Fable Review - XBX

Few games have enjoyed so much hype or suffered so much skepticism as Fable. When Peter Molyneux announced the game those many years ago, he claimed it would be “The best RPG ever made.” While it’s unlikely many believed that, it still raised the bar to an impossibly high level. So let’s throw out the unrealistic expectations, and attempt to look at Fable for what it is.

Best served cold

Fable casts you in the role of a hero in the land of Albion. After a brief set of errands in your hometown, bandits raid the place and leave the town in flames and your family dead. A mysterious wizard named Maze rescues you and whisks you off for training at the Heroes’ Guild, where you will learn the arts of combat in preparation for vengeance against the people who shattered your life. Adolescence serves as your tutorial, and after you’ve learned the basics of casting spells, shooting arrows, and whacking beetles with a stick, you’re cast out to make your way in the world.

The simple tale of vengeance and hidden motives unfolds over a surprisingly small number of quests that take you across the whole of Albion, where shocking revelations (that you can probably guess in the first hour of the game) will be sprung on you at regular intervals. In the meantime, the real meat of the game lies between the storyline’s breadcrumb trail.

Smack in the middle of Good and Evil

From the start, you’re encouraged to perform good or evil deeds as you please. Helping a child fight off a bully will gain you good points. Helping the bully beat the crap out of said child will earn you evil points. Such choices present themselves on a near-constant basis, and soon your character will begin to reflect his moral fiber. Good characters will eventually glow with a holy light, plus gain a halo and mystic butterflies that flutter about their head. An evil hero will turn pale, grow horns, and develop a sinister red glow about the eyes. A swarm of flies will follow him wherever he goes. Naturally, your alignment will affect how people react to you and how attractive you are.

You do have a lot of freedom in the game world to do as you please. You can do good deeds for people, you can massacre entire villages and buy up the newly vacant real estate, you can marry men or women in different villages, rent houses out for extra cash, change your appearance with tattoos or hairstyles, or just stand in the middle of crowds and show off your quest trophies in an attempt to gain notoriety. All of this is highly absorbing, and it’s easy to waste hours experimenting with various expressions, gifts, and actions just to see how people will react to your behavior.

The Untouchable

The one problem with the morality system is that it really never affects the game much. Beyond the change in appearance and a marked inability to get a date, being evil carries no consequences. Even massacring a village’s population will have no repercussions if you wait a few days for the town to repopulate the fines to drop to zero. In fact, the only act of evil that seems to be seriously frowned upon by Fable is spousal abuse and divorce. A divorce will earn you a whopping 600 evil points. Murdering your spouse in cold blood will net you fourteen evil points. Albion’s ethics code seems a bit skewed.

The storyline will unfold exactly the same way, whether you’re angelic or demonic. Even moral choices made in story quests don’t alter anything. Only once, at the very end, does a choice affect the outcome of Fable’s story, and it’s hardly a conundrum. It’s certainly a lot of fun to play around with the various ways of being a paragon of virtue or a disciple of vice, but the lack of consequences make it more of a side game or toy than an actual game element.

Trinity of pain

Luckily, the other half of the game is as enjoyable as playing around with the world at large. Combat is a real-time affair that feels fairly close to the 3D Zelda titles. Fable makes use of just about every button the Xbox controller to give you access to melee, ranged, and magic attacks at any time. Unlike many third-person hack and slash games, Fable’s combat feels solid and the hits have weight and power to them. At no time do you feel like your blades are not cutting through solid objects and creatures, in large part thanks to the excellent sound design.

True to the game’s theme of “do-as-you-please,” you can focus on one particular combat type or balance your character between all three. Depending on which method of attack you use to down an enemy, you’ll gain melee, ranged, or magic experience points, which can then be used to level up your skills in those areas.

As you grow more proficient in various skills, your character will change to reflect his expertise. A heavy magic user will age faster and lose his hair as a sign of “wisdom.” A melee expert will grow larger and stronger than the usual character, and his preference for close combat will likely leave him with numerous scars criss-crossing his face and body. After enough time spent in the field, your character’s appearance will mold itself to your play style, and this helps immensely in creating a feeling of “ownership” over your hero. The variety of appearances is especially impressive, considering that every game starts with an identical hero.

Not me, you slop artist!

Pure fighters will merrily hack and slash their way through the game with ease. Archers will need more finesse, but the aiming system for the bow is simple to master. Magic users will run into the problematic targeting system head-on, which does not feel the need to differentiate between enemy and friendly targets. Often the trader you’re trying to escort will feel the sting of your lightning spell as frequently as the bandits you’re trying to protect him from.

Between the combat challenges, legendary weapons to be obtained, and numerous ways to screw with the heads of townspeople, it’s the bits between the storyline that will keep players coming back to Fable. Some may instantly love or hate the game due to the hype, but at its core this is a solid game that takes several risks, never quite rising above what’s been done before. It may fall far short of what Molyneux promised, but when simply held up to its competition, particularly on the Xbox, Fable stands out as a top-shelf action RPG.