DSOGaming reports on a job listing for the next generation Fable game in development which will be using the ForzaTech engine.

As the job listing reads:

“Do you want to have a major impact on 3 AAA titles in development across 2 beloved Xbox franchises? ForzaTech is the engine, tools, and pipelines that drive both the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon series of games. In addition to adding new features like raytracing to support the next console generation, we are also enriching the toolset to support an open world action RPG – Fable.”

Gamespot reports that there's a chance that Microsoft will continue the Fable series:

Microsoft On The Future Of The Fable Series

Would you like to see Fable return someday?

In March last year, Microsoft made the announcement that it was closing long-running British studio Lionhead, which made the Fable and Black & White franchises, among others. The closure of the studio also meant that the Xbox One and PC game Fable Legends was being canceled. A digital card game called Fable Fortune was released, though this game was released by an outside studio (with support from Microsoft, which owns the Fable rights). But will there ever be another mainline Fable game? That remains to be seen, but if Microsoft were to bring it back, that would please Xbox boss Shannon Loftis, who heads up Xbox's first-party publishing team.

She told GameSpot this week as part of her PAX Aus travels that Microsoft loves Fable as a franchise. One of the main reasons why Loftis moved to England years ago was to help lead the production of Fable II.

"Fable is very near and dear to my heart," Loftis said. "Actually one of the primary reasons [I moved to England] was to work with the team on Fable II. Fable Fortune is now out, the card game. We love the IP. I can't talk right now about whether we're doing anything with it or not, but if I ever get the chance to go back to Albion ... "
[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Lionhead released a patch for Fable Anniversary on Steam. Here are the changes.

Fixed an issue with the controller system which was causing crashes when casting spells if you were using keyboard and mouse.
Fix for music playing over frescos
Fix for gossip/NPC chatter carrying over from previous profiles
Display error message box if My Documents mapped to network (not currently supported)
Fixed a crash related to saving immediately after completing a quest.
Updated saving system to be more robust when writing files.
Added automatic backup system for saves.
Added new re-mappable actions for Accept and Back in the menus. Enter and Backspace are still the primary keys but you can now remap a secondary key.

PC Gamer has the only review for Fable Anniversary that I can find, and lets just they they are not impressed. The final score reflects that as the game only received a 65/100.

Fable Anniversary hasn't added much to the original formula save achievements and a harder 'Heroic Mode', but that's OK. Updated graphics, improved controls, and a new save system were all that was really needed to tweak Fable for modern players. I could give this to my brother and sister who were in nappies when the original came out and know that they could still get something out of it. They might just roll their eyes at the echoey voice of the Guildmaster telling them their health was low, but then kids are so good at games these days they probably wouldn't hear it nearly as much as I did.

IN2GPU writer Radu Postolache calls Fable Anniversary "A Failed PC Port", and I have to say I agree with everything he has writing. Just read the Steam reviews.

So what conclusion should we make about Fable Anniversary? Fable is like a good story written in different kinds of books. Would you rather pay 32 Euros for the same story written in a new book whose pages will fall apart and would be very cumbersome to use, or would you pay 9 Euros for the classic, yellowed pages book that deliver the original experience which can hardly be improved. In my opinion, Anniversary is a bitter disappointment, at least for now. If you still haven’t played Lost Chapters, then you should get to it, because it’s still good. As for Anniversary, you can either wait for the big problems to be fixed, or play it on Xbox 360. It feels to me like Lionhead released Anniversary in a hurry and just didn’t care for us PC gamers, bringing to the market yet another cash grab.

Fable Anniversary is now avaiable on Steam with three new DLC packs.

Fable Anniversary is launching on Steam today! We've been working hard since February to not only bring the game to PC but to also make it sound better, look better and most importantly play better than ever before.

With updated sound design, advanced graphics settings and the all new Heroic Mode, we’ve crammed as much spit* and polish into the game as possible. (*not real spit)

*WARNING* - Heroic Mode is really hard! Lionhead are not responsible for any swearing, tantrums or table flipping that may occur during play.

Finally one of the most exciting features we have just announced is official modding support. Shipping with a version of the UE3 Editor, everyone is going to be able to edit any of the existing art and animation in the game. This means that anything our artists and animators can do, you can to. (Can someone please create robot chickens just so we can shut Craig up?!)

