During Xbox's Developer Direct, Forza Horizon developer Playground Games more fully showed off its Fable reboot. The game's visuals are impressive, but the real achievement of the dev team may be the open world and people who live in it. According to Playground Games, there are over 1,000 NPCs in Fable, and players can talk to and interact with all of them.

"You can talk to them, you can romance them, you can marry them," said Fable general manager Ralph Fulton. "You can divorce them or be divorced by them. You can have children with them. You can hire them. You can fire them. [NPCs] are kind of a game within a game, but they are such a unique, fundamental part of Fable. And I think one of the things that sets Fable apart from other open-world medieval fantasy RPGs is that it was uncuttable. We knew we had to deliver against this. I love that we've stuck with the ambition that we had right at the start of that."

As part of the developers' stated goal to include so many NPCs, Fulton added that each person has their own daily routine that they follow, as well as their own place to live and sleep. Furthermore, Fulton revealed that every single building in Fable can be entered and explored by the player. In fact, players can even purchase buildings and homes of their own.

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A new Fable game is coming this year from developer Playground. It's the first new entry in the series following the closure of original developer Lionhead and the departure of series director Peter Molyneux from Microsoft.

Playground is not trying to "ape" anything that Lionhead did, game director Ralph Fulton said in an interview. Instead, the developer said it was important for the new game to be a reboot so Playground could put its own stamp on Fable--while retaining elements of the original games, like morality and kicking chickens.

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The Fable series is known for a lot of things, including the ability to kick chickens and send them soaring through the air. The new Fable, from developer Playground, will continue to allow you to do this, it was confirmed as part of Xbox Developer Direct.

In an interview with Xbox, game director Ralph Fulton said if NPCs in the world see you kicking chickens, you'll begin to earn a reputation as a "Chicken Chaser." If enough people witness you kicking chickens, or if you just do it a lot, your reputation in a given settlement will be that you're a person who likes to kick chickens. "People will react to you based on what they think about that particular reputation," Fulton said.

However, different people will take this reputation to mean different things. "Kicking chickens isn't objectively good or objectively evil in a way everybody will agree on," Fulton said. "It comes down to the unique worldview of the NPC [and] what they think of you because of it."

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After last year's critically acclaimed sleeper Keeper, Double Fine is coming back with a new take on an older game. During the Xbox Developer Direct, Double Fine officially unveiled Kiln, a title where players will be able to make unique pottery warriors and send them into battle against each other.

During the much-longer look at Kiln from the Xbox Developer Direct, it was clear that the vase creation has a lot of options for players to shape their warriors and guide their destructive destinies. However, you won't need to be a pottery master to realize your clay visions in this game.

"Making pots in real life is really difficult," said project lead Derek Brand during an interview with Xbox Wire. "It takes a lot of practice, and you can get good at it over time, but it is not an easy thing to just jump into. We wanted to make the pot-making super easy and accessible--it's just a button and a control stick--and you can make any kind of shape you wanted. We wanted people to immediately feel like they're masters at this craft."

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The new Fable game that Microsoft showed off during the Xbox Developer Direct takes inspiration from an unlikely source: the popular TV show The Office.

Game director Ralph Fulton said in an interview with Xbox that British humor "manifests in lots of different ways throughout the game." The team at Playground, which is based in England, was inspired by the "rich variety of British comedies" of the past two decades, including Ricky Gervais' The Office, as well as Peep Show, The IT Crowd, and others.

"We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well," he said, no doubt referencing the American version that elevated the series to new heights. "Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularized, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humor which really appeals to us."

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers can start the weekend a little early, because the next Free Play Days event begins today, January 22 and goes through Sunday, January 25. One of the four games available to players is South Park: Snow Day!, which seems appropriate given the cold weather sweeping much of the US.

South Park: Snow Day!

Snow Day! is a four-player co-op title that casts players as the new kid in town opposite Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny. A blizzard has blown through South Park, and set the boys off into a fantasy realm of adventure where they get to battle it out to save the world. Or at least some of the world, since they won't be leaving South Park any time soon.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One

As the name implies, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an origin story for the world's greatest non-Batman detective. But he hasn't hit his peak of deduction yet. This game puts players in control of a much younger Sherlock as he attempts to unravel the events surrounding the sudden death of his mother.

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I first heard about Hytale a few years ago. My son, a huge Minecraft fan, told me how the Hypixel server on Minecraft was a major landing spot for some dedicated players. He added that the team running that server, today known as Hypixel Studios, was making its own game, Hytale, and it had already spent years in development. It was to be a new Minecraft competitor, building on what players loved about the Hypixel server while establishing ways to stand out as an experience that even Minecraft diehards could not deny. In January 2026, Hytale is certainly not that. Instead, it's a Minecraft clone that rarely justifies its existence. Presumably, it's going to change a lot over the next several years, but for now, it's best left to players who are so dedicated that they're compelled to get in on the game's ground floor.

Starting out in Hytale, you'll drop into a procedurally generated world full of trees, rivers, a few villages and ruins, and mines, of course. The blocky, voxel art style is a bit less pixelated than Mojang's titan of the genre, but in most other ways, the early moments of Hytale are remarkably familiar to anyone who has played Minecraft.

You'll collect a few basic resources so you can craft a pickaxe and a hatchet, use those to chop down trees and smash small boulders, thereby crafting things like workbenches, which quickly open up the world to many more craftable items, from target dummies and beds to teleporters and various meals. It's not long before you've built yourself a humble abode, both stylish and sturdy in the face of enemy "mobs" that roam the land, like rats, skeletons, and rock golems.

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Gooey is a precision platformer where you squish, swing, and fling your way through vibrant, momentum-based levels using your elastic grappling arm. Inspired by Celeste, Super Meat Boy, and the creative spirit of Mario Maker, Gooey delivers tight controls, satisfying movement, and an ever-growing world of user-generated challenges.