The next Fable will use the Forza engine

The next Fable will use the same engine as Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport—not surprising, as Horizon studio Playground is developing it. The confirmation comes courtesy of a new Microsoft job listing for a software engineer at Turn 10 Studios, who will be responsible for bolting new features into the ForzaTech engine, ray tracing among them. Turn 10 Studios is responsible for the Motorsport branch of the Forza series.

While it’s not surprising, it’s nevertheless interesting: ForzaTech has been used solely for racing games, and while the open worlds of the Horizon games are gorgeous, it’ll probably take some work to adapt the engine for an action-RPG. “In addition to adding new features like raytracing to support the next console generation, we are also enriching the toolset to support an open world action RPG – Fable,” the job description reads.

The listing also specifies that the successful applicant will have “a major impact on 3 AAA titles in development.” No one really needs confirmation that there’s going to be a new Forza Horizon, but there it is anyway (Forza Motorsport 8 is already confirmed).

The advertisement also seems to confirm another thing we already suspected: Fable 4 is a way off. It was unveiled in July 2020 with a light-on-detail CG trailer, and since then, Microsoft and Playground Studios haven’t uttered a peep about it.