Fable reboot trailer: is the Jack of Blades return worth it?

The new Fable trailer ends on the return of Jack of Blades, and that reveal put my jaw on the floor. Before that moment, the first half of the trailer was dark and serious enough that I sat there wondering whether this was Fable at all. Sticking with it to the end was the right call.

I've been playing Fable since Fable 2. It's the game that got me into RPGs and opened the whole genre up for me, so when I say this reboot matters, I mean it. The ending is the kind of moment you don't want spoiled, on the level of The Sixth Sense or Joffrey's death. If you haven't seen the trailer, go and see it first.

Why I might be more hyped for Fable than GTA 6

I won't shy away from this: I might be more hyped for Fable than I am for GTA 6. That's largely because, at my core, I'm a fantasy genre player. I'm not going to pretend I won't be taking a week off work for GTA 6. But will I be taking a month off for Fable? Probably.

For anyone who needs context, Fable is a reboot, not a sequel. It was announced back in 2020. It's set in Albion, a world shaped by your choices. You can be the hero, or you can be an absolute menace to society if you want to. It's entirely up to you. I think that's why the nostalgia is real, and why this reboot matters so much to people like me.

The Fable trailer has split fans into two camps

The trailer has split people, and I think it's worth naming what the split is. I'd say there are two camps. Camp one says this doesn't feel like Fable. To them, the tone is too serious and too cinematic, and at times it's too much like The Witcher and Baldur's Gate. The morality system, the good and evil mechanic that was the heartbeat of the original games, is part of that worry. Some people feel that without it, the familiar furniture, so to speak, from the demon door to Jack of Blades, is window dressing on something that isn't Fable.

Camp two sees a smart subversion. Fable trailers are usually goofy at first. This one goes emotional and even somber, then bookends it with the classic Fable antics and chills. Very deliberate, very British. For many people, it works.

I was cautious to begin with. That dramatic music and the dark atmosphere had me thinking, is this Fable? What's going on? But I moved to a more nuanced place toward the end, and I think that journey is exactly why people are conflicted.

The dark opening may have kept Fable's British humor back too long

The trailer opens dark and foggy, with muted colors and serious music, and for roughly the first half it stays that way. That's probably where I think the problem comes from. They might have lost people before the good stuff arrived.

If I were describing Fable to someone who's never played it, I'd call it very deadpan British comedy meets fantasy. Think The Inbetweeners meets The IT Crowd meets The Office, then add your generic fantasy movie on top. That's the DNA. And I think that DNA was absent for too long at the start: the brightness, the wit, the very Britishness of it.

If you're a returning player, you knew it was coming and you were waiting for it. But if you were completely new, I wonder whether they let that serious tone linger too long.

Hayley Atwell's Isabel looks like a compelling villain

Something I did take away is that Isabel is great, and Hayley Atwell is fantastic casting. Isabel is a brand new character, so I don't know her story going in and can only go off what the trailer shows. What I saw was someone driven and powerful, on a quest to right what she sees as a tragic injustice. She's grief fueled, and she's turned her pain into determination. That focus is apparently what sets her at odds with the hero of Briar Hill and Humphrey, her one time guardian.

The dangerous bit, and what makes her interesting, is that she's not only convinced she's doing the right thing. She's convinced she'll be able to make right any harm she causes along the way. That combination of conviction and self-justification is exactly what makes a villain compelling. If you want a shorthand, I'd go with Abby from The Last of Us meets the Illusive Man from Mass Effect. Maybe they had a kid, and that kid is Isabel. I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

What I noticed first is that she's not some over the top sultry woman. Her clothes are cool, and the character design is strong enough that my first thought was that this would make a great cosplay. For me, that's a sign you've got the character right.

Isabel's fourth wall break is pure Albion

The fourth wall break works well. Isabel turns, looks directly at you and has the conversation with you. It's that moment of: oh, we're doing this then.

If you've played Fable before, you know why that hits differently, because that's the whole point of Albion. Your opinion matters, your choices matter, and they want your input. That's the relationship the original games built with you. You weren't only spectating as a story unfolded, you were part of it. So when Isabel looks straight out and starts talking to you, for a second you're back there. Who gets to be a real hero and who doesn't? The trailer sets that question up well.

