Fable is still six months out from its February 23, 2027 launch, but gamescom 2026 just delivered the deepest look yet at Playground Games’ long-delayed reboot, pairing a first-ever hands-on combat demo for press and creators with an extended gameplay video touring the city of Bowerstone.
The hands-on impressions come from XBOX Wire’s first taste of Fable’s combat, built around a quest called Mud and Death that sends the Hero into a once-flooded, now-haunted mine alongside Heroes’ Guild leader Humphry, fighting through ghosts and skeletons. The reboot evolves the original trilogy’s Strength, Skill, and Will systems into something you can switch between seamlessly mid-fight, with melee, ranged, and magic options shaped by your equipment and skill choices, and XBOX Wire’s writer played the demo twice with two different loadouts to show how much those choices matter.
Both runs put a two-handed Bower Hammer in the Hero’s hands, a slower, more powerful pick that one-shots weaker enemies, proves its worth against armored ones, and hits multiple targets with its huge swing, plus a charge attack that sends you spinning across the room. Humphry even calls out your weapon choice on the way into the mine. Dodges, parries, and weapon-specific finishers round out the kit, and a well-timed parry can knock a skeleton’s head clean off, leaving it staggered and far less accurate.
Spells occupy four slots and are cast by holding RT and pressing one of the face buttons, with each cast going on a cooldown afterward. The demo’s palette included a Fireball that charges into a room-clearing explosion, Lightning that chains between enemies, phantom daggers via the Blades spell, a Lift spell that draws groups helplessly into the air and slams them back down on a second cast, a Rush teleport that pops you behind targets and reaches archers on high ground, Push for shoving crowds back (or off ledges), and Befowl, which turns enemies into chickens. Casting it on an undead enemy produces, naturally, an undead chicken.
Ranged combat rounds things out with two very different tools across the two playthroughs, the slow-drawing but accurate Deepwood Bow and the Repeater Crossbow’s high-speed hail of weaker bolts. Weakspot targeting gives ranged options extra value, with leg shots stumbling unarmored enemies and the flying Lantern Keeper’s lantern proving easier to hit with a bow than any spell.
The demo also introduced the enemy roster, starting with the Hollow Folk, the collective name for Fable’s skeletons, which come in melee, ranged, and armored variants, the last of which are immune to ranged attacks. Hollow Folk can be dismembered wherever they aren’t armored, and they keep coming regardless. Wraiths are fast, flying ghosts that are weak on their own but spawn and inhabit more Hollow Folk mid-fight, then pop back out for a second phase once their hosts fall. Topping the demo is the Lantern Keeper, a large, slow, flying mini-boss with a serious healthbar, an unblockable fire breath, explosive projectiles, and the ability to spawn even more Wraiths, so groups keep growing if you don’t work fast.
As for the extended gameplay video below, it steps into Bowerstone, the bustling capital of Albion, and shows a living city where every person has a life of their own, with homes and businesses to own, reputations to build, appearance customization, difficult choices, and even growing a family. Fable arrives February 23, 2027 on XBOX Series X|S and PC, with cloud support, inclusion with Game Pass, and XBOX Play Anywhere covering both console and PC, and preordering nets the Pre-Order Content Pack with the questionably heroic Chicken Suit and a collection of in-game gifts, while the Premium Edition includes early access starting February 18. As I said when the delay to February was announced, Playground has earned the benefit of the doubt, and my 40 hours with Forza Horizon 6 left me convinced this is a studio that knows exactly what it’s doing when it comes to making a fun game. Between Befowl and the Chicken Suit, the reboot clearly isn’t abandoning the franchise’s chicken traditions.
