Since the latter half of the Xbox 360’s lifespan, it has become increasingly clear that Microsoft has opted out of the console exclusives arms race. Whereas Sony and Nintendo continue to pump out a wide breadth of quality first and second party titles, the Xbox has had to make due with the trinity of Gears of War, Halo, and Forza. While some former exclusive developers (like BioWare and Bungie) continue production of new games as multiplatform titles, the same cannot be said of Microsoft’s three UK studios. Bizarre Creations, former Project Gotham Racing series developers, have wilted under Activision’s ownership and have not released a game since 2010. A similar fate has befallen storied developer Rare, who have been kept in Kinect and Avatar purgatory since 2008. But perhaps the most depressing story belongs to Peter Molyneux’s former studio, Lionhead, which was shuttered in 2016 after years of irrelevance. With the studio’s shutdown it is unlikely that we will see another entry in its flagship series, Fable, and that is a true shame.

Though not as highly regarded as other major RPG franchises, the Fable games have always delighted in their own way. The first game carved out a niche with its charming sense of humor and focus on building up the hero’s reputation through a unique dialog and relationship system. The second game built upon this foundation by adding a fully realized economy, online cooperative play, and a much larger scope. The last of the mainline games, Fable III, for some reason or another has been maligned as the franchise killer, sending it towards the excretable Fable: The Journey before dying off completely. After nearly seven years of avoiding it, I finally decided to see what all the hubbub was surrounding the third Fable game and, by extension, what it did to kill off such well-regarded series. Onward to Albion!

Fable III starts out approximately 50 years since the end of Fable II. Albion has entered an industrial age, with the attendant bellowing smokestacks and rampant child labor. You are the son or daughter of the now deceased Hero, scion to the throne and second in line to rule. Your older brother, Logan, is a hated tyrant whose policies have become increasingly onerous upon the citizenry. After he presents you with a cruel decision to save either your significant other or a group of protesters from execution, you are spurred into action to lead a revolution against him. This results in the game’s first half, which feels a lot like the previous game in which you quest around Albion, building up your army and reputation prior to confronting the royal army in the capital city of Bowerstone. Upon defeating Logan and his loyalist forces, the game’s big twist is revealed. You are now the rightful ruler of Albion, however a supernatural army will arrive at your shores in one year to kill every man, woman, and child in the country. The only way to oppose this is to amass 6,500,000 gold pieces in order to fund an army large enough to prevent the impending havoc. With this crisis looming you must make the hard decisions between filling the royal treasury and becoming a tyrant, or emptying the coffers and having the people love you.

It’s the second half of Fable III that really pushes the series forward. The larger scope of looking after the best interests of Albion is something that feels unique to the game. It also allows the game to become surprisingly political by presenting the player with such heavy issues as balancing the needs of industry with the protection of Albion’s natural resources. Though you can help fund your government’s policies by transferring personal wealth over to the treasury, it can be difficult to stay out of debt if you give the go-ahead to every popular measure. Making the “right” decision becomes all the more difficult when the other option typically allows you to pillage Albion’s people and resources for gold, like if you choose to convert an orphanage into a brothel, netting over 1,000,000 gold pieces in revenue. Heavy is indeed the head that wears the crown.

Despite being Albion’s head of state, the game smartly does not limit your comings and goings in its latter half. You’re still a Hero, and so you will continue to journey across the land solving problems and killing all manner of beast and man that threatens the peace. The typical Fable nonsense is still present, with writing that recalls the dry English wit of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. It’s still great fun to interact with the locals, get married, have lots of sex (and deal with the consequences), and commit the occasional crime spree. The real estate system from Fable II makes a return, which made me care greatly about the world as I owned vast swathes of it by the end of the game. Of course, it’s still easy to game this system, and tying a rubber band to your controller and leaving the system on overnight remains an effective way to gain essentially infinite gold.

That’s not to say the game is perfect. Fable III comes with it a myriad of technical shortcomings, including a control scheme that feels sluggish, textures that sometimes fail to load, and the occasional hard freeze. The game is clearly straining under the limits of the Xbox 360, with the chugging framerate being a constant reminder of that fact. Additionally, the lack of menus can make questing more tedious than it needs to be and the series staple breadcrumb trail can be somewhat unreliable. However, if you’re willing to overlook these issues, the underlying game remains incredibly charming and compelling.

