Lionhead Studios released the firstFablegame in 2004, shortly followed by itsLost Chaptersre-release, and these two launches setFabledown the path of being one of Xbox’s most beloved exclusive franchises. WhileMicrosoft shut Lionhead Studios downin 2016, Playground Games’ upcomingFable 4gives fans hope that the series might see a proper revival, alongside past features like world morphing.
Fans don’t know much aboutFable 4, which still lacks a release window. This leaves plenty of questions and much room for speculation, such as how the new game might incorporate features from the original trilogy. This includesFable’s famous Morphing mechanics. While it arguably wouldn’t beFablewithout the franchise’s iconic character morphing, World Morphing is an important but less obvious feature thatFable 4needs to take advantage of.
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World Morphing in the Fable Trilogy
All three coreFablegames featured a morphing system where the player character’s appearance changed based on their actions. However,Fable 2was the first game to introduce the concept of World Morphing, and the first example comes quite early on. Much like the first game,Fable 2opened with a childhood prologuewhere the Hero needed to collect gold coins by performing good or bad deeds. This primarily served to demonstrateFable 2’s moral choice system.
After collecting missing arrest warrants, players can turn them over to a town guard or the local criminal syndicate. However, when the Hero returns to their childhood neighborhood after the game’s first ten-year time skip, they will find it a very different place. If the player helped the Town Guard, they’d find that crime has largely disappeared fromFable 2’s Bowerstone Old Town. New merchants have moved in, old buildings have been refurbished, and a new central avenue gives it a much less claustrophobic atmosphere.
However, if players help the gang, Old Town becomes even more of a slum than it was during the Hero’s childhood. The buildings are rundown, and most lack doors and windows. The guards also don’t come around anymore, so there is no real law to speak of. This version ofFable 2’s Old Town is almost unrecognizable compared to its cleaned-up counterpart, which may as well be an entirely separate zone.
While Old Town is the first and arguably most memorable example ofFable 2’s World Morphing, it’s far from the only example. Most regions go through some degree of change after the game’s second ten-year time skip. Not all morphs are based on a specific choice or side-quest, and not all moral choices result in a Morph. However, many are, and these help players visualize theimpactFable’s Heroes have on Albion. Regions like Oakfield, Westcliff, and Brightwood change substantially based on player choices.
World Morphing returned in2010’sFable 3, with most of the significant changes tied to the player’s decisions after becoming Albion’s King or Queen. These throne room decisions can change nearly every region of Albion, sometimes drastically.Fable 3also featured a more subtle system where shops and homes would Morph based on the region’s economic stability, repairing or degrading on their own. This was primarily but not exclusively driven by the Town’s Morale, which reflects the ratio of good and evil actions players performed in the local area.
In addition to giving players a clear idea of how their actions impact the world, Morphing gives fans an excuse to revisit areas and lets developers get more mileage from less world space.Fable 4won’t need a huge open worldif it finds a way to keep a smaller number of locations interesting.
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World Morphing in Fable 4
The big difference betweenFable 4and its predecessors is thatPlayground and Eidos Montreal’s gamewill likely be entirely open-world. However, most open-world games still feature distinct regions or biomes, so that isn’t a problem as far asFable’s World Morphing is concerned. Depending on its implementation, the open world may improve the system, since it allows for a more gradual transition from one region to the next.
Unfortunately, the limited information onFable 4and its open worldmakes it hard to say precisely how the game’s World Morphing will work. Ideally, Playground Games would take elements from bothFable 2andFable 3. Any Morphing system would likely be tied mainly toFable 4’s quests, as inFable 2, butFable 3’s Economy and Morale mechanics would also be valuable for creating more subtle environmental changes.
It’s also easy to see how the system could function usingFable 2as a precedent. For example,Fable 4’s Hero may stumble upon a small village being extorted by the local bandit gang. The villagers beg them for aid, but shortly after leaving town, a bandit confronts the Hero and offers them a share of the loot if they help make an example of the village. If the player helps the villagers, they may return later to see the town doubled in size with many new services. However, if they destroy the village, players may return to find a literal ghost town overrun with the undead.
Not all ofFable 4’s World Morphs need to be that extreme, but there should be at least a few major Morphs of that scale. They don’t necessarily need to be a single step, either. For example,Fable 3featured several short quests to help establish and develop the settlement of Driftwood on a group of islands near Bowerstone. While Playground Games probably shouldn’t recycle Driftwood one-to-one,Fable 4could feature a similar chain of quests.
Of course, there are still a few questions about the logistics ofFable 4’s Morphing.Fable 2featured two ten-year time skips, andFable 3’s more dramatic World Morphs were implied to happen over months of organized effort. IfFable 4’s storyfeatures major time skips likeFable 2, that seems like the natural point for any changes to occur. Alternatively, updating progress based on story progression seems like a logical solution. Either way,Fable 4would be better if actions have a visible impact, even if it means fudging the timeline a bit.
Fable 4is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
