Fable Legends Will be Free to Play, Microsoft Says

Microsoft announced this week that the latest game in the critically-acclaimed Fable series of cooperative role-playing games will be free to play on Windows and Xbox One. As interesting, the game will let games on Windows and Xbox One play together, and it will support DirectX 12 when Windows 10 launches later this year.

As with all Fable games, Fable Legends is being developed by Lionhead Studios and will be published by Microsoft Games. It’s described as a “multiplayer remix” of the Fable series of games, which got their start with the original Fable on the original Xbox way back in 2004. In the multiplayer-only game you play alongside four other players and can choose to be the hero or villain of the story.

I’m not into role-playing games. But I recognize the popularity of these titles and their importance to the Microsoft gaming ecosystem, not just on Xbox but with Windows as well. And you may recall that Microsoft showed off Windows 10/Xbox One interplay at its Windows 10 media event back in January. At the time, the firm described Fable Legends as the first in a series of games that would let gamers play with each other from their device of choice.

This week’s news is obviously a big deal as well. To play Fable Legends for free, you will need a Windows 10 PC or Xbox One console and (for Xbox One only) an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Then, “you’ll be able to download the game on either system and play through it beginning-to-end without having to spend any money,” Microsoft notes.

That said, you can pay for Fable Legends if you want to. That is, the free version is somewhat limited in that you can only access a set of hero characters that are rotated on a regular basis. “This gives you the chance to play every hero in the game for free over time, and any progress made on a hero will be kept until they come back into rotation,” Microsoft notes. “If you want permanent access to heroes outside of free rotation, you’ll be able to earn them through gameplay, or purchase them for real money.”

So how do you pay? In-game, you earn silver while questing, and all of the in-game perks that your character(s) more powerful can be bought with the silver that you earn. But you can also buy gold with real money and then use that gold to purchase many of the items that are also available for silver.

Progress and items will be synced across Windows 10 PC and Xbox One, Microsoft says. So you could, for example, play on Windows 10 for a while and then sign in on your Xbox One with the same account and pick up where you left off. Or vice versa.

Enjoy, D&D-loving geeks. Now it’s back to my usual noobtoobing in Call of Duty.