The demon door proves this Fable still knows what it is

Then the classic Fable DNA shows up, and the moment I saw that demon door, I was in. For anyone who hasn't played the originals, most RPG doors are only doors. You walk up, you open them, you go in, and that's the whole relationship. Fable demon doors are completely different. They insult you. They flirt with you. They challenge you. They tell terrible jokes, they complain about their lives, and occasionally they sound like they've had one too many pints at the local pub. Every one feels like meeting a weird character rather than interacting with a game mechanic.

That's what made them so special. You'd see a giant talking stone face in the middle of nowhere and immediately want to know what was behind it, and not because of the loot. Sometimes the reward was a hidden garden, a bizarre little story or a secret area that felt completely separate from the rest of the world. Many fantasy games take themselves very seriously, and Fable never did. The humor of the demon doors is reminiscent of classic British fairy tales, pantomime villains and the absurd comedy you'd find in a Monty Python sketch. You'd go from fighting bandits to having a philosophical argument with a giant stone face that wanted to see a mullet haircut.

As a kid in the early 2000s, before every secret was instantly explained online, demon doors felt mysterious. You'd hear rumors at school: there's a door that opens if you're evil, or there's legendary gear behind that one. Half the fun was figuring it out yourself. So seeing a demon door in the new trailer doing exactly what demon doors have always done tells me this game still knows what it is. The shots of towns, monsters and the wider world do eventually arrive, and the nostalgic Fable feel is there. I think it needed to front load it better.

A What We Do in the Shadows star got me on board

The moment I properly got on board was spotting Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows. I'm someone who quotes Laszlo on a regular basis, so that matters to me. Now imagine if they threw Matt Berry in there too. Someone needs to start that petition.

Who Jack of Blades is in Fable lore

And then there's Jack of Blades. For the uninitiated, he isn't just a villain. He predates the humans of Albion by about a millennium, and he comes from a place called the Void. In his prime he was part of something called the Court, made up of three Void beings: Jack, the Queen of Blades and the Knight of Blades. They entered Albion, demanded fealty and brought disaster every time humanity refused.

The Court's reign ended with William Black using the Sword of Aeons. The Knight and the Queen were destroyed. Jack survived by binding his soul to his mask, which is why he looks the way he does, and calling that cool is an understatement. Since then he's been pulling the strings in the background, taking control of whoever puts on the mask, pretending to be a hero and causing atrocities across Fable's history.

In the original Fable, players defeat him in his humanoid form and destroy the Sword of Aeons. In Fable: The Lost Chapters, there's one more battle where he transforms into a dragon, and afterward players can destroy the mask, seemingly finishing him for good. Canonically he's dead, unless you went down the villainous route in the original game, in which case he survives. But the canonical assumption has always been that he's gone. Until now.

The Fable morality system is a legitimate concern

The morality system keeps coming up, and it deserves more than a wave of the hand. A game where you decide your own fate is exactly why I love games like Fable and Knights of the Old Republic. So many games have predetermined outcomes. The ones where you sit and consider your choices, genuinely weighing up whether to be the hero or the absolute menace, are what immerse you in a world. That's what helps me switch off from the real world, and it's what I look for in a game.

So if they've stripped that out, altered it or tweaked it, as some people are suggesting they might have, that isn't only a missing mechanic. That's the thing that made Fable, well, Fable. I'm holding out hope, but it's a legitimate concern, and I'd want more information before saying more.

What fans are saying about the Fable trailer

One reaction I came across read: "Doesn't even feel like Fable, lol. Sure, there's a demon door and some familiar enemies, but the way the characters talk, act, and look, it feels like this game wants to be The Witcher and Baldur's Gate." It went on to say that if there's still no morality system, it will be disappointing. That's a little harsh, but also fair, and I think the morality system is the legitimate point underneath that criticism.

Others were more positive. One person called the trailer a subversion that starts emotional and somber before ending on antics and chills, and said they were pleasantly surprised. Another said Jack of Blades coming back in a new Fable set before Fable 2 is what they had wanted most from a game since childhood. My personal favorite: "The hero is me. I'm known as chicken chaser."

There was GTA 6 chatter too, with one person worried Fable would sit in its shadow and suggesting it had been pushed to February to have a shot at being on people's radar. I've already said where I stand. I'm a fantasy genre player, and I'm probably taking a month off for Fable.