Fable Anniversary - Preview @ TheDeadHamster

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.