Fable

 Role playing and adventure games have been using the good versus evil morality system for years now. The improvements in technology this decade has given game developers more tools to make this core gameplay system something more, actually giving these decisions emotion and weight. Lionhead Studios' Fable series is built entirely around this principle. While Peter Molyneux does oversell the features of his games on a regular basis, I felt the first two Fable games did an above average job of making you actually care about these good versus evil decisions. Molyneux has been no less enthusiastic about the latest game in the series, Fable III. Does it live up to his flamboyant promises? 

 Fast forward a few decades after the end of Fable II. You play your hero king or queen’s son or daughter. Albion has made the turn into the industrial age where factories and child labor are prevalent. Your older brother Logan is now King of Albion and is mostly responsible for the industry-fueled decay of the city of Bowerstone. There is no character creator and the only things you can change about your character are the hairstyles, tattoos and clothes that you come across along your quest. At the very beginning of the game Logan betrays you and forces you to make a “tough” decision. This sets forth a series of events that has you and a group of your followers on the road to revolution. You must find people who are willing to help you fight Logan and subsequently do favors for them to earn their trust. Most of these revolutionaries will also ask you for a promise, which will later have a pretty profound effect on the game.

It’s no secret that once you are about 3/4 of the way through the game you will become the new monarch of Albion. Gameplay wise, the runup to this main, inevitable event is one of Fable III’s primary faults. While you’re running around Albion trying to collect followers you are constantly making those promises I talked about earlier. While I understand that making these promises is necessary to further the game's story, Fable is supposed to be about being able to do whatever you please. With that in mind, I am left wondering, why must I promise things to people, promises I will be expected to honor, to take power? Why can’t I just force them to follow me somehow, or find some way to manipulate the stipulations of those promises? I never really felt like I had the chance to be “evil” during that portion of the game. Sure I could run around randomly murdering people and stealing their livelihood, but Fable is about doing more than that. I can’t really get into it without completely spoiling the game, so you’ll just have to see for yourself. The decisions at the end of the game were tough to make, and I found myself taking 5-10 minutes to think about what I should and shouldn’t do.

One of the big problems with Fable II was its menu system. It was slow, clunky, and visually unappealing. Fable III gets rid of that system entirely, and replaces it with a contextual menu that you physically navigate. That’s right, when you press pause during gameplay you are instantly transported to a small series of rooms called the Sanctuary. There is the main room, where your map and quest list are located. The weapons, clothing, money, and even standard game settings all have separate rooms and nooks in the Sanctuary. Want to switch from a sword to a hammer? Hit pause, run into the weapons room, walk up to the hammer you desire, select it, then hit B to exit.

That might sound like a lot of work, but I actually enjoyed using the Sanctuary for changing weapons, clothing, tattoos and other physical attributes. Where it needs work is the map. The map is located in the main portion of the Sanctuary. There is no mini-map in the game proper so anytime you need to look at it, you have to go to the Sanctuary. Your quest list is also located in the map and it too has no shortcut button press in the game proper. This does start to get cumbersome when you are doing quest after quest and constantly changing your desired destination. The glowing breadcrumb trail is back from Fable II and it functions and doesn’t function the same way. Every now and again it gets confused and you’ll find yourself waiting around for it to appear. I sometimes had to change quests to get it to appear and on one occasion had to completely re-boot the game. Overall, I feel like the Sanctuary is a welcome addition. Just give me a quicker way to access my quests and the map and it would have been perfect.

The overall combat of the game is largely unchanged from the previous game. Your Melee, Magic, and Ranged attacks are all tied to one button each. Hold down that button for a “flourish” attack from one of the aforementioned attacks. The upgrade system is streamlined giving you 5 levels of each attack. You unlock them by earning guild seals. You don’t get separate points for magic, ranged, and melee attacks anymore. All you acquire through the game from killing baddies and completing quest is guild seals. Your leveling menu system is also gone, and you guessed it, replaced with a upgrade tree that you physically navigate called the Road to Rule. Along the Road to Rule are several chests - you can use guild seals to open these and gain access to better upgrades as you progress through the game. While the combat is basically the same, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is the first Fable game that was developed and released within a two year window. The rushed development definitely showed as the first 3 hours of the game for me were full of screen tearing, a single digit frame rate, and straight up broken quests. After the first 3 hours things got much smoother, but not perfect. It absolutely doesn’t have the level of polish you have come to expect from Lionhead. There are times when the game looks gorgeous and others when it looks really terrible. The overall design of Albion is great, they really captured the era they were going for very well. It was just obvious from the get go that the game needed another several months of tender loving care.

The real success of Fab le III is in its side quests. This is where Lionhead gets to really let loose and insert that great British comedy that we have come to love from the Fable games. Fable III is no disappointment here, I won’t elaborate on any of them in fear of ruining them. You really need to experience some of them fresh and with no preconceived notions. The characters, voice acting, and writing are also top notch. I can’t really think of a game this year that had better voice work than this game. Lionhead continues to set the bar high on this front, with folks like John Cleese and Stephen Frye playing some really interesting characters.

Co-op play was absolutely broken in Fable II. It ran terribly and didn’t allow you to bring your own character to your friends world. This time Lionhead got it right. You can bring your character, weapons, and even your dog into your friend’s version of Albion. You can get married, have a baby, and form a business partnership with any of your virtual cohorts. You may also run into some issues initially joining another players game. It would not let me join my friends game until we both had downloaded the free DLC that comes with the new version of the game. So if your having issues joining games, I would start there.

Businesses and houses can also still be purchased, sold, and rented out. Doing so in the game proper is the same as previously, just walk up to the little sign outside the door and choose what you’d like to do. The map allows you do these things remotely, which speeds things up enough to keep it from getting monotonous. One addition is any house you rent out will have a repair rating that falls. If it falls too low, your tenants will stop paying rent. Unlike the general property management scheme, there is no quick way to repair all of your property, or select multiple homes to repair. You have to individually select each property for repairs. Income occurs every 5 real time minutes and accumulates only when you are playing. I personally don’t care for those two additions. It is just as easy to amass a large sum of money rather quickly so it doesn’t really feel like it accomplished anything.

In my opinion, Fable II was one of the best improvements by a sequel ever. It fixed so many things that were wrong with the first game and added some great new features to build upon. Fable III seems like a few small steps forward. I really loved the game, but there are portions of the end game that I really didn’t enjoy and screwed up my post game Albion in ways I didn’t care for. It was too rushed for my tastes and could have been handled much better. That being said you should still play Fable III, co-op is a blast and made for some pretty hilarious moments. Just don’t expect a huge change from Fable II, and you’ll be farting in people's faces before you know it.