Fable was one of the most anticipated Xbox games of 2004. With Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios making it out to be God’s gift to RPG fans, it’s not hard to see why. This game was being touted as the next evolution of RPG. He said there would be co-op play, growing trees, and many other wonderful features never seen before. Well, the game was released and he has since publicly apologized (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3724674.stm) for speaking of such vapor features to the public and press that didn’t end up in the final game. So after four years of development, let’s see how it turned out.

If there is one place where Fable truly shines, it is in presentation. This game reminded me a lot of a Legend of Zelda game, which could be the reason I could not stop playing it. The medieval world of Albion is a well developed environment, with lots to fight (bandits, hobs, balverines, and other mythical creatures) and lots to see. As the game progresses, the player’s character and the world around him change. From the very beginning, players have a choice to make, do good deeds and be the hero and guardian of Albion or slaughter anything in your path and become its worst and most vile villain. The world interacts and changes with the main character according to the alignment with either good or evil. And the dialogue and story change accordingly. The more evil a player is, the more characters grovel and fear his presence. If player is good, they praise him and applaud as he approaches them. At first this game seems very open-ended. In the villages the main character can do many things: buy property, get married to multiple women (must resist Mormon joke), get drunk off his ass, have sex, and, my personal favorite, punt chickens.

This all sounds very nice, but as I mentioned, it only seems open-ended. There is an obvious linear path you must take to progress the main story, which is cookie cutter at best. One shouldn’t go looking for depth in the plot, basically there is an item of great power that a bad guy is trying to secure for himself so he can rule the world, and our hero/anti-hero is the only one that can stop him. In this case, it’s the item is the Sword of Aeons, and the villain is the underwhelming Jack of Blades. This guy is uber-lame in my opinion. With four years of development, one would think they would have come up with someone a little more menacing. And the worst part, weighing in at a mere 12 hours of gameplay, Fable can easily be finished within a rental from Blockbuster, and that time is including all the side quests! Loading times get really annoying in this game. Having to wait 5 seconds in-between areas of Albion made me want to throw my Sprite Remix at the screen, and made the game more time consuming that it needed to be. And finally, after beating the game, Fable as little to no replay value. Sure there is a ton to do, but, after you beat the main quest, who cares?

For an Xbox game, where there is so much potential, this game’s graphics were underwhelming. I’ve seen PlayStation 2 games that looked better than some parts of Albion. Another thing that irked me is that there are parts where slowdown is a problem in the game. If there are a bunch of baddies on the screen in some areas, the frame rate slumps down to a crawl. Regardless of these problems, the graphics overall don’t do anything to take away from the game or hinder it in anyway. The music in this game is great. There are some obvious themes in the score, and it adds to the presentation immensely. The sounds are realistic, and do their part to absorb the player in this medieval world. A lot of attention was put into the dialogue and voiceovers, all the characters have an English accent and sound very believable.

The gameplay is almost perfect in this game. There are some gripes I have, mostly the spell casting, where I cast something I didn’t want because I accidentally switched pages during battle. Other than that the battle system works extremely well, and is easy to pick up. There are three different styles of fighting a character can use: melee, archery, or will. Depending on which one is chosen, baddies and bosses are dealt with differently. The more one uses a certain style, the more points one gains towards upgrades. As the character gains levels, he evolves. This system works well in my opinion and is one of the few exceptional things in this game.

Despite its obvious flaws I still had an absolute blast playing this game. It has a true sense of humor and character, I just wish it were longer, and had a better story. As for the hype I mentioned earlier, it didn’t really add anything revolutionary to the genre. It was all stuff that was seen before and often times done better. Well, I guess we will just have to wait for Fable 2, which, if any of Lionhead’s other sequels (ahem, Black and White 2) are any indication, we won’t be seeing for quite some time.

Tested System:
Microsoft Xbox