Callum

Getting Playground to develop the next Fable installment will either be genius, or stupidity - at first glance, I agree that they have no experience in this genre and because of that, perhaps the game has an hurdle from day 1. I will say, though - using a studio that doesn't have fantasy game experience might actually be a good call, considering Fable wasn't really a standard fantasy game. The humour, the world that was built, everything around it was so unique and difficult to quantifiably copy that if another studio responsible for another big fantasy success played too close to home, it could create a Fable without the soul that made it successful to begin with. Playground are essentially having to start from scratch, as if they were a new studio - nothing they've done before that they can borrow from, they have to create a new version of an old world. And in a way, that's what Lionhead originally had to do.

The one-gendered lead may end up being a mistake, but we can't be certain that's what they've done yet - it's easier to create one mockup until the game is actually closer to final development than to create two.

I'm not massively optimistic, I'm not going to be rushing to buy this installment like I did the previous trilogy (I played the original game while I was still at primary school), but I'll give it a solid chance until we see how capable Playground actually is, beyond cars.