Fable Legends DX12 Engine Offers up to 40% Performance Gains

Fable Legends is an upcoming free-to-play cooperative action RPG developed by Lionhead Studios. This is a major departure from the traditional Fable formula which focuses on providing an enthralling single player experience via humorous characters and a thrilling story. Sadly, the series has progressively got worse and I really didn’t care for Fable III at all. This is a crying shame because Fable: The Lost Chapters is so charming and one of my favourite RPGs of all time. While Fable Legends is an interesting concept, many users simply want to see a brand new Fable game based on a standard business model. The advent of microtransactions makes the core gaming demographic quite concerned about a game’s value and ability to continue without having to grind for hours.

Currently, Fable Legends is accessible to a small number of users in the closed beta. I am one of the lucky ones and able to play the game, but an embargo agreement means I cannot publicly discuss it. As a Windows 10 exclusive, Fable Legends is opting for a DirectX 12 engine and offers significant performance gains compared to the older DirectX 11 API. Lionhead Studios’ director, Stuart Whyte said in a recent interview with BidnessETC that the performance enhancements on PC could be as much as 40%. This obviously depends on the hardware in question and I’d like to see a more detailed analysis of which configurations showcase the biggest gains.

Also, Whyte went onto discuss the effect on DirectX 12 on the Xbox One and said advanced features including asynchronous compute and efficient multi-threaded rendering would help “push the visual bar higher than would otherwise be possible.” Please note, this doesn’t mean DirectX 12 will be able to leverage extra frames-per-second, unlike the implementation on PC. Perhaps, it will help to improve texture quality or allow for a higher rendering resolution.