Fable: The Lost Chapters Hands-On

Ever since my WoW addiction started in early December, I've been having a real hard time connecting to other game worlds. What I mean is that I just couldn't bring myself to find any of the stories compelling or narrated well enough for me to become immersed in the fantasy setting. I'm telling you, this has been a growing problem for me.

This old man packs quite a punch.

I'm seeing bright lights. Must've taken too much cough medicine again.

I finished Fable a while ago on the Xbox, and though I have forgotten most of the details about it, that underlying notion about it that I had left in the back of my mind told me that I found it very addictive and yet lacking in terms of the features that were promised prior to its release (That's putting it nicely -Mo). Fable fell victim to its own hype. Peter Molyneux went out of his way to flare the vivid imagination of gamers with fables (pun intended) of grand game concepts; like raising and molding your character from his days as a wee nipper to adulthood, getting married, playing in a consistent world with a working economy, etc. While most of these features were present in game in one form or another, they weren't as detailed or as well developed as Peter made them out to be in the numerous interviews leading up to the game's release. This wasn't necessarily Lionhead's fault, as they were probably under pressure by the publisher, Microsoft, to get the game out in time for the holiday season, so some features simply had to be cut down... considerably.

I say this in light of the upcoming release of Fable: The Lost Chapters for the PC. We've recently gotten a preview build from Microsoft and I have once again plunged myself into the world of Fable to see how things have changed on the PC. Essentially, The Lost Chapters promises to bring more content that was sorely lacking from the Xbox game. In a nutshell, "Explore the original worlds and core missions of 'Fable' that thrilled Xbox gamers and discover additional regions, storylines and side quests, as well as optional missions with 'Fable: The Lost Chapters.' In addition, 'Fable: The Lost Chapters' offers the ability to fight new monsters, practice an expanded group of spells, don new armor, wield additional weapons and interact with new expressions."

There are a couple of things you should know about Fable that should help you decide whether you want to try it on the PC or not.
One, Fable has an exceptionally well-written and narrated epic story that will be a treat for any true aficionado of the fantasy genre.
To get back to what I was saying in the opening paragraph, I have had problems connecting with video game worlds. Frankly, most of them are done crudely and superficially enough as they don't engage the player in any way. That is definitely not the case with Fable. The dialogue and the cut-scenes are minimalistic, yet brilliant; authentic in a manner of speaking, and emotional enough to have you become attached to the main characters. Fable successfully fuses traditional Japanese story telling with many influences from Western culture, and does it in such a way that the experiment actually works.

The other thing of note is the excellently designed interface for the PC version, which is just as seamless (if not more so) than the Xbox controller configuration. I don't know if it's my experience with the mouse and keyboard combo (though to be honest, I've played all the good Xbox games, so I'm not unfamiliar with the gamepad), but I have executed moves and strategies much more efficiently on the PC. Personally, this makes the combat system even more fun, and considering that a great portion of this title focuses on combat, this is truly good news for PC gamers.

Just going about my business.

HULK SMASH!!

Finally, the graphics look much better now that you can see the world in crisp, high-res textures and with the addition of all the advanced DirectX effects. I tested the preview build on an AMD 64/1.5GB RAM/ATI 9800XT rig and it ran fairly smoothly with all the setting maxed out (except for the highest quality shadows, which aren't supported by my hardware). And we're talking about an early game build here. I cannot wait to see what the finished product looks like.
It should also be noted that Lionhead artists did an amazing job on Fable. The art design has that timeless quality of Blizzard classics. You might find it eye-catching two or three years from now. It appeals to one's sense of aesthetics and it's not merely bound by the latest technological bells and whistles.

Overall, it's quite apparent that this one's developing into a quality port. I'm not yet at the Lost Chapters, but I'm not allowed to talk about those anyway (or grab in game screenshots, which is a real drag; the game looks great even now). Glad to see that Lionhead is on the right track with this one.

In a final plea to the publisher: Please don't let Peter Molyneux talk about it much. Let the game content speak for itself.