After being one of the worst kept secrets in the industry for a good couple of years, a Playground Games-developed Fable reboot was finally announced at the recent Xbox Games Showcase. Understandably, Playground have been expanding of late to ramp up development on the open world RPG, with reports in 2018 suggesting that they were hiring over 170 developers to work on the game. Now, a report by VGC compiles a list of some notable industry veterans who are part of that development team.
For starters, Ralph Fulton – who has been at Playground for over a decade and worked on all Forza Horizon games – serves as the project’s creative director. The narrative team of Fable is composed of various former Batman: Arkham Knight devs, as we’ve previously reported, with Martin Lancaster serving as Narrative Director, Craig Owens serving as Principal Scriptwriter, and Kim MacAskill serving as Senior Scriptwriter.
Will Kennedy, who worked on Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online during his eight years at Rockstar, is the Chief Designer. Juan Fernández de Simón – formerly of Ninja Theory (where he worked on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice) and Tequila Works – is the Principal Game Designer, while Hunter Wright, who worked as a level designer on Borderlands 3 and Battleborn at Gearbox, serves as the Lead Quest Designer. Joe Mckernan – who spent three years at Playground working on Forza Horizon before moving to Guerrilla Games for Horizon Zero Dawn – returned to the studio in June 2018 to serve as the UI Lead.
On the art side, Adam Olsson, who was Lead Environment Artist on The Division 2, fills that same role in the Fable team, working alongside Principal Environment Artist Scotty Brown, who has previously worked on the likes of Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 2. Tom Isaksan – who had long stints at Ubisoft and IO Interactive and worked on Ghost Recon Wildlands and several Hitman games – is the Lead Character Artist.
The team has notable names from other major studios on the production side of things as well. Ian Mitchell – who has worked on Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Star Wars Battlefront 2 – serves as Senior Producer. Sean Eyestone – who worked on Metal Gear Solid 4 and 5 during a long stint at Kojima Productions – is Production Director.
Playground Games’ Fable team also consists of various staff that have been at the studio for a while and previously worked on Forza Horizon, including Level Design Director Craig Littler, Senior Game Designer Grant Orban, Audio Director Douglas Watson, and more.
Recently, some rumours suggested that Fable would be an MMO, but subsequent reports have contradicted those claims. Read more on that through here.