Most games in the role playing genre today equate ambition with the amount of content, so it’s unusual to see a game like Fable that is ambitious in a different way.
There is one genius thing about the Kingdom Come games if you choose to live outside the law. So you enter someone’s house, quietly unlock a chest where valuable things might be, and steal nice clothes from it. Throw the old rags off you and immediately put on your new fashion catch and go out of the house, hoping that people will greet you nicely with “good evening, gentlemen” when they see you in a nice uniform. When the devil comes to you: they recognize their clothes on you and not even five or six – they are already running to report the thief to the guards.
If you thought it wouldn’t happen in the game, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. But, you are right not to think that this could happen – because such situations in games generally do not happen. You can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many games in the last ten years have surprised you in a similar way.
But why is that so?
In short, most games don’t even bother to deliver anything outside of a proven formula. In the era when the recipe for the commercial success of games was not as constructed as it is today, developers experimented more and were more ready for crazy ideas that would sometimes be a hit and sometimes turn out to be a complete failure. In today’s game development, it is necessary to justify every cent invested and every minute of time invested, therefore the line of least resistance is most often followed and the tactic “copy from another, but rewrite a little so as not to be noticed” is used. That’s why today we have a hundred or so soulslike games that usually only offer a thematic variation on the ideas of FromSoftware’s games.
Ambition in the genre of action RPGs has turned into piling up content and raising challenges. Instead of the game bringing something more than the typical mechanics of all other games of that genre, we are promised the biggest map so far, the longest adventure so far, the most challenging opponents so far. See that mountain in the distance? – not only can you climb there, but you will see another mountain there and guess what: you can climb it too!
I recently wrote in my review of The Outer Worlds 2 how refreshing it is to see an RPG where you can attack the questgiver. It’s silly that that’s even praise for a game in 2025, but that’s the reality of RPGs these days, when things are simplified so much that we end up with a directed story where we’re just a small permutation. After all, the line between action-adventure and RPG has become blurred when almost every third game has RPG elements. And don’t ask the adventure part to bring you some unexpected innovations.
In that reality, I know exactly what we’ll get from a new Witcher or Mass Effect. I bet the answer is the same as the previous games of those series – only more so. Not to mention Bethesda’s titles; older Elder Scrolls fans know how the simplification (dumbing down to some) of the series has been going on since 2006. But, we have sixteen times the detail and it just works.
I have to admit that I’m pleasantly surprised that the upcoming Fable hasn’t decided to go that route, at least judging by what’s been shown so far. They kept simulation elements such as running a business, starting a family and gaining a reputation with the characters (say more than a thousand individuals). It’s strange, but for a moment I forgot that this was even a part of the previous Fable games, which were infamously (over)ambitious. Just like in KCD I didn’t expect the characters to recognize what I stole from them, so here I didn’t expect Fable to offer any more interactivity than a Dragon Age or Hogwarts Legacy. It’s not a hardcore CRPG like Baldur’s Gate 3 though.
It remains to be seen how everything promised will work out in Fable, but I’m glad we have a big-budget game that tries to deliver something more than the standard smacking of opponents and setting up camp for crafting and character conversations. I want more games where I can rent houses, kick chickens, etc. Literally not all games need these options, but I want to see a higher level of interaction in an RPG than “pet the dog”.
Fortunately, Fable isn’t the only game trying something ambitious and a little different. The upcoming Dawnwalker uses an interesting structure in that it limits the game to 30 days and 30 nights, and players have to judge for themselves which quests will lead them towards the main goal or take away from their running time. The most exciting things have not even been announced yet, such as the next projects of Warhorse Studios or the new game by the director of Disco Elysium, on which the chief designer of Planescape Torment also collaborates.