Don't forget the remastered edition of Fable called Fable Anniversary will be released next week on Steam. You can still pre-order it for a discount on Steam.

FOR EVERY CHOICE, A CONSEQUENCE.

Fully re-mastered with HD visuals and audio, Fable Anniversary is a stunning rendition of the original game that will delight faithful fans and new players alike!

The all new Heroic difficulty setting will test the mettle of even the most hardcore Fable fan. With no Resurrection Phials and even more lethal enemies to contend with, will you be able to survive?

Forge a hero based on your actions: age and evolve a hero or villain through the actions you choose and the path you follow-be it for good, evil, or in-between.

Build your living legend: Through deeds and actions, build a name for yourself across the land. Recruit allies and followers. Gain glory or notoriety. Who will you be?

With an entirely new lighting system, slick new interface, all new textures, models and gameplay, Fable Anniversary is the full HD, definitive Fable experience

Steam announces that you can now pre-purchase Fable Anniversary for 20% off.

FOR EVERY CHOICE, A CONSEQUENCE.

Fully re-mastered with HD visuals and audio, Fable Anniversary is a stunning rendition of the original game that will delight faithful fans and new players alike!

The all new Heroic difficulty setting will test the mettle of even the most hardcore Fable fan. With no Resurrection Phials and even more lethal enemies to contend with, will you be able to survive?

Forge a hero based on your actions: age and evolve a hero or villain through the actions you choose and the path you follow-be it for good, evil, or in-between.

Build your living legend: Through deeds and actions, build a name for yourself across the land. Recruit allies and followers. Gain glory or notoriety. Who will you be?

With an entirely new lighting system, slick new interface, all new textures, models and gameplay, Fable Anniversary is the full HD, definitive Fable experience.

Continue-Play takes a look back at Fables: Legends, and decided to review the game at the same time, Here is a small sample to get you started.

Even decoupled from Project Ego’s infamous reputation, Fable: The Lost Chapters remains an ambitious undertaking that underlines everything troublesome about the gaming industry’s fixation with innovation. As an action-RPG, it’s simplistic, button-mashy, poorly balanced, and a bit repetitive. As a story, it’s inconsistent and discordant.

But as a project, Fable: The Lost Chapters is somewhat faultless. It’s a mishmash of mechanics and storytelling tools that don’t always weave the most interesting stories. But when it does, it does so with such earnestness that it’s difficult to hate it.

At the time of its release, Molyneux’s words certainly cast it in a terrible light: there’s no magnificent oak tree coming from one beautiful acorn. There’s just the stock story of the Hero of Oakvale, a lot of farting, burping, tens of marriages in tens of towns, some light property management, and a lot of disappointment. However, decoupled from its backgrounds, Fable: The Lost Chapters is just pure, dumb fun.

Lionhead Studios released a new teaser trailer for Fable Anniversary that mentions the game might be getting a PC release. Well time will tell as they say.

Since launching Fable Anniversary on Xbox 360, we've been inundated with requests to bring the game to PC..

VG 24/7 interviews Ted Timmins the Franchise Manager of the Fable series.

How does the development process of the original Fable compare to Fable Anniversary?

You have to approach it as you would making a brand new game. Sure, it’s a remaster, not a full-on remake. But a remaster on the scale of Fable: The Lost Chapters is a huge undertaking. There’s so many different parts and components. At one stage we had over 100 artists working on the art. There was Halo Anniversary which was very successful a couple of years ago, and there’s Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time on the 3DS which I love. When you look at those they’ve set the standard for what people expect in a remastered game.

This isn’t a reboot like Tomb Raider. This is reminding the fans why they fell in love with Albion all that time ago. The fans have been demanding this and it’s one of the reasons why we decided to put it on the Xbox 360 – to let the fans complete their collection and have the whole franchise on one platform.

What was the original goal with a remake like this, what did you want to achieve?

Initially we really wanted to just remake the whole thing. But then once we worked out it would take about three years we realised it wasn’t viable. And that’s not really what the fans would want. The fans want a nice excuse to play through the original again. The feedback that we’ve had so far is that they’re ecstatic. I have that feeling towards a lot of games myself, like Halo – it blew my mind. I can relate to the fans’ feelings.

Here are some reviews for Fable: Anniversary that is to be released shortly. The review scores range from 6 to 9.