With the passage of several years and the arrival of a new console generation, I wasn’t expecting to be taken in by Fable III as I ended up being. I was reminded how much I enjoyed being in the quirky nation of Albion and how neat it was to see the world advance over the course of three games. It’s disappointing that we are unlikely to see a Fable IV harness the Xbox One to create a modern day (or future) version of Albion. There’s still much potential in the series to offer a less serious form of epic RPG, but only if Microsoft wishes for it to be so. Until then, Fable III remains an excellent send-off to a memorable series.

I like Fable 3, but I feel the second half of that game could have been awesome, but it really dropped the ball. After you find out about the evil coming to destroy the world which your brother had found out about years before (IIRC) it would have been so cool to realize that all the seemingly evil stuff your brother had been doing was done in an attempt to save the people in the kingdom. The problem is that it turns out your brother is actually just kind of an evil dick.

Then comes the part where you have to choose whether to keep all the promises you made to the people helping you during the rebellion and become loved or to break them to earn the money needed to save the people and become hated. This could also have been a cool use of the morality system in the game (which I generally hate in games) where the seemingly evil option of breaking your promises is actually the "good" choice. The reason for this is because keeping your promises are good for you subjects in the short term, but in the long term it will leave the people dead and you know this, so the reason to keep your promises is that you want to be loved AKA the "evil" option.

But they don`t do this in the game and keeping your promises and therefore dooming the people is still the "good" option. The end of the game is also just generally really rushed and feels incomplete. There is also the fact that you can leave the game on for 10 hours and rack up the money from your rents to save the kingdom with money from your own pockets which kinda ruins any consequence from your previous choices by letting you do the best of both worlds with both keeping your promises and saving the world.

That`s the end of my rant. Sorry it turned out so long. Anyway. It was a good blog and I do generally like Fable 3 (the first half mostly) in spite of it`s shortcomings. When you are going on adventures it`s a fun and funny romp. I am just disappointed by the second half because it had so much potential to be amazing.

I was really disappointed by Fable III. There were so many great ideas that just never translated into good gameplay while a lot of the charm from the earlier games was stripped out.

• The whole "road to rule" character upgrade system could have been cool, except that it ended up being a linear set of corridors with really boring abilities (I need to spend points to unlock different dyes? Really?).
• The idea of your super-secret John Cleese lair was likewise nifty, but boiled down it was still just a gussied-up, less efficient menu. Now I have to go back two separate screens just to change weapons.
• Relationships with NPCs was even more shallow that in prior games. Instead of even needing to complete II's minimalist meter-game you just hold down a button for a slightly too-long period of time. It turned villagers into upgrade Pez-dispensers.
• No item descriptions. A small but meaningful thing since it took out a lot of the goofy charm earlier games had. They even have a quest that makes a joke about it later in the game. It was not funny.

Unlike you, I also thought the back-half of the game was quite terrible. What should have been actual moral choices were just boiled down to how much gold you had. In other words - Just Another Video Game Meter. It never should have been possible to be nice and save the kingdom at the same time.

The whole thing felt like they tried to refine the elements of the series and went way too far. It didn't end up feeling leaner than prior entries, just less. Fewer enemies, fewer cosmetic options, fewer abilities, etc. Just a lesser game all around.

Uh, you basically described Fable 3.

Your brother apologizes after you beat him, and says he did everything for Albion. He makes multiple mentions about how thankful he is that you finally know the truth about why he was forced to do what he did, and he hopes it doesn't warp/destroy you like it did him. You can also look at the history of the world and realize that Logan was considered a wise and benevolent king, beloved by his people until he got back from his trip to the desert region. It was only then he pushed hard into industrialization/army building/taxing.

If you spare him he ends the game by becoming a monk, and attempting to travel the world as a Teresa like figure to hopefully undo some of the damage he did as King.

He was 100% not "just a dick.".

The skew at the end was also built exactly as you describe. You could pay everyone back for the revolution, but in the process not have enough money to fight the actual endgame evil. Or you could pay everyone back and lose to the endgame evil. It was only after some people played the systems and paid everyone back with their own cash did people realize the good ending was to be selfless and work your way into doing everything yourself. But even that's a real rough ending to get, because it's not as easy as "leave your properties running overnight, and the rent will solve the issue in 10 hours." because getting the money to own that many properties is intense. It's easily a solid 10-20 hours of straight questing/working just to be able to pay everything back. Also many people in the first few days of launch didn't get the memo that you could save everyone, so they were forced to make hard decisions on which rebellion groups they paid back and which they ignored.

