Fable is one of the biggest Xbox first-party releases this generation, and it’s recently shown off a lot of footage ahead of its February 23, 2027 launch date. That’s after a delay out of this year and takes it far away from the Grand Theft Auto 6 release window. Now, new information has been revealed about its length, and it’s caused a debate: Is it going to be long enough?
During a Q&A at Gamescom with Polygon, Fable associate game director Will Kennedy laid out the potential playtime:
“We have around 15-20 hours of mainline quest gameplay, we have around 15-20 of side and open-world exploration content gameplay,” Kennedy said. “And then, of course, the life systems are limitless, so you can play them for as long as you want.”
That led to some raised eyebrows, saying that a 15-20 hour story campaign felt awfully short for an RPG, with a total of 30-40 hours with both side quests and exploration. Is that a fair take?
Many will point out that this is in keeping with past Fable games. While it obviously depended on the playthrough, estimates put the main campaign plus side quests of each game at 19-26 hours. A 100% completion could be 30-50 hours, ranging from Fable 1 to the longer Fable 3 in 2010. So, present-day Fable is longer, if these reported numbers are accurate.
There is also Kennedy saying that the “life systems” are limitless, things like going around the world and marrying or killing everyone, or buying up everything in the land. There is also the opportunity for multiple playthroughs based on decisions you may or may not make (though this is true for most RPGs).
However, the counter:
Fable has reportedly been in the works in some form for 9 or 10 years. It was first revealed a full 6 years ago, in July 2020, before disappearing for years and only this past year has it started to show anything significant. The idea is that a game with such a long production time should probably end up larger than what we’re apparently going to see here. If we’re going to compare it to the original Fables, there were three games in 6 years from 2004 to 2010. The gap between Fable 2 and 3 was only two years.
There is also the expectation of the size of open world RPGs in 2026, whether it’s fair or not. By comparison, this seems shorter than many we’ve seen over past decade, and many with less production time and resources at hand. In fact, with these numbers, Fable tracks closely to fellow Xbox RPG Avowed, which had a main story of 20-25 hours and 35-45 hours with side content. It is somewhat understandable to think that a game like Fable, a storied IP with so much time in development, should be producing something larger than Avowed. Though again, this is outside of the “life systems” aspect.
I lean toward the latter position here, that this does come across as a bit short, given how long Fable has been in development and comparing it to other games in the genre. Comparing it to the original trilogy of Fable games that began 22 years ago does not seem like the most relevant data point, particularly if we’re considering the two biggest games had just a two-year gap between them.
Could Fable be great at 20-40 hours? Sure it could, though this length does seem a bit odd in the context of its release.
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