Fable 4 reportedly has Witcher 3-like combat, CDPR DNA, and a whole lot of polish for an alpha build

A journalist viewed Fable 4's alpha footage, praising its combat system, which shows influence from CD Projekt Red developers. The game, slated for 2025, appears polished and impressive, even in its early stage, with additional support from Eidos-Montréal.

A journalist has seen an alpha build of Fable 4 and said it's apparent that former CD Projekt Red developers worked on it.

The new and yet untitled Fable reboot was first announced back in July 2020, and then after a few years of radio silence it finally got a proper trailer last Summer. Xbox slapped a 2025 release window on the game and dropped a fresh trailer at this Summer's Xbox Games Showcase, but we haven't heard much from developer Playground Games since then. Now, Windows Central's Jez Corden has given some seriously encouraging words for fans of the long-running RPG series.

Corden revealed during an episode of the Xbox Two Podcast (timestamped here) that he "very recently" saw alpha footage of the next Fable game, and said it "looks fucking fantastic." He went on to compare it directly to The Witcher 3, specifically in terms of its combat.

"You can tell that this project has CD Projekt Red DNA," he said. "Playground Games picked up a bunch of developers from CD Projekt Red. I believe they picked up their combat designer, and you can kind of tell."

It sounds like Corden is referring to Paweł Kapała, who was senior gameplay designer at CDPR before moving to Playground Games to work on the new Fable and ultimately joining the Activision-owned Elsewhere Entertainment.

Corden clarified that the new Fable isn't a "1:1" copy of The Witcher 3's combat, but he noted similarities like the "pirouettes and the dodging and the dodge-rolling and the seamless hack-and-slash into an execution, which looks really, really cool."

Corden also added that the game "looks super polished, super good" in its alpha state, although earlier in the podcast he admitted he wasn't sure the footage he saw was recent, which means the current dev kit might be different from what he saw. Still, it's heartening to hear such positive words from someone who reportedly witnessed the game first-hand.

It was confirmed back in June that Eidos-Montréal, the studio known for the Deus Ex series along with Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, is helping Playground Games with Fable 4, so it's possible we'll see influences from those games as well.

For everything on the big box's horizon, you can head over to our upcoming Xbox Series X games guide.