Fable reboot drops horns and haloes for a nuanced take on morality

In the original Fable games, a character's morality visibly changed their appearance: murder enough people and horns would sprout, perform virtuous deeds and a halo could appear. That visual system won't return in Playground Games' reboot. At a Summer Game Fest demo, associate game directors Craig Littler and William Kennedy explained the studio's reasoning.

"Our take on morality: it's updated, it's modern, it's nuanced and complex," Kennedy said, adding that "every NPC has their own moral lens to judge you with." He argued that different reputations across characters make a single visual shorthand impractical: "If you think about that, you might have a set of reputations, but different NPCs think about them differently, so how can you have a single visual representation of that?

fable, fable reboot, playground games, morality, horns, halo, demo, william kennedy, craig littler, npcs