Fable III

Overview

Fable III is set fifty years after the events of Fable II. This latest installment returns to the continent of Albion, which is now entering its industrial age, and is also now under the rule of the tyrant King Logan who is also the player's elder brother. The player's character, the "Hero", is forced into a quest to lead a revolution against King Logan, who has become a tyrant since succeeding to the throne following the death of the previous monarch, the Hero from Fable 2. As the younger child of the Hero, the game is split into two distinct sections, the first being the overthrowing of King Logan and the second being governing the land and preparing for a threat from the neighboring nation of Aurora. The hero must decide how to govern the land and how to react to the threat as Albion's new ruler.

Story

The story of Fable III is set approximately 50 years after the events of Fable II. The land of Albion is now under the control of a tyrant named Logan, who is leading the country into a state of collapse with him egoistic ways. It is in this setting that the main character finds himself. The hero of the game is Logan's younger brother/sister, and it is his duty to overthrow the evil king to bring Albion back to its days of glory. In the first half of the game, the player will have to gain support from Albion's subjects so that a revolution is possible. The people eventually responds to the call to arms but only when the Hero has made several big promises when the revolution is over and he/she is crowned king/queen. Here are some major pledges:

- Sabine, the ruler of the Dwellers, hoped to see that the mountains can be given to the dwellers so that they could resume their way of life again

- The citizens of the Brightwall village wanted to see its prestigious Academy (originally closed down by Logan) opened again.

- Paige, an activist from the Bowerstone Industrial area, asked that the Hero do something about poverty in industrial areas and child labor.

- Kalin, the representative of the faraway kingdom of Aurora, requested that Aurora will not only be annexed by Albion but will also receive extra protection from the Crawler (more of that later)

The revolution is successful, and Logan is deposed (whether he is spared or not is up to the player) However, when the main character will come to power in the second half of the game, he learns that the Crawler (a shadowy entity) will eventually attack Albion with a large army of shadows. To prevent the damage, the Hero will need to amass a large sum of money to a raise a strong army that will repel the Crawler and reduce civilian casualties. Now, he will have to decide whether to uphold the promises made to his allies and his subjects (all of these promises requiring a large sum of money) and restore Albion, or to follow the steps of Logan and pillage the economy for personal benefits.

Regardless of the choices, the Crawler's forces attack, Albion burns to the ground, and the Hero defeats the Crawler but at the cost of Sir Walter Beck, the Hero's mentor and the person the Crawler took over to defeat the Hero. The main campaign of the game ends with a funeral held to honor Walter, participated by the Hero, Jasper (the Hero's servant, who now runs the Sanctuary/interactive main menu), Ben Finn (a follower of the executed Major Swift), and potentially by Sabine, Paige, Kalin (depending if the Hero upheld the promises or not) or Logan (if spared). However, once this scene ends, the game continues indefinitely.

Gameplay

One of the main stand-out points about Fable III is its absolute lack of a menu system. Reflecting on the awkward Fable II menu system (with sub-loads and dull lists), Molyneux decided to remove a menu system completely. Instead, when pressing the start button, the player gets teleported to the main character's sanctuary, which is being looked after by his butler Jasper. Among other things, Jasper gives helpful advice in and out of the game, as well as act like the "guide in the new menu". Moreover, the sanctuary provides the main character with an opportunity to change his clothes in his wardrobe. Menu systems have also been lifted in shops: instead of scrolling through purchasable items, players simply now grab them off the shelves. Finally, the type of magic used by the player is now presented with different gauntlets, all of which are also stored at the sanctuary, so he can now pick them without menus as well.

Furthermore, with the main character now being the king of Albion, he will have a large amount of distributable wealth. While he could choose to spend all the money for new outfits and upgrading the castle (if he chooses to get a family, it will pressure him into doing such actions), or he could choose to help the people with it, which will reward him more over time. In fact, the protagonist could choose to spend his money on taxes, prevention of crime, and fair distribution of wealth among other things to help Albion. The player will also choose how to deal with citizens that will refuse to cooperate with the government: they could simply ignore them, throw them into dungeons, or even butcher them with an army, all of which would influence the karma of the main character. Moreover, when the threat of invasion from Aurora arises, he will also have to determine how much money to spend on military to win the war.

Combat

The combat in Fable III was largely left unchanged in comparison to Fable II - it still uses the 3 button system to change between melee, ranged, and magic, with the addition of new weaponry that arrived with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Albion. Also, looking at the way the character changed in previous games according to his karma, the same system was now applied to weapons in Fable III, so as an evil character will have an ominous, flaming, skull-faced axe, while a good character would have a sharp shining blade. While this sounds simplified, Molyneux described how complex the system would be, with various factors such as the amount of killed civilians being processed when shaping these weapons.

NPC Interaction

Like the combat, the social interaction in Fable III remained largely the same, with the main character talking to others through emoticons and other such things. However, it was also refined after Fable II, with whole combinations of emotions now being free to express. Also, a lot of the interactions are much more involved in the game: the main character can hug NPCs and hold their hands, which wasn't available in previous games. The general karma system for the main character will remain the same as Fable II, with his appearance, as well as outside opinion changing in accordance with his actions.

