Character creators are no new thing when it comes to video games, especially RPGs. Fable is just one in a very long line of adventures allowing you to sculpt a hero in your image, but when it comes time to showcase a game ahead of time, decisions need to be made.
From its initial reveal onward, we’ve become accustomed to seeing multiple chosen hero appearances throughout trailers and gameplay videos, of all shapes, sizes, and genders. But that first female hero is who has become the poster child for Playground’s reboot, with some people deciding it would be a perfectly normal thing to do to complain about her not being conventionally “attractive” enough.
Well, at gamescom 2026, the Forza Horizon studio revealed a new extended look at quest gameplay taking place in Albion’s capital of Bowerstone, in which the player hero took the form of a woman we hadn’t seen before. A response to online backlash or just a simple example of the variations available when playing around with Fable’s character creator? I asked game director Ralph Fulton.
“Earlier this year, we obviously revealed that we have had some customization in our game,” Fulton explains. “It’s not a revolutionary thing for an RPG to have, but nevertheless, there was some speculation that we didn’t, and we were happy to reveal: yes, we did.”
Since then, in the assets we’ve put out; our showcase trailer, the live gameplay video we put out in June and both of our assets here, we’ve been happy to start just cycling through some of the characters you can select and customize using that tool. The girl that you see in the theater demo that we’re showing today is just another one of the characters that you can select and customize in the game. And you know what? People like her, I’m delighted.”
Fable will launch on February 23, 2027, and you’ll have the freedom to make your character look however you like. It really is that simple.
For more on the RPG, you can check out not one, but two previews from gamescom 2026, where I gave my impressions of the new quest gameplay, plus my thoughts on its combat having played it.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
