Albion - Lionhead's fantastical, idealised, over-saturated version of England's green and pleasant land - looks more beautiful than ever. Dense woodland and verdant meadows stretch off into the distance, where a tumbledown city is just visible. A hero fights some goblin-like redcaps on a clifftop, giving himself a running commentary as he does so: "our hero enters the scene: brave, charming, capable of self-narration." It's a good-humoured fairytale, just like Fable has always been.

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“ It's not Fable 4, but it's most definitely Fable.

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But there is a difference. The hero on-screen, a Prince Charming type who flourishes a rapier and wise-cracks in classic Fable style - is just one of four working together. The other three - a fabulously-attired magician, a female warrior with a shield that looks like it weighs as much as she does, a crossbow-wielding archer - are controlled by other players. And the enemies are controlled by another, fifth player: the villain. From a top-down perspective, the villain controls the heroes' quest, placing enemies, traps, ambushes and more in their path as they play. He's the classic dungeon master.It's not quite the Fable MMO that's long been rumoured, then, but it's very ambitious. Fable Legends is set 400 years before the other Fable games, at a time when Albion's myths and folklore are still being forged, the point at which legends are reality. Heroes are common: these four on-screen aren't the only ones (and when the game comes out, they won't be the only ones you can play), and they compete and co-operate with each other to step out into the wilds and claim the monster-ridden lands whilst villagers cower away at home. It's not Fable 4, but it's most definitely Fable.Fable Legends is designed around five people playing at once, though should you wish to play alone the AI will take over the roles of your companions and the antagonist. That, though, is not the game that Lionhead has designed. The four heroes I saw all played very differently - Prince Charming was closest to classic Fable gameplay, with the camera hanging back above his shoulders, where the archer was viewed through an over-the-should, third-person-shooter perspective. The warrior woman, meanwhile, was the tank of the party, where the magician Winter is a support class whose freezing spell stops enemies in their tracks for one of the others to shatter. These are classic MMO roles, but the combat is far from the sterile experience that can sometimes define that genre. It looks accessible, fast-paced and very physical. Playing alone, you can switch between these party members at will.Naturally this changes a lot of how Fable Legends plays, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of the series: great storytelling, a gorgeous world and quintessential British humour. The last two are in full evidence even at this early stage. Lionhead's aim with Fable Legends is to create the most beautiful online fantasy out there, and that looks well within the studio's reach with the help of Unreal Engine 4. The heroes chattered entertainingly to each other throughout the quest, and the boss, when it emerged from its lair in some ruins topped with an overgrown stone statue in the shape of a crescent moon, was an ogre with a club topped with the head of another ogre, which was continually arguing with its owner. I'm told that the emotes will definitely be making a return, thankfully - it just wouldn't be a Fable game without the option to fart at people on commandThe idea of having a live dungeon master raises a lot of complex questions. This is much, much more complicated than Fable 3's rather tacked-on co-op mode, and Lionhead is going to have to work hard to build an infrastructure that can support five players like this. Matchmaking, especially, will be crucial, and is a big focus for the studio. Fable Legends makes use of the Xbox One's cloud capabilities, and thus it's not playable offline. It's also quest-based rather than open world: there's a hub city called Brightlodge, where you can occupy yourself with classic Fable busywork like smithing and pie-making and, presumably, trying to seduce random townspeople, and once you've selected a quest from the map (like in the first Fable) you're sent out into the world.The presence of a human villain theoretically means that no quest is the same twice. Being the villain can be as easy or complicated as the player chooses; if you don't fancy placing every enemy and trap individually, there will be pre-built loadouts that you can play around with. As you become a better villain you'll earn more points to spend on units. Eckelberry expects that the people who are best at being the villain will be those who watch how players are working together and adapt their strategy around that, cutting them off from one another or creating distractions to catch one on their own, and directing enemy behaviour as well as placement. The top-down perspective seems well-suited to Smartglass, and you'll be able to use a tablet to place and direct minions as well as the controller.Because Fable Legends isn't an MMO, it's not limited in the same ways as an MMO. Lionhead hasn't had to build an enormous open world that can support hundreds of hours of exploration and play, meaning that Lionhead can lavish the same artistic attention to detail upon each individual environment. It still looks and feels just like Fable should, then, and if Lionhead can pair this hugely adventurous five-player gameplay with the at turns hilarious, affecting and rousing storytelling and characterisation of Fable games past, Fable Legends could be very special indeed.

After eight years Keza MacDonald is still not bored of writing about video games, which is just as well, as her skills at demon-slaying and pretend guitar are pretty much non-transferable. You can follow her on IGN and Twitter