearance,Eora has a ton of lore to offerAvowed.Even though the Living Lands, the region whereAvowedtakes place,didn’t appear in those games, they’ve been fleshed out significantly and players have a good idea of what to expect going in. The area’s population is very diverse, boding well for character creation, and all kinds of fantastical beasts and landmarks in the area make it a promising choice for an adventure.
All of this remains consistent between thePillarsgames, so it’s liable to be similar inAvowed.In contrast,Fablehas handled Albion very differently over the years. For instance, there’s a gap of five hundred years between the first and second games in the main line. Naturally this means that Albion undergoes tremendous changes and becomes a very different society. The same things happen to a lesser extent whenfifty years pass beforeFable 3takes place.Fablegoes from a medieval adventure to a early modern or Renaissance society to the dawn of an industrial empire. Technology and society are constantly changing between the games, forcing lore to expand with it.
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Building on the Foundation
It’s certainly possible to viewFable’s inclination toward constant change as a good thing. It allows players to explore various kinds of fantasy worlds within the same franchise and see a society develop in response to the player’s actions. However, from a lore perspective, it proves troublesome. Time skips create a lot of extra work for the writers, forcing themto reimagine Albion with everyFablegamerather than focusing on the details of an established setting with each new entry and fleshing them out in new ways. So much change results in instability and can make the games hard to follow.
With that in mind, maybeFablewill look to Eora and decide to pin down Albion’s lore to a specific time. This new entry is a reboot, so it’s got the opportunity to make big, bold changes inFable’s traditions. MaybePlayground Gameswill decide to prioritize stable lore that doesn’t have to reintroduce itself to players every time since going back to basics is ideal for a reboot.Fablehas the opportunity to make its lore more grounded and let players get comfortable as the developers look toward the possibility of a whole reboot trilogy, or even more.
Fableis in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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