Fable Legends Will Be Free-To-Play
Almost everything unlockable by playing
Oh! We never said what Fable Legends [official site] even is. Microsoft announced a PC version during their big Windows 10 announce-o-rama in January, but it became just another bullet point in a huge newsblast. So. While your typical Fable game is a sprawling open-world, story-driven RPG, Fable Legends is a multiplayer dungeon-crawling action-RPG where up to 4 players can band together in co-op against forces controlled by a villainous player (or AI in any of these roles). And, it was announced yesterday, it'll be free-to-play.
That being a broad and often disappointing term, the post explains quite how it'll be free-to-play. For starters, only a selection of its character lineup will playable at any time, rotating regularly. This is fairly typical for MOBAs, but they don't usually have per-character persistent progression. Characters played for free will remember progress when they rotate out and be the same when they return, but I'm not super into the idea of taking away progress, even temporarily.
Lionhead say you won't need to pay a penny to finish the game, play all its quests, and unlock all characters, traps, items, and so on. All non-cosmetic bits can be unlocked with 'silver' currency earned by playing, though whipping out your credit card and buying them with 'gold' is obviously cheaper. Balancing the rate silver's earned at so players don't get annoyed will be a tricky one. It sounds like they plan to have some cosmetic bits only purchasable with gold too.
Fable Legends on PC will require Windows 10, but will support cross-platform multiplayer with the Xbox One version. Purchases and progress will be shared between the two versions too. Beta signups are open, if you're curious.
Here, have a trailer accompanying this announcement:
