Fable

"Not what many had envisioned but still a quality title"

Finally released August last year, Fable is a truly epic project. The product of hype, a massive budget, the mind of Peter Molyneux, The Simpsons composer Danny Elfman among many others and a development time longer than the time the Xbox has been on shelves, it was either destined to be a runaway success, capitalising off the hype and exploding onto the scene as one of the greatest RPG's available or it was going to dissapoint gamers around the world drawn in by the hype.

Surprisingly, it kinda delivers both, in parts. In some ways it's a huge dissapointment that many gamers will probably be a bit turned down by, but in others (and mainly) it's a triumph of design and production values. A big portion of the much touted features are missing from the final game, for example things like the competition with rival heroes and story paths are there, but in greatly altered and superficial forms. Some things like having children and removing items from your victims are basically totally missing, among many of the other genre-breaking features that Molyneux and his team had raved about during production time.

Luckily what remains is a very solid and plain fun role-playing game with a ton of customization and a simple and enjoyable battle system. The game really needs to be looked at as the product it is now rather than what it was meant to be. Keeping that in mind, Fable is a medieval 3d action RPG, more in the vein of Zelda than something like Morrowind (as it was originally intended). The combat is straightforward, you can build up your character how you want and there's a hell of alot to do in the world of Albion when you're first thrust into it. But one of the best things is that you can play the game how you want - be evil and have everyone cower at your presence, be good and have children run to you cheering, be a neutral quiet hero with unknown power or use your fame to your advantage, wooing the local women and doing arm pumps in the Town Square. However you choose, Fable is a stylish and dazzling experience loaded with options.

Every great RPG needs a great story to go along with it. Fable breaks the formula by not necessarily having a great story, but making the journey to the climax satisfying and enjoyable. The storys as basic as it gets, starting off with a bandit raid killing your father and having your sister and mother kidnapped. You then get rescued by a man from a hero guild and the story rolls along from there, with a few basic twists and a pretty shallow main villain until the end. You get a few chances to influence the story, but probably not as many as you'd think (your good and evil more influences how people react rather than meaningfully affecting the story). So don't expect a KOTOR or Final Fantasy storywise, but you'll get something basic and reasonably enjoyable. The voice acting throughout the game is uniformly quality. The main character doesn't talk but the main supporting cast is very good (the guildmaster and Maze being 2 standouts I thought). The villagers tend to overly reuse lines to the point of annoyance but thankfully they change when your renown or alignment significantly so it's bearable.

The world of Albion is quite an expansive one. You're forced along linear paths within each individual area, but there are enough open wide areas and towns (which are totally open and explorable) to keep it interesting. Besides, the areas are nothing short of incredible that you travel through. Lush and perfectly themed lake and river areas to medieval towns to rocky beaches to stony caves and ruins, the designs and regions are near flawless. Graphically the characters are well done also, with heroes all having very unique looks and personalities, with their own tattoos, clothing and fighting styles. One problem that you'll probably notice is the lack of villager and enemy models, with most enemies looking alike in their specific races. The villagers suffer even more, with only a minimal amount of models throughout. They do slightly change throughout regions though.

The combat and experience system is another thing that Fable does very well. There are 4 basic types of experience (General, Strength, Skill and Will) to level up different areas. You go back to the Heroes Guild (which acts as a base camp of sorts, with a shop and training areas, as well as giving you your quests) and level up at the experience point. Strength, Skill and Will experience points level up their individual areas and are gained from battling enemies with skills from that area (for example, Strength points are gained by melee combat, Will from spells etc.) while General experience points are gained from winning quests and are dropped by defeated enemies. There are 50 weapons in total as well as 16 spells (which usually evolve as they're leveled up). Many gamers would've probably hoped for a greater range of weaponry (perhaps some staff weapons and gloves/gauntlets) but the weapons available are certainly servicable. The spells are also good with some pretty unique ones as well as alignment based skills (which is a good use of the system, explained later). Armour wise you can pretty go as you please as armour doesn't make a drastic difference to damage recieved. Of course plate mail will defend better than robes but if you choose the latter you'll find it's not overly detrimental to your quest. Combat is easy to get into, especially melee. You target the closest enemy to you automatically and you can lock on at anytime to the closest enemy with the left trigger. The system isn't perfect and doesn't work as well as a similar system does in something like Ocarina of Time, but the surprisingly good camera will at least make sure you can get out of any troubles quickly. Apart from the attack button there's also a 'flourish' button - basically a shield bypassing attack that does extra damage and also knocks enemies down. Bow combat is well balanced - arrows can be 'charged' (basically pulled back for longer) to cause more damage and you can dodge and roll as you charge arrows. Magic combat is also well designed with a broad array of spells and a simple system (similar to the expression system discussed in the next paragraph) at your disposal to lay waste to your enemies. Perhaps the best thing about the system is how easy it is to be any of these types and crossover as much as you want to in between. If you want to simply use a bow the whole game, it's balanced well enough to allow for it. If you want to be a spell warrior, then you can augment yourself with magic and lay waste to enemies with your blade or mallet or axe or mace. Whatever you'd like to do combat wise within the system is catered for.

