Fable Heroes Revealed, Fable: The Journey Screenshots and Release Date

Well, we now know what last week’s tease on the Lionhead Studios website was all about. Just when I thought the Fable franchise couldn’t take any crazier turn than the Kinect-focused Fable: The Journey comes this leaked profile page on Xbox.com that reveals a four-player hack n’ slash called Fable Heroes (notice the button?). The screenshots suggest that it will be a kid-friendly action RPG along the same lines as Castle Crashers, but I’ll just quote the description and let you decide:

Fable Heroes is a fresh spin on the beloved Fable franchise in which up to 4 players play both cooperatively and competitively in this hack-and-slash adventure. Work together as heroes of Albion to defeat familiar foes and new enemies while collecting as many gold coins as possible to unlock upgrades, characters, and items in both this game and Fable: The Journey for Kinect for Xbox 360.

Oh, and we now have five new screenshots and a September 4th release date to take in on the Fable: The Journey profile page.  I suspect all of these leaks are simply due to someone jumping the gun before this week’s GDC kicks off, or they could be here just to cloud our vision while Microsoft prepares an announcement for a “hardcore RPG” called Fable IV.  Yeah.  Thanks, Kotaku.