Fable Legends isn’t what you expect and it’s Free-to-Play

Fable Legends, the latest iteration of Lionhead studios’s most successful franchise takes a departure from the “traditional” Fable gameplay. Instead of an Action Role-Playing Game, Fable Legends will be a “Multiplayer Online Quest Adventure” as the developers at Lionhead coin it. It features asymmetric multiplayer elements where 4 players will be on a team trying to complete a quest with a 5th player acting as sort of a “dungeonmaster” whose goal is to hamper the other player’s progress by placing traps and monsters through-out the quest; players familiar with the Indie game Dungeonland may recognize this multiplayer format. The game will also offer cross-platform multiplayer, which is always appreciated.

Now the interesting bit of news that came to surface about Fable Legends recently is that it will be using a Free-to-Play model. The game will have an episodic structure with each episode being completely free updates. Given that, Lionhead seeks to create a model similar to both Valve’s Dota 2 and Riot’s League of Legends:

• Characters will be on a weekly rotation with the 4 playable heroes changing each week
• Monsters available for the villain character will also be on a weekly rotation
• XP and Equipment will not be lost when a character leaves the rotation
• Players may opt to use real-money or in-game currency to purchase characters or monsters to unlock and use permanently
• In-game currency or real-money may again be used to purchase cosmetic items

This is Lionhead studios’ first Fable game without Peter Molyneux’s direction, and so far it looks more promising than any of the recent titles in the franchise. Fable Legends has a tentative release date of (sometime within) 2015, and you may look forward to play it on both Xbox One and Windows PC platforms.