Metro, 6/10

If you’ve never played any of the games before though, or perhaps just one and not the others, Fable Trilogy is also released this week and includes Fable Anniversary, Fable II, and Fable III. The latter two aren’t altered in any way but on a technical level they don’t particularly need it.

What all three could do with though is something to address the intrinsic shallowness of the gameplay. Although playing the first one again it’s clear that’s never really been Fable’s primary focus. Instead it tries to offer a more human and personal experience for a role-playing game, and in that sense it still has disappointingly few peers.

IGN, 8/10

Fable Anniversary’s personality has proved truly ageless, even if some of its mechanics haven’t. Inevitably, its doesn’t feel as fresh today as they did in 2004, but the strange and beautiful world of Albion, with all its weird idiosyncrasies and wildly varied accents, is as absorbing and lovably, peculiarly British as it ever was.

Life at the Moment, 9/10

Fable Anniversary is an outstanding version of the original game. If the new console generation can live up to the ambition and imagination this title showed a decade ago theneverything is going to be alright.

And as it takes too much time to quote them all, here is a summary of some others.

• Destructoid, 7.5/10
• EGM, 6/10
• The Escapist, 3/5
• Eurogamer, 6/10
• Hardcore Gamer, 4/5
• Now Gamer, 9/10
• OXM, 7/10
• Videogamer, 7/10

Fable Anniversary has another hands-on preview at Dead Hamster. The site even has a video of the E3 gameplay.

The Good news is that for those of you who love Fable TLC just as it is, you'll be more than happy with what the team has managed to accomplish. For those of you who like Fable TLC but want to see it brought into the current generation, you're also in luck. In talking with the team it was clear that they felt it was extremely important to make sure that they didn't "damage" Fable TLC for the purists out there. Yet they did recognize that some players will want a bit more than just vanilla-Fable. The changes that the team have made, in addition to the SmartGlass integration, has resulted in a game that should meet the needs of either side.

Additionally, the team tells me that there's still a good deal left that they intend to do with Fable Anniversary over the course of the next few months. They'll be polishing any areas that need polish, they're working on updating the controls (though they'll offer the original controls for anyone who prefers them), they're still tweaking and adjusting the user interface, and there's much more going on behind the scenes that they'll be doing up until release.

The one thing that seemed to stand out to me the most while playing Fable Anniversary is that after a while you forget you're playing a remake. Which, in my opinion, is just as it should be. It was only until I used SmartGlass to compare screenshots that I would be reminded of how far Fable Anniversary has taken the game. You just get drawn into the game's updated look and feel and you just get caught up in the game world. I was essentially playing Fable TLC just as I had always remembered it, yet it still somehow felt new; almost as if I were playing it for the first time. It was this odd and somewhat indefinable mix of my memory of the game combined with a brand new experience.

Which brings us back to nostalgia. Is Fable Anniversary capitalizing on our nostalgia? Most definitely. But it's hitting this really magical balance between letting us revisit the game that we all loved so much while somehow allowing us to experience it as if for the first time. Fable Anniversary is shaping up to be something truly special from the Lionhead team.

Lionhead's remastered Fable Anniversary was at this year's E3, and so here are a few previews and gameplay video.

Polygon

There's someone else with an eye on this project, Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux, who has now moved onto new things with 22Cans. "He's very interested in progress," said Oman. "We chat about it often. He and Tim had breakfast today and talked about it."

Famously, Fable was one of Molyneux's great development projects, a living, breathing world that, he said at the time, would redefine gameplay. Even if it didn't quite pan out according to the Molyneux hype, Fable is, according to Oman, "one of the most successful IPs in gaming history."

He said that the new game will retain the exact same controls as the original, but with "a more intuitive design, that feels exactly like the original." he added, "Visually, it's completely updated, in all the environments from bright outdoor scenes to misty graveyards. We're able to do the things the original designers could only dream of."

RPGSite

The UI has been rejigged to feel a little more modern, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is the same. It’s a strange feeling to return to this game’s more complex UI-reliant combat after the ‘one button’ rhythm-driven combat of Fable II and III, but it still feels pretty good. There are new control options for those more familiar and comfortable with a feel closer to more recent titles in the series. All told, it’s a little more obviously sluggish than modern games, but again, one has to remember that this game is a decade old.

The save system has also been made more forgiving to match Fable II and III, and will allow players to save at anytime from anywhere in the game - even during quests.