Co-op

The co-operative mode retains aspects from Fable II whilst adding or changing a few mechanics. Other players playing Fable III will still appear as orbs in the game-world but instead of the 'Mercenaries' that players were forced to use whenever they joined another player's session, they are able to join as their own unique character. Abilities, weapons as well as each player's dog are consistent in the co-op mode. Also, players are able to adventure Albion independently from one another without having the constraint of being close to one another.

A new addition is that two separate players can now become married, share expressions (including experiencing a sexual relationship) and birth children. Gold and items procured in a co-op game can be carried back over to single-player mode. Non-romantic relationships are also possible, players can enter a business partnership to combine their resources to invest in property as well as earn bonus experience for performing well together in combat.

Kinect Support

Despite promising some kind of Kinect content for Fable 3 (exactly what was never announced), Peter Molyneux revealed on The Engadget Show Live that the game will NOT actually feature any input from Microsoft's motion-device. He suggested that he'd like to create a Fable game from the ground up with Kinect in mind. This has been borne out with the announcement at E3 2011 of Fable: The Journey.

The voice cast

Simon Pegg - Voice for Ben Finn in Fable 3

• Sir Ben Kingsley -- Sabine
• Zoe Wanamaker -- Theresa
• Stephen Fry -- Reaver
• Michael Fassbender -- Logan
• Nicholas Hoult -- Elliot
• Bernard Hill -- Sir Walter Beck
• Simon Pegg -- Ben Finn
• John Cleese -- Jasper
• Jonathan Ross -- Barry Hatch
• Naomie Harris -- Page
• Jason Manford - Private Jammy

Avatar Awards

Fable III has four avatar awards.

• Royal Boots - Win the support of the Dwellers.
• Royal Shirt - Win the support of the Bowerstone.
• Royal Trousers - Win the support of the Swift Brigade.
• Crown - Become the ruler of Albion.

Trivia

• Jonathan Ross accidentally leaked the existence of Fable III over his Twitter, several days before the game was announced. He said had spent the day recording lines for Fable III. Once he realized his mistake he removed the offending 'tweet' though it was too late and the Internet had noticed.

• Actors from the company Shepperton Studios provided the voices for many of the characters in Fable III.

• John Cleese voices the player's butler, who suggests clothing options and assist the player with weapon choices.

• Stephen Fry also returns to provide voice over for Fable 3.

• In the Weddings' section of the New York Times, Joshua Atkins' occupation was displayed as lead designer for Fable 3 before the game had officially been announced.

Collector's Edition

The Collector's Edition of Fable III comes with the following features:

Fable III Limited Collector's Edition

• A New Quest set in haunted forests of Silverpines.
• An Exclusive Region of Albion
• Fable III Playing Cards
• A Guild Seal Coin
• A New Breed of Dog - The Boxer
• A Unique Outfit

Pre-Order Bonus

Reaver Sword and Morph Tattoo

Pre-orders of Fable III at GameStop received a code for two in-game items, a tattoo and a sword, and 1000 gold.

• Tattoo: Morphs as you morph; so the color will change depending on your alignment. For magic users, the tattoo will also become a will line when you use magic will lines. Finally, it will also increase your attractiveness toward NPCs, and it can be used to complete a specific quest in Aurora.

• Sword: With a history linked to Fable 2 through Reaver, it is evil and gets bonuses for killing innocents, spending money and annoying people, just like Reaver.

Pre-orders from Amazon received a code for two in-game items, the Champions Hammer and the Balance Tattoo, and the ability to import a created villager from xbox.com/fable3.

Pre-orders from Best Buy gave a code for Garth's sword and tattoo from Fable 2.

Pre-orders from Wal-Mart provided a code for Hammer's hammer and tattoo from Fable 2.

Xbox 360 Miscellaneous Information

The game requires ~5.7 GB of space in order to install the game to the Xbox 360 HDD or other external storage unit. It should be noted that the install does not completely remove the slow down that periodically occurs in the game world and the load times aren't drastically different from when it isn't installed.

PC Version Information

The PC version was released on May 20th. The PC version contains extra content like the extra difficulty level and all the DLC currently available.

The requirements for the PC version are:

Minimum:

• Operating System: Windows XP 32 bit, Windows Vista 32\64bits, Windows 7 32bits\64bits
• CPU: Core 2 Duo @ 2Ghz or AMD Athlon X2 4000
• Video: NVidia 7600 or ATI HD 2600 Pro
• Memory: 2GB RAM

• DirectX 9.0c
• HDD: 12 GB disk space

Recommended:

• Operating System: Windows XP 32 bit, Windows Vista 32\64bits, Windows 7 32bits\64bits
• CPU: Dual core 2,9Ghz
• Video Recommended: Nvidia 260 GTX 986MB or ATI 5770 1GB
• Memory: 4GB RAM
• DirectX 9.0c
• HDD: 12 GB disk space

Soundtrack

The original soundtrack for Fable III was composed by Russell Shaw.