A lot of gaming news came out this week. Here is what I have been keeping an eye on.

Fable (Feb 2027)

I never got into the Fable series back in the day, as they were XBox exclusives for a long while. Technically, the first and third entries are in my Steam library, but Fable 3 crashing during an auto-save didn’t cut it in 2016, let alone a decade later. What is cutting things, is this 30-minute gameplay trailer.

The systems presented are very gamified, as I am sure the originals were as well, but I was impressed nonetheless with the overall game vibe. “Romance any random NPC” telegraphs that romance isn’t that deep, but maybe that doesn’t matter if you take a shining to a particular barkeep or general narrative. No doubt there will be forum posts detailing RimWorld-esque grotesqueries such as swooning the orphan whose parents you murdered for no reason.

But you know what? Good on them. When you build a sandbox, sometimes you are going to uncover some buried shit.

Anyway, I’m excited. It’s also going to be on Game Pass, so there’s that too.

Palworld 1.0 (July 10th)

After my original forays into Palworld two years ago, I have not touched the game since. While the zeitgeist has moved on, I was waiting for precisely this particular bit of news, e.g. a version 1.0 release. I do not have grand delusions that any developer takes versioning seriously, but if you are going to pick a particular point in time to make final determination as to the quality of a game, I figure 1.0 is about as good as anything.

You can watch the latest trailer here. It has nothing on the very original teaser trailer, but then again, nothing else really could.

Valheim 1.0 (September 9th)

Same deal as Palworld. Played for almost 50 hours five years ago, and stopped once I ran out of Early Access road (and encountered placeholder monster drops). I have some concerns about what I have heard about the Mistlands experience already in the game, but we shall see. Trailer here.

Abiotic Factor: Entropic Break (Autumn 2026)

I almost didn’t include this one, as I am not entirely sure how I feel about it. Specifically, Abiotic Factor is getting a DLC released later this year. Which is good! But I spent nearly 160 hours playing the game already, and I’m not certain whether I want (or am able to be) sucked in back in. Trailer here.