Fable II

"Glitches, bad co-op and missed opportunities hinder an otherwise terrific action/adventure game."

The Microsoft PR department's long, hellish task of keeping a muzzle on Peter Molyneux is over, and we are finally given the sequel to one of the most important games of the last console generation. It succeeds on many levels, but it also shows that an expanded focus from Peter Molyneux is still needed to truly touch gamers the way he feels his game should.

Sights and sounds:
Visually speaking, Fable II is a treasure. It focuses on design driving the graphics and animation, which gives it the game it's own unique sense of presentation. At the same time, the effects and quality are also impressive, so you don't ever feel like you were short changed on quality due to the substance. Fable II moves beyond the dark ages but not quite into an industrial era. Cobblestone roads, stone bridge, coach houses, clock towers, and clothing designs fit right in and establish that heavily armored knights are no longer the norm for this colonial-type era. Spell animations are nice but you've seen better.

Outside areas not only look pretty, they are huge. Instead of a handful of tiny little 1-2 encounter environments between towns, you have a large outdoor area with a lot to explore and fight. This is done perfectly for this game.

The sound in the game is great, though I feel the music is a notch below the original game. Still, it fulls the room with whimsical ambiance for towns, as well as getting to the point for spooky caves or peril filled rooms of monsters. Voice acting in the game is perfect, as are the sounds of combat, the roar of enemies and the, uh, farting.

Combat:
Combat is extremely easy. A non-gamer can pick up the controller and punish beetles and bandits without much effort. Dying only results in scarring and unclaimed EXP orbs vanishing, so there's no real fear of having to replay a situation beyond superficial problems. This is both good and bad. A casual gamer won't struggle to progress in the game, but a typical gamer has nothing to keep him honest. The original Fable had too many resurrection phials, this game includes them but a normal gamer would have to be especially careless, probably purposely so, in order to ever experience "death".

The controls for each of the 3 attack types have been simplified, which is again both good and bad. I find that it removes some depth from the combat system. It also puts aiming and blocking into skill paths that you learn. Flourishes as well are done in this manner - holding the attack button will allow you to block and build up a flourish. While this oversimplifies combat a bit too much, it also allows you to chain all three attack types together in battle a bit easier.

The focus seems to be that it's so easy, anyone can just press the X button and all the enemies die. But for added challenge, you would want to chain different attacks and flourishes together to increase an experience multiplier that judges how well you performed in combat. Even at that, the combat isn't terribly deep and its not hard to consistently have a decent multiplier even if you just mash the buttons. Oh, and even if I've complained about the controls, the most important thing to remember is that it's fun to play in battle. So even if it's way too easy and shallow, you're chopping through a pair of bandits, then turning around and shooting another, and then charging some cool lightning spell to melt the flesh away from anything that survived.

As you figure out how to increase your multiplier, combat becomes a bit more rewarding. Not only is it more fun the more you increase your combat abilities, it becomes more visually appealing with decapitations, slo-mo finishers, flourishes, electrocutions, and so on. I would have liked to see random boss characters in the game, and there are far too few large and scary enemies.

Following the bread crumb trail:
The storyline is better than the first game by a good bit. The original had a bit more in the way of early and generic hero tasks than the sequel, but the improved story more than makes up for it. You'll also find that various odd quests will pop up along the way, so you won't always need to keep your bread crumb trail pointed along the hero's storyline quests.

Ah yes, the bread crumb trail. This shows you exactly where you need to go in order to progress in your currently selected quest. It can be turned off, brightened or dimmed, and it's essentially a magical little GPS tool for you. Very good feature. I actually like the removal of the mini-map, which is simply too small to be all that useful in big maps with few paths. I do have a major gripe with the pause screen map - it's really bad. It doesn't show Demon Doors that you encounter, silver key chests, and I've found that it doesn't accurately display traveling salesmen either.

One major addition to the game, is the dog. The dog was added to try and establish a certain love for your companion, though I'm not sure it's effective for that. Still, when the dog helps you out early on, or is kicked, it's hard not to feel glad he's there or upset at the guy that kicked him. The dog also does tricks, growls when enemies are near, fights, and can sniff out treasure for you. Really well done, though he's seemingly one of a kind and you can't pick out what breed he is.

