Fable is a hugely important game for Xbox, reviving a dead IP for the first time in 16 years, developed by one of its best studios and released in a generation that has been lacking in big first-party hits. Now, however, some showcases have players worried, including a recent look at the game's combat shared by Playground Games.

This clip of a Fable boss fight is spreading around in multiple uploads, racking up millions of views. It’s a sluggish fight against a miniboss enemy, which takes forever, and the enemy barely seems to react to any hit. But there’s more to be said here, and the context for this is at least somewhat misleading.

  • Yes, I will agree that the lack of reaction on most hits is bad. It does not look great. That said, while it may look like a relatively normal enemy, it is classified as a boss/miniboss type, not just a “heavy” that may go down more quickly in other games.
  • This is being played on a high difficulty, which would give enemies more health at baseline, hence the fight taking longer than most will likely experience.
  • The main piece of footage circulating is at a much lower framerate than 60 fps, where that version it looks better.
  • The clip of just the miniboss alone cuts out a section against other enemies right before it, when combat is much more varied, and the enemies are more reactive to the character’s attacks.
  • Other shared clips by Playground show much more diverse and interesting combat than what we’re seeing here.

This one individual fight against one individual enemy doesn’t look great, no, but expanding outside that, even in this same clip, combat in Fable is not as dire as it looks in this one instance. We also don’t know how old this build is, and there are still six more months until release after Fable was delayed to February 23, 2027. That’s a lot of polish still to come, which is often most intense in the final months before a game’s release.

I am no Xbox apologist, as lord knows the brand has been something of a disaster for two generations now. But I do think cutting short clips of a singular minute-long fight extrapolated into “wow Fable’s combat is going to be awful” is not terribly fair.

I have been impressed with what I’ve seen so far from Fable , its combat seeming to be an evolution of the past games and looking generally fun. Though I am the most interested in very Fable things like buying every house and business in the land and marrying all its inhabitants. Or, I suppose, killing them, both of which are possible. We will get more previews from here, and maybe this specific aspect of the game could be worked on in the half a year until release. I wouldn’t give it too much weight.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .