Fable Review

RPGs have taken a big leap in non-linear game play, moral decisions and general looking coolishness. Fable was really one of the reasons I purchased my Xbox, and I have a great deal of respect for Peter Molyneux's wonderful concepts. As can be imagined, I was so giddy when I received my copy that I wet the bed four times that night. (Wow, I wonder what you do before a big date. - Ed.)

This game does have a pretty strong story. Lots of twists and turns, although sometimes it seems like people just drop out of the sky and are suddenly incredibly important to the story. It gets told through these neat little woodcut looking panel things, as well as in game movies, and basically after your home town is ravaged by bandits, you are saved, travel to the Heroes Guild, train until graduation and then take quests, eventually seeking to take revenge. The story is pretty interesting, never gets really dull, but really seems to take a backseat. You can't predict much because characters just suddenly show up and disappear. It's bizarre.

I am Thor - the God of thunder! It's either that or I'm gonna be one fried mofo.

Stop looking at my cleavage, warrior.

Let me just get the technical stuff out of the way first. Fable looks good, sounds good, but the areas you travel through are very small, and load times are very long. Apart from that, it plays through very well, apart from the occasional hiccup. The AI is very basic, you get the feeling that you're just dealing with the most rudimentary opponents around sometimes, just given extra abilities to make them able to kick your ass (although they rarely do). From a technical standpoint, the game is decent - while it does look nice, the Xbox is weeping and in between the small areas, it gets on Live and goes to support groups for other Xboxes that are having a mother of a time trying to play smoothly. A lot of the time it can, others it just breaks down. Nothing terrible, but certainly noticeable.

That being said, Gameplay is combat based. If you're the rogue type, forget it; this game is primarily about sticking your sword through another man's face. It's also about casting some spells that burn his crotch with lightning and shooting him through the chest with an arrow. You get to do it all, and you better do it all, and don't even think about ever avoiding any of it. This game is never about anything more than doing quests and killing people.

Sure there are some nice features thrown in, like character customization, the ability to get married, and the fact that people respond to the way that you look. However, they all seem sort of shallow. Much like the real world, I cannot for the life of me get laid; I look ugly no matter what I do, and people all think I'm great for my achievements even though my title is Arse Face. It just seems very simple, there are only three sets of each type of armor; one being neutral; and since the other good and bad sets don't actually change how strong it is as armor, I often times just save my pennies, as I'm regularly strapped for cash.

You can also fish and dig, but after trying it a few times, I thought it was a pain in the ass, and it isn't really required to complete the game, so I've given up on it. Fishing is really lame, you basically sit there with a rod in your hand, press A a lot and hope that your string doesn't break. You can't move either the character or the camera and it has to load up to be able to do it. There are plenty of other games with much better fishing.

The areas are very, very linear. Basically, you can't stray at all off of a path because there are a million things stopping you, so you find yourself walking from point a to point b (the correct point b if there happen to be multiple exits is always marked out) and killing anything you find on the way. Of course, you can just run by if you're in a hurry, ignore the enemies, and go straight from loading zone to loading zone. They did add a teleport feature, which is very handy as it does prevent you from going all over the world from loading zone to loading zone. This is frustrating though, I played all of Prince of Persia without a single loading zone (expect when I saved), why can't I do the same thing with a game that doesn't have nearly the draw distance?

I sure hope I don't miss with this big swing.

That was one toxic fart!

The choices between good and bad are somewhat limited too and very obvious. Killing people is bad, hitting innocents is bad, stealing is, you guessed it, bad, breaking another person's property is bad. Basically, all the laws from the real world are in Fable, so if you can't do it here, you can't do it there (and be good). Helping people is good, having mercy on people is also good, and basically, the moral choices you make are incredibly simple. There are no hard choices like in a game like Knights of the Old Republic; there's nothing really challenging about it.

All of these complaints aside, I really have been having fun. Sure it might be the most linear of the non-linear RPGs, but it is a good game regardless. Honestly, what they set out to do was very, very ambitious, and I would reckon almost impossible to completely fulfill on Xbox. It's a fun game, combat lets you use a bow, a sword, and will magic, and it runs on the Chris Taylor school of thought that says that you get specialty XP for what you're using, so even a swordsman can use magic and visa-versa. This does make up for how simple combat can be by making you able to use many things at once. However, I find myself tripping over the controls sometimes.

Combat is a lot of fun - you're dodging, blocking, attacking with sword, bow and magic constantly. It's very, very high paced, and can be lots and lots of fun. At times the enemies will all be able to block, but this just prevents you from just using your sword, magic will break a block. You need to use all of your skills; not that this is bad, but be sure to be well rounded, and know that even if you hate magic, you're going to likely need it at one time or another.

You can get loads of different haircuts, tattoos and what-have-you for your character, although you can't pick gender or your starting look. This can be sort of frustrating as no matter what I do with my hair, I'm always the same dirty, bug eyed nitwit. Granted, the story might not work so well if you were a chick, but this makes the game incredibly simple for character customization. Hell, you don't even get to name your character - something every other title like this lets you do. All the Links might look the same, but at least mine gets called Jackson.

I really don't want to say that this game isn't a lot of fun. It is. You can get married, you can do a lot of neat stuff, but this isn't really the non-linear experience that it was promised to be. Don't expect a world in which you can do anything you want, and the level design itself is very restrictive. You can buy houses and businesses for Christ's sake, you can even start a family, it just can be very shallow and simple at times.

Overall, while a very fun game, with high paced combat, this is not the game that we were promised. Where's the world in which you can do anything? I really can't hold the game up to its hype, but given that it follows a year after my favorite game of all time, it's sort of crushed by the competition. If you play this game to have fun, and realize that it does have some guidelines, you will enjoy it, if you're expecting another RPG masterpiece, you're shit out of luck.