While on the subject of armour and combat, it's also worth mentioning how it affects your attractiveness and scariness ratings. Something like dark platemail will make you a pretty unattractive prospect, but if you're into making people cower at your presence it'll help that way. Usually the best way to go is to wear something like bright robes without a helmet and the women will be all over you. Attracting women is quite a simple prospect and it's really unfortunate that it wasn't built upon to a higher level and the interactivity increased. As it stands you basically just get some renown from quests (which isn't too hard), put some nice clothes on and talk to some women before throwing them a few expressions and a gift or two. Expressions work similar to items in Zelda and are assigned to the d-pad (you hold R to access your personally assigned expressions, otherwise it's context sensitive). There are many expressions, to do things like the afformentioned attraction of the opposite sex (or even the same sex if you're so inclined, some men are designated by the game to be aligned that way) you can do things like flirt, flex your muscles, strike a pose and so on. If you'd rather turn people away you can do things like give people the finger, burp, fart and other lovely things like that. As your alignment changes and renown increases you'll gain new expressions based on what you gained them for (for example, if your alignment to good increases then you'll gain things like saying thankyou and sorry, while if your alignment to bad increases it'd be something more akin to an evil laugh or an offensive action). It's not a particularily deep or involving system but it does it's duty and allows for simple interaction straight away, catering for both the casual and more hardcore player.

One of the best things about Fable is the character creation and evolution throughout the game. When everyone who plays the game is first let out of the Hero Guild and thrust into Albion, you'll be the same, skinny, brown haired kid as everyone else. But as you go on, you'll quickly change. All the armour in the game is well detailed and represented within the game, but that's not all you can do to your body. You can goto a travelling barber or tattooist and using your 'style cards' you can pay for the stylist to change your facial and scalp hair into various styles. The tattoos are a very cool little addition - each tattoo is a little slice of Albion history as well as being a cool addition to your heroes body. Tattoos look different for different places and can be placed nearly anywhere. Battle will affect your appearance as well. If you engage in alot of melee combat you'll notice scars forming on your bare skin (usually your face) and even over tattoos, deforming them and the surrounding area. The cool thing about the scar system is not only can you get scars all over, you will also see different scars depending on the wound inflicted. If you get a scar from a Balverine (a werewolf like creature) it'll be more like a row of scratches rather than a sword wound. Scars will also run along different areas and look deeper depending on how hard and on which angle you're hit. It all contributes to you being able to make a battle hardened warrior. You also age in Fable, mainly from leveling your stats up and using magic. One unfortunate thing about the aging is that it's not influenced by time. A game day might be 45 minutes and you could do 25 game days before you finish the game but if you didn't level up or use magic then you'd still be basically as young as when you set out. Magic users also age far too quickly, which may turn away players who don't wish to play as a 65 year old man (the age limit) for a large portion of the game.

Alignment is another important thing in Albion. It's affected by your actions in quests and around towns and basically determines how good or evil you are, affecting people's reactions to you. It works how you'd think - do good like helping people in need, killing undead enemies and stopping bandits and you'll gain good points. Kill villagers and work with bandits and you'll gain evil points. Not only does this affect reactions and certain spells and skills, but it'll affect your appearance. If you're good you'll emit a bright and almost holy aura, as well as having a halo above your head and small butterflies hovering around you. If you're evil you'll see basically the opposite, ugly horns will sprout from your head, your eyes will glow red and flies will follow you as you go around. The whole system is well implemented and makes you think about what you'd do more than if you could just get away with it or if you simply got a fine. One problem with the system is how easy it is to change people's minds about what type of person you are. For example, one day you could wipe out a whole town of innocent villagers without mercy and defeat a whole unit of guards, but if you waited for the fines to die down, donated at the Church of Avo (the good god of Albion...and yes there is an evil god as well...) and did a mission or two for people you'd be back in the worlds good books. A bit unrealistic, to say the least.

To touch on the music and sound in the game, it's basically uniformly good. As with the rest of the game the quality is very high. The tunes aren't as memorable as say, Final Fantasy but they're better composed and they fit the game well. The sound effects are basically what you'd expect. The sword effects are suitably chunky and strong while the spells are the usual elemental and spiritual noises you'd expect. There's not really too much ambient noise in the game which is slightly dissapointing, as some more realistic implementation of that kind of sound could've greatly enhanced the atmosphere.

If you're looking for an epic RPG lengthwise, Fable isn't the best place to go. If you choose to mainly stick with the story quests and only divulge into some of the sidequests and maybe buy a few houses, get married, find some silver keys (a bit like finding heart pieces in Ocarina of Time, you use them to open various silver chests that are placed around Albion), go fishing do a few demon doors (doors which require tasks to be done to open which are usually given by riddles) and play a few bar games (such as memory, blackjack and the like) then you'll be done in 10-15 hours depending on how much you do (you could zip through in 7-8 hours if you wanted). Luckily, although this sounds short, there are a few saving graces. For one, the time you are playing is absolutely packed. There's not much useless running around (you can either use your guild seal or Cullis gates to warp around Albion) and the story moves along at a rapid pace, not to mention there's a ton of stuff to do in between. Secondly, the replay value in this is very high. Since you might play as a melee player the first time, you'll be wondering what it'd be like playing through again using a mage or a thief (I started thinking about this about 5 hours in). There are also the story decisions which you could do differently the second time, not to mention the alignment. Playing as an evil character has just as many merits as playing as a good character in the world of Fable.

Whew. Two and a half thousand words in and I still feel like i've only scratched the surface of what Fable has to offer to you. The bottom word is this - Fable isn't perfect, and it's probably not many gamers expected it'd be. But if you go in and don't get dragged down by whats not in the game, you'll have a great time with whats in. Play through casually for a 10 hour game, or play it hardcore and get 50 hours out of it. Either way, Fable is one of the best RPG's available for the Xbox and while it's not a classic, it's a great project that begs to be played. If a sequel could fix the problems and catch the truly epic essence this game hints at, Fable could become a real flagship series and a classic game probably isn't too far down the track.

Visual - 9.0/10
Aural - 8.9/10
Gameplay - 8.8/10
Longevity - 8.5/10

Overall - 8.9/10 (Rounded up to 9)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/05