Also while the good/evil points start out the way you'd think, they do skew heavily as you go. You can do the first few rebellion payoffs and still get good karma for it, but if you keep paying them off at the expense of the war funds, you will start getting bad karma for it. It only stays good karma if you have the money for both. Otherwise it does eventually switch and start giving you bad karma for putting the short term first, and the "good" option is to tell people off.

Fable 3 isn't a perfect game, but it's better then a lot of people give it credit for.

I'm in the minority here, but I loved the ending. Your brother the tyrant was a tyrant as a means to saving lives. His responsibilty and good intentions negatively impacted lives and he was painted a villain for it. When you take over, you CAN (I did) be the hero and a good all around guy only if you have the luxery of wealth to cover it. Otherwise, you need to make tough choices with people's lives.

I took my moral lumps as a land baron, compulsively buying, repairing, and raising the rent on every house across the land, which afforded me the luxery of saving the land and being loved. Thank you open-world compulsion and not-yet having children to occupy my time.

I liked that your governing choices had consequences and that problems were not unsolvable if you had vast wealth to personally invest. Even when I had more money than God, my vault got frighteningly empty from time to time investing in saving lives and making people happy. With some of the choices, despite my massive stash of coin, I still erred on the side of industry, because you had to be realistic, even with oodles of cash to throw at problems.

It seemed like one of the most honest takes on leadership in a mass market game...this and Mass Effect 2 both come to mind. Fable 3 was just more harsh about idealism and realism colliding, which is both rare and great to see.

I totally get the criticisms against Fable III that everyone brings up, but for the most part they didn't bother me that much. The Good/Evil and resourcing decisions made at the end of the game felt sufficiently weighty and fair to me and captured a side of leadership that games often struggle with. Sure, you can be a tyrant and save Albion that way, or bribe the populace and deal with the consequences later. But the third way, amassing enough gold to save the country while not exploiting its land and people, felt to me like a commentary that good governance requires slow, grinding work that many in power are not willing to do. The one flaw with this was the waiting for gold exploit which subverts the message, but I'm willing to overlook that.

I liked Fable III more so than a lot of the criticism surrounding it suggested I would. Does it have its problems? Sure but it was just one of those games I found I could ignore its shortcomings and enjoy my playthrough of it.

I really liked all three of the main Fable games. I see them getting hit pretty hard, but I put tons of hours in to each one and loved them all.

I don't really remember the ending of Fable 3 all that much but I loved both 2 and 3. The biggest testament to their greatness is how flawed they are but still manages to be great.

@nals: I don't know, man. The second half of Fable 3 was the easiest part of the game for me, and I didn't feel like I was sacrificing anything. Playing Fable 2, I realized that the best way to get paid, was to own properties, and when I started Fable 3 knowing that I immediately started buying property. So I was rich before I sacked the brother character, and was able to settle the courts without any pressure. Pretty sure Fable 3 took me maybe only a little over twenty hours to finish.

I was very disappointed with Fable 3.

I'd hope we see another Fable. That said, as much as I like Fable 3, I can't get through it. I lose interest as I try to get through it, and with the news that Lionhead was shut down, it made me lose even more interest. I was a big fan of the first Fable when it came out, and when two was revealed I was extremely excited, but when it came out I just didn't pick it up. I played Lost Chapters somewhere between two's release and originally playing the first, but that was the last time I played Fable until a couple of years ago. I got the trilogy on 360, playing Anniversary, Fable 2, and then tried to play three. I really just wanted to play two because I know it was a game I was once super excited for; three wasn't even something I considered at the time of buying, it was just part of the package. I enjoyed them, but yeah, just couldn't get through three. I always want to play another game in the process. At first, when I quit three, I thought I'd had my fill of Fable and didn't really want to take the time to do all the quests. Ironically, I've played much, much larger games since then. Eh, yeah. I don't know when I'll beat it, but it'll probably be when there's absolutely nothing else to play and I am in the mood for it. I do like it, but I guess it doesn't hold my interest compared to other games I could be playing.