Remember those mockumentary-style interview sections in the original reveal trailer for Fable? Well, those will actually be in the game, and they’re inspired by an unlikely source — The Office.

Fable is a distinctly British video game series, and one where comedy has always been allowed to thrive. Both deadpan and absurdist British humor were at the centre of Lionhead’s original trilogy, and it's great to see that ethos carrying forward into Playground Games’ 2026 reboot, which we recently got an extended look at during January’s Xbox Developer Direct.

Speaking to Xbox Wire, Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton mentioned a handful of classic 21st-century British sitcoms as touchstones for Fable’s tone. “We were inspired by the incredibly rich variety of British comedies that have been around over the last 20 years, like Peep Show, The IT Crowd and so many others," Fulton revealed. “We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well.”

“Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularised, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humour which really appeals to us. And the actors who have been in a lot of these shows — and indeed some of whom are in our game — they’re known all over the world.”

It isn’t just the style of humor from these comedies that Playground is taking inspiration from, but filmmaking techniques, too. “The other cool thing about The Office is something we’ve kind of nicked," Fulton revealed. “You’ve maybe seen in our trailers that we have a sort of mockumentary interview style. I think a lot of people assume we just did that for those trailers, but it’s actually a device we use throughout the game.”

“I’ve never seen it in games before," Fulton continued. "But it allows you a way to really neatly tell a joke or drop a little bit of character detail in a way that would feel really clunky in a dialogue, but suddenly feels entirely natural when you do it to ‘camera’.”

This can be seen in the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase trailer for Fable, above, in which Peep Show’s Matt King speaks to us straight down the lens as Humphrey the Golden, Guildmaster of Albion. It’s a sitcom technique pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the original BBC version of The Office, before, obviously, making its way overseas for the likes of Pam and Jim to take full advantage of with their knowing looks to camera in its U.S. edition. This mockumentary-style has spawned dozens of similar TV shows since, but, as Fulton said, it's something we’ve never really seen in a game before, which makes for an intriguing proposition.

You can check out our own big interview with Ralph Fulton about Fable here, as well as learning about how you can marry each and every one of its 1,000 NPCs.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Tom Holland's return in Spider-Man: Brand New Day will feature a "tonal shift" from the actors' first trilogy, director Destin Daniel Cretton has said.

This year's long-awaited new Spider-Man film, Holland's fourth, will pick up some time after the events of 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, with Peter Parker's secret identity forgotten by the wider world — separating him from past girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). At the same time, Holland will have to deal with a new threat and team up with gun-toting Marvel TV action hero Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal).

Discussing the movie with ComicBook this week, Cretton said he had been "really excited" to take on this next chapter of Tom Holland's Spider-Man story as there was agreement among Marvel boss Kevin Feige, Sony exec Amy Pascal, and Holland himself "to do something different."

"Of course it's still the Spider-Man that everybody loves," Cretton said. "But this is a new chapter in his life, and that tonal shift was something that was really exciting to me and felt really different. It was an extremely gratifying experience."

In the past, Feige has mentioned that Brand New Day will retain the franchise's usual film rating — there's no suggestion that Tom Holland's Spider-Man is suddenly getting the R-movie treatment akin to Deadpool & Wolverine — meaning that Frank Castle's lethal antics would have to fit in.

Still, Cretton seems to be suggesting here that Brand New Day will feature a more mature tone — perhaps by the very nature of Holland's Spider-Man no longer being a student, and forced to fend for himself without his Aunt May.

Officially, little is known of Spider-Man: Brand New Day's story, which Marvel and Sony have attempted to keep under wraps as much as possible. Indeed, Stranger Things actress Sadie Sink has said she's been kept wrapped up in a large coat "like a penguin" to hide her costume from fans during shooting, so mysterious is her role.

That said, we do know that Mark Ruffalo will be back as Bruce Banner/The Hulk in the movie, while Better Call Saul's Michael Mando will reprise his role as Scorpion. A big action sequence was previously filmed in the Scottish city of Glasgow, standing in for New York, which saw Holland riding around on top of a tank.

With four trailers (that aren't actually trailers) already released for this December's Avengers: Doomsday, fans are hoping to see something more of Spider-Man: Brand New Day soon — ahead of its launch in theaters on July 31. Just before Christmas, what appeared to be grainy footage of an upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer hit the internet, featuring dialogue that positioned Sink's character as a villain — initially, at least.

"You're a mess, Spider-Man," Sink's unnamed character can be heard to say. "Don't get in my way. Otherwise, it won't just be your friends who don't remember who Peter Parker is." Plenty of speculation exists around who Sink may be playing, though perhaps our biggest clue is the report that her character will be returning for Avengers: Secret Wars, something that rules out her being a one-and-done villain.

Image credit: MEGA/GC Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social