Fable 3 review

“Fable III” is the latest installment to the action-packed and critically acclaimed Xbox 360 exclusive franchise that has sold more than six million copies. Fans new and returning will now embark on an epic adventure, where the race for the crown is only the beginning of your spectacular journey. Five decades have passed since the events of “Fable II,” and Albion has matured into an industrial revolution, but the fate of the kingdom is at peril.

In “Fable III,” you will be called upon to rally and fight alongside your people, ascend to the seat of power, and experience the true meaning of love and loss while defending your throne. In your quest to seize power and defend your kingdom, the choices you make will change the world around you, for the greater good or your own personal gain.

Who will you become? A rebel without a cause, the tyrant you rebelled against, or the greatest ruler to ever live?



Molyneux has promised to remove traditional RPG mechanics from Fable III, the emphasis being on removing “clunkiness” and making the game more accessible. One of the most striking changes in Fable III is the menu system, or, rather, the absence of one. Citing the distaste of lists, the game lacks any semblance of a traditional 2D menu, instead relying solely on the game universe from the moment you hit the start button. Upon hitting the start button the player is transported to the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is inhabited by your personal butler, Jasper, who makes in-game suggestions and advice. Changing clothes is now accomplished by using a changing room that features all of your wardrobe possibilities. Magic is now cast by gauntlets kept in the Sanctuary instead of changing them through the HUD, and shops contain their inventories on the shelves instead of in purchase screens.

There are rewards for being a self-serving ruler, including a treasury filled with gold piles that grow or diminish based on the player’s wealth. The player’s in-game family will attempt to pressure the player into selfishly taking money from Albion to maintain and upgrade his or her castle.

The player’s style of combat also impacts the gameplay. Depending on the skill level and experience, the player’s melee and ranged weapons will change with use, as well as the player’s magic-casting gauntlets. The example is if a players slaughters innocents and civilians the weapon will darken and drip blood, but will glow if used against evil. The blade will also lengthen and widen if the player uses advanced attacks and defensive blocks. Molyneux stated that “Everybody ended up going towards one big weapon, that’s not choice, that’s not power, that’s everybody doing the same thing. So we thought to ourselves, we’re not going to design any more weapons, we’re going to get the player to do it.” The player can trade their crafted weapons online with other players for gold and can in turn purchase other weapons crafted by other players.



The character-morphing that defines the series, where the player’s character changes appearance based on his or her actions, growing beautiful or ugly based on good and evil actions respectively, is reported to be more dynamic.

The player is also tasked with dealing with how society works on a day-to-day basis, such as how to handle crime, poverty, and taxation.
Fable III introduced location-morphing. If the player taxes a region heavily, the people will become visibly poorer, their buildings will start to fall into disrepair and the player will encounter hostility from them if he passes through the area.
The example Lionhead gave was the town of Bowerstone: in the time since Fable II Albion has undergone the industrial revolution and Bowerstone has become “a mass of Victorian-era inspired churning industry,” with the skyline being hugely affected by this. During the technological upheaval, however, crime, injustice and poverty have grown and the player can choose to eradicate it or let it continue unchecked.
Either way, Albion will grow to reflect the player’s decisions or lack thereof.



Molyneux has also promised that the player will have complete power over the game’s world when he/she becomes king or queen. Citizens of Albion can be punished for doing things good or bad, and can be dealt with in any way the player chooses. For example citizens who don’t pay their taxes can be dealt with by being thrown into a dungeon or being slaughtered by an army dispatched by the player.

Once the player becomes the monarch they have the decision to go to war as another country named Aurora will threaten Albion. While Albion is only a single continent in a much-larger world, Fable III is the first game in the series to expand the playable areas beyond Albion’s borders.

A new system applies to general interaction expanding on Expressions. Expression Touch is similar to the previous games but leads to a new feature called Dynamic Touch. Molyneux gave some examples of this new feature like of a child trapped in a burning building. The player can go into the house and comfort the child with Expression Touch before using Dynamic Touch to carry the child to safety. The other is being able to use Expression Touch to talk and flirt with a character, then using Dynamic Touch to shake their hand, then embrace, and then leading to intimacy.


There is speculation that Fable 3 will break away from the tradition of a silent hero due to a gameplay video with the hero conversing with the character Walter Beck. Another player reported to hear a short exchange between the hero and his companion.

Fable III will use a similar drop-in, drop-out Co-operative system as its predecessor. However, Molyneux has revealed that rather than being “tied to one camera”, players will be able to explore the world freely. Molyneux also stated that players will be able to use their own character, rather than a henchman such as that in Fable II, and will use the same equipment and have the same dog. Players will be able to use Dynamic and Expression Touch on another player, help in quests, and even marry and have children. Marriage and family has also changed, and players will be able to adopt children. This will allow players to have families through homosexual marriage or through a “business partnership”.

Plot
Set approximately 50–60 years after the events of Fable II, the continent of Albion, where the Fable series is set, is currently under the control of Logan, a corrupt, tyrannical king. Logan’s sibling, the “Hero” and playable character, is forced into a quest to become a revolutionary leader to defeat the king after an “injustice” happens to their parent, the previous ruler of Albion, believed to be killed at the hands of Logan. Over the course of the first half of the game, the Hero will gain the people of Albion’s support, overthrow Logan and become ruler of Albion him/herself. During the second half of the game, the player will have to choose whether or not to follow up on promises made to the public, at the risk of losing Albion’s approval. While dealing with this, the player will also be faced with the possibility of war when “Aurora”, a neighbouring country, begins to threaten Albion.

Features

* Embark on an epic adventure
* Be the Hero
* Blockbuster Action meets adventure
* Choice and consequence

The character-morphing that defines the series, where the player’s character changes appearance based on his or her actions, growing beautiful or ugly based on good and evil actions respectively, is reported to be more dynamic.

DO NOT WANT!!



The rest of it sounds quite impressive however. Still the mere fact that your appearance changes ruins everything for me. I like specific appearances.

Nevertheless, if gameplay from my friends or YT videos convinces me otherwise I may look into it further.

Thus far Fable 3 has been a huge step backwards from Fable 2. I'm quite disappointed, but I'm not finished yet. I'll be sure to pick this game apart when I do finish though.

Edit: Actually I did beat the stupid game, but I am playing it again to try to get the good ending and to see if it's worth it. I mean the stipulations for the good ending are INSANE! That alone has made this a terrible game, but we'll see how this second playthrough goes. So far it's pretty boring since I am too busy earning gold to actually have any fun, and last time when I dared try to have fun with this broken peice of junk game and it's godawful interface *LOATHS THE INTERFACE* it showed me by giving me a crappy ending despite all my choices.

*ahem* Anyway I'm going to see if this gets any better, but so far it's at the very least a 5/10, maybe lower. If I do review the game... well the only way to properly critisize it is indeed with spoilers. The dev team really weren't thinking when they made this game, and as far as I can tell it's much buggier than Fable 2 was when it was launched. I mean Fable 2 was pretty buggy but Fable 3 seems to be as a bad as New Vegas on consoles bug wise. I had to restart one game due to game breaker, and when I beat it the first time... guh.... Plus the broken gameplay. I'll wait until I review it...

I usually really enjoy Fable despite the imperfections, but this last installment could have been great if not for incredibly stupid imbalanced, and regressive design choices, and seemingly 0 testing!