The game unfortunately still features load-times, the architecture of the game such that it would likely be impossible to turn it into a flowing open world - but Lionhead has reduced them significantly. The developer describes them as ‘Lightning Fast,’ and they certainly zipped by during our time storming Twinblade’s camp at E3.

There's a new FAQ on the Lionhead Studios forums for Fable Anniversary.

Q: Can you be more specific about what exactly is being updated?

A: It was important to us that Fable Anniversary isn't just a simple port, we want it to be up there with the best looking games available on Xbox 360. In order to achieve this vision, we have;

• An entirely new lighting system, powered by Unreal.
• All new models, textures and materials - leather now actually looks and feels like leather!
• All new particle fx, to make Fireballs hotter than ever!
• All new facial and cutscene animation technology to bring even more life to our story sequences!
• Widescreen support! A 4:3 TV is sooooo 2004, so you can enjoy Fable Anniversary with 16:9 beauty!
• Also, not forgetting sound! All our audio has been fully remastered for surround sound!

Q: When is Fable Anniversary launching?

A: Fable Anniversary will launch later this year.

Q: Will content from The Lost Chapters be included in Anniversary?

A: Absolutely - all of the content from The Lost Chapters will be included.

Q: Will there be new quests or content?

A: Our intention with Fable Anniversary was to re-capture the game that so many fell in love with and bring it up to date for a modern generation of console gamers. We think the story, quests and gameplay of the original game are what lead to it becoming a critically acclaimed title in 2004, and we've got no intention of changing or adding to that with Anniversary.

Also we get the tyipcal Microsoft answer from Lionhead about a PC release on Gamespot.

"We're not ruling out a PC version, however, nothing is in development at this time,"

Fable Anniversary a HD remastered version of the original Fable is going to be released. The game so far will only be available for the Xbox 360. Major Nelson has a podcast on the title with lead designer Ted Timmins offering some additional details on the title.

News today is that Lionhhead are bringing Fable Anniversary, a re-mastered version of Fable: The Lost Chapters, to Xbox 360. Promising a complete HD graphical overhaul and achievements for the first time, Fable fans will be able to rediscover the game that started it all later this year.

Ted Timmins, Lead Designer, who worked on the original Fable as a games tester: “We’re really excited to be bringing a re-mastered version of Fable: The Lost Chapters to the Xbox 360. It’s been one of the biggest community requests as we know how much the fans love the original game.”

RPS goes back to look at the original Fable:

Which is a theme that runs all through it. It’s a game that shouts about choice, primarily in the option to become a living legend through kindness or through viciousness, but forbids you from ever straying from its very real paths. No doubt Lionhead’s decision to restrict roaming to key quest hubs linked by narrow, enemy-littered roads is deliberate, rather than the simple cop-out it’s been labelled as: it wants to point you at fun stuff, not endless empty fells.

In truth, it doesn’t matter that much – it’s pretty enough and populous enough to distract from its geographical slightness. It’s how it depicts the restrictions that sours the deal: all flimsy wooden fences and tiny stone walls. In asking to accept that those, of all things, are impenetrable barriers in a world of might and magic, it’s insulting. If a game absolutely must tie its players to a beaten path, there are better ways to do it than visibly breaking its own rules.

After reading the premise on the box for Fable: The Lost Chapters, I knew that I absolutely HAD to get this game and play it. It's rare that I am truly excited enough about a game to come up with the cash to buy it at full price -- I prefer to wait for it to drop by 20-30% at least. But for Fable: TLC, I oiled the hinges on my pennybox and forked over the full price. Many things about the game description on the box influenced my decision - the fact that your countenance changes based on your alignment and (I didn't find out until later) your combat ability, extended quests and spells for the user to play with, people react to you based on what you've done in game. Was I disappointed with my purchase, or have I been happily putting entire towns to the sword in an orgy of death and destruction? Read on and find out.

Simon: I think if you were to ask our artists, the bit they were most pleased they got away with was the topiary cocks.

Dene: If you were to hang around the guild in the northern part of Bowerstone, you'd have all these bushes which are very strangely phallically shaped, and we only realised this fairly close to the end. Basically, it was late and they were a bit pissed off that they were working late, so they decided to make things shaped out of penises.

Simon: Yeah, I think they're actually in the north part of Bowerstone. But if you asked them on another day, they'd just say that it was in fact a complete accident and there's nothing even remotely phallic about the shape of those bushes.