We're a little over two weeks away from this year's attempt at an online-only E3, meaning everyone'll soon be sinking into the familiar swamp of showcase schedules and diary dates required to keep track of the event and everything around it. Wisely starting early to avoid the ensuing scramble, though, Microsoft has announced a 13th June air date for this year's E3-adjacent Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.

It'll be a significant event for a number of reasons, not least because it's the first joint announcement show for the two companies following Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda last year, and things kick off at 10am PT on Sunday, 13th June - which, for us UK folk, equates to an entirely tolerable 6pm in the evening. It's a long one too, with Microsoft promising 90-minutes of announcements - hopefully that's a taut 90 minutes with none of the waffly filler it usually loves to pad out its livestreams with (hello Inside Xbox, I'm looking at you).

As you'd expect, there's little in the way of specifics regarding the games we'll be seeing - all the better to retain that all-important element of surprise - and Microsoft is merely teasing a look at the "epic gaming lineup coming out of [the Bethesda] partnership, the incredible games coming to Xbox this holiday, upcoming releases on Xbox Game Pass, and more."

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Microsoft has announced new games coming to Xbox Game Pass during what's left of April.

As announced, the PlayStation Studios-developed MLB The Show 21 launches on Xbox Game Pass today for console and cloud (there's no PC version). It's got cross-platform play, too, so Xbox players can play with friends on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

On 22nd April, Xbox Game Pass on PC gets puzzle game Phogs!.

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Tracing the origin of Fable is a fun thing to do. Project Ego, the codename for Lionhead's fabulous role-playing game, is well-documented. But what is not well-documented is the game that came before it: Wishworld.

Wishworld is the subject of the latest episode of People Make Games, the YouTube series from ex-Eurogamer video person Chris Bratt. It offers a wonderful insight into Wishworld, which sounds nothing much like Fable at all. In fact, in many ways, it sounds more ambitious.

In an interview with Dene Carter, co-creator of Fable, Bratt reveals the kind of game Wishworld was intended to be. You'd play a wizard in an academy who was charged with remaking a barren landscape using a raft of spells. Character archetypes included everything from a Victorian gentleman to a guardian angel and her charge.

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I decided to create a communist utopia in Fable 3. Actually, I probably shouldn't use the word utopia as it suggests that I think it would be good, when in reality I have no idea, as I've never lived in one. Or a dystopia of any kind. (I don't think.)

I mean how many people need to be pissed off for it to fall in the latter category? 1 million? 1000? 100? If that's the case then every time there's a rail strike the whole of the UK descends into one. That and the contentious issue of using the VAR system to regulate football - how dare we use facts? Are people who are anti-VAR the flat earthers of football? I mean, it's science and we all know science is smarter than all of us. Except theoretical computer science - that just thinks its cleverer than all of us when there would be no way to prove it as it's all just theoretical and therefore, in my eyes, rubbish. If you don't need to use a Petri dish, Bunsen burner or the weird hieroglyphic-looking functions on your calculator then it is clearly not science. (From someone who clearly failed GCSE science.)

As Fable 3 was actually the second Fable I ever played, something never sat right with me about the people of Bowerstone. Yes, a cute and somewhat charming little town, but ultimately it's in a little Bowerstone bubble completely oblivious to the rest of the lands' worries and woes and the frankly shocking things that go on in forests.

After being moderately good in Fable 2 I decided to up the ante in 3. I knew there were going to be some tough decisions to make in the game and, frankly, I don't do well with Sophie's Choices. I get frozen in the headlights of the 21st century just trying to choose a chocolate bar under the glare of a judgemental shopkeeper. Plus a Sophie's Choice isn't really two impossible choices both of which are awful, as it misses out the third and oft overlooked choice, which is sitting in the corner with your fingers in your ears and hoping everyone in the room will get bored and leave.

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Good and evil is barely the start of it, frankly. Fable is one of those rare, fascinating game series upon which nobody can really seem to agree about anything for very long. It's a shallow RPG, or maybe it's a canny and satirical examination of RPGs in general. It's hilarious - oh, the burping! Or maybe it's just juvenile. Let's face it: Fable's easy to the point of being obsequious, isn't it? Or maybe it's choosing to measure itself in ways that go beyond mere difficulty? It's no surprise, then, that with all this discussion churning around it, the world of Albion is so often defined by a mechanic that it doesn't even contain.

As a young child, the story once went, you will find an acorn. If you plant the acorn, green shoots will emerge from the earth. Years later, after a long life of consequence and heroism, you will return to the place that you planted that acorn and a huge oak tree will tower overhead. A lovely idea, isn't it, that a game would be both so reactive and so poetic, that a game would really notice you and afford your presence a degree of lasting importance, that a game would see your involvement with it as a chance for it to grow? But of course there was no acorn in Fable. By extension, there was no oak tree that would have erupted from it. Or was there?

When I heard a few weeks back that a new Fable game was underway with a new developer attached, I experienced a rush of fond memories so vivid, playful, silly and heartfelt that I almost wobbled on my feet for a few seconds. I remembered setting off, barefoot, on a summer's day to a distant island where a cog-driven door emerged from the side of a hill. I remembered the moon peering down through sickly grey murk above bogland, where a monster covered in bracken and moss stood up to his waist in mud. Most of all, I remembered a house I once bought where the previous owner, thanks to a brilliant glitch, lived on long after I had killed them, partially stuck in one of the upstairs walls. Then, I started to think about the task of bringing a series like this back to life with a new creative team and in a new era. In a game so full of moving parts, so driven by whimsy and - perhaps - by accident, what single piece of Fable is absolutely indispensable? In which part of Fable does Fable truly live?

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Work is underway on a brand new, big-budget Fable game, Eurogamer can reveal.

Fable franchise owner Microsoft has tasked UK developer Playground, which makes the Forza Horizon racing games for Xbox and PC, with creating this new Fable, sources close to the project have told Eurogamer. Microsoft said in a statement it does not comment on rumour or speculation.

We've heard the new Fable is planned as a story and character-focussed open-world action RPG. A significant investment in its development is also planned, with some 200 people set to work on the game at Playground's newly-established second office in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

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