Fable Legends "isn't a ghetto PC port"

Fable Legends is coming to Windows 10, despite being announced as an Xbox One exclusive. I sat down with David Eckelberry, game director on Fable Legends, to chat about the game and its transition to PC. He assured me the PC version was not at all an afterthought: "If you've got a kickass graphics card, put it up to 4k, have fun—why not?" he said, "We're not trying to make a ghetto PC port out of Fable Legends, we're definitely trying to make a quality experience."

The logic behind this thinking is simple, according to Eckelberry: "There are more Windows 10s out there than there are Xbox Ones, so we have to have realistic expectations about making the Windows experience great."

As for the Windows 10 element, it brings with it the addition of DirectX 12. What does that add, though? "It's not that there's anything in a truly gameplay sense that we can do with DirectX 12," Eckelberry told me, "It's about putting more polygons per square inch.

"We can do things that may seem silly, like every blade of grass having its own shadow. It doesn't change the nature of the game but it does make it gorgeous to look at and make you feel like you're really in the space."

With DX12 power, of course, comes DX12 responsibility—and Eckelberry maintained his team at Lionhead isn't getting complacent just because it has access to a more powerful, easier-to-tinker-with backend.

"You would think that," he said, "But I'll be honest—as soon as you give us 25%, or whatever the exact percentage is, we want to eat it. We want to put more creatures in, or make them look better, or the heroes, whatever the technology allows.

"We push the limits, we don't just say 'this is easy to do now', we say 'oh we have this much more processing power now, let's make the cloth more realistic, let's make more shadow passes, let's make better bounce light...' Stuff like that just makes the world feel more real."

Fable Legends releases towards the end of the year, though you can sign up for the beta right now.