Exciting news, as a now-deleted post from Reddit shows a possible leak of Fable IV, including details of a reboot with an in-depth character creator, an open-world, multiplayer, and the building of towns that directly affect the main story. Microsoft has not confirmed any of the details below.
If the leaks are true, the story begins by describing how Albion and Aurora are both gone, and now considered "lands reduced to fables." Afterward, the Spire was rebuilt for use by a mad king who used its power to wish for an asteroid to strike the planet far into the future. Eons have passed and everything is new, while the player must stop the destruction of the planet. Get ready for time travel!
Other leaked details state that the game will come with an in-depth character creator, which we will need to see to believe, as one of the most prominent features of the first games was that the morality of actions directly affected physical appearance. If you were good and helpful, a character would appear angelic, while evil characters that robbed and murdered literally grew a pair of devil horns. Having a character creator seems to imply that morality will no longer affect appearance, which is quite a departure from the original game.
Players will also be able to build towns, which heavily tie into the main quest if you finish with the "bad ending" and fail. This too requires more information to analyze. Players have purchased properties in-game since Fable II, up to and including all of a town's homes and apartments to rent to citizens, and shops in the market. Raising and dropping the rent would then affect morality, but played no part in determining the final outcome of the game, so there needs to be something new to this formula.
The absence of guns would be another departure from the series. Does this also mean that bows and other ranged weapons will be removed as well? This rumor feels out of place if the game does take place in a technologically modern location. However, if the leak about time travel in the game is true, then not bringing that sort of weapon to the past makes some sense.
Finally, we come to the rumor of multiplayer in what has traditionally been a single-player ARPG. Since the game is also rumored to have a sprawling open-world, one answer might be a smaller-scale take on Red Dead Online from Red Dead Redemption 2, which would feature hunting or salvaging missions for materials, since players will be building entire towns, or co-op missions to defeat common enemies. Player-vs-player combat is always an option for multiplayer, though the game would need to lay the groundwork as to why that would be an occurrence among "Heroes".
With E3 right around the corner, all we can do is wait until the event from June 11-13!