Characters:
Quest-related NPCs (storyline or optional) are fairly well developed, and some of which can provide you with honest emotional reactions. This was hardly present in the original game.

Unfortunately, while most of the other NPCs have a good look/design to them, and can say funny things or appropriate reactions to the given situation, it's a sea of sheep in every town. They fill out the place, but I was hoping for a bit more in the way of unique NPCs. I don't mind the massive amounts of housewives that all look the same and follow me around, but maybe a couple of houses could have had named and unique NPCs. I was excited by the unique bard at the entrance of Bowerstone Market, but he doesn't play much of a role beyond that area. I was hoping for just a slight bit more in the way of unique NPCs that you could chose to interact with throughout the game without being part of quests.

Choice:
Your character is defined by your own actions, what you eat, how you choose to solve situations, what you do in your idle time, and how you build your character's combat abilities. These will shape your character morphs over the game, and it's done much slower than the first game and far more reasonably. No senior citizen discount coffee this time around! The morphs are fine, I wouldn't say there's a drastic update to this from the first game. Except... that you can be a female now, though adding to her physique detracts from her femininity.

(If Peter Molyneux wants a casual gamer's opinion, my wife isn't happy with the quality of hairstyles and the Chyna appearance of a strong female warrior! Hire a woman next time, and not one from the UK!)

There are also a few moments in the game that can pull an honest emotional reaction, if you come across them. If you let a town fall into darkness, the result is a sad area that you can't go back and fix. It helps set your world as something you actually play a role in, and the lack of multiple save files per character enforces this idea. No longer can people reload their game and fix their mistake and claim the game lacks depth. That said, letting a town fall apart feels worse than saving a town feels good. Still, not many games let your choices impact an area this way. There are other character-related tradeoffs as well, having to endure or sacrifice (or just enjoy the misfortune of others depending on how you play!) so that someone else may survive, or that your experience will remain intact.

While some of these major changes to towns and characters impact the game and make the player feel a certain way, they also present an opportunity that the developers didn't bother to pick up on. If your actions cause other events/situations, there should be further choices to fix or patch up the problems. It's extra content that could have been provided to further entrench a player in the world of Albion, but instead they chose a "you made your bed, now lie in it" approach. That they give you game changing choices at all, and further follow through with them such that they impact the game in a worthwhile way, is fantastic so this point is probably just nitpicking.

Items:
Weapons are about the same as before. Guns replace bows, but crossbows remain. It's mostly a cosmetic change, though as you proceed down the "skill" path, your aiming abilities allow you to disarm an opponent and also shoot him in the junk.

Armor is one of the bigger changes - it no longer improves your defense. In fact, it is simply labeled as clothing, and you have a wider selection to choose from. You also have dyes to change the color of your clothes and hair, and while the interface for this isn't perfect, it's nice to have that level of customization. Defense is done solely through the toughness skill now, and this is a nice change of pace as you are free to wear whatever you want.

Multiplayer:
It seemed as though the clothing-no-defense-rating scheme was done to encourage people to wear different items, because there is now co-op play. Sadly, this is not the case, as you can't bring your hero character into another player's game. This is a good concept for local co-op, but for online co-op this is unacceptable. Maybe the secondary character shouldn't gain renown or anything that really changes character morphs, but you should still be able to bring in weapons and clothes and the character model itself in. Why bother with encouraging everyone to look different if people can't check each other's hero out?

The co-op execution is also horrible. The local co-op uses a confusing camera choice, zooming out to keep both characters on screen, even if they're only a few feet apart. It's ugly in all ways. But I guess they couldn't have scrapped it because there would be Hell to pay. Online co-op is implemented in roughly the same way, and it makes little sense why they would choose to do this. A lot of wasted potential here - this could have been a game people played well into the New Year, goofing around in each other's Albion. Especially if explicitly co-op content was added on disc or via downloadable content.

Glitches:
There are plenty of glitches in the game. For instance, during the first move of some jobs, the game won't load the arch with the target zone, and you'll miss your first hammer strike or drop your first pint. If you join a childhood game for co-op, it'll wipe out your good stuff. There are plenty of other well documented glitches and it is certainly worthwhile to check out a spoiler free glitch avoidance guide before hopping in the game. You probably won't deal with anything game breaking, but this is where the lack of multiple saves per character is really bad. It enforces the choice issue but if you get a glitched wife, character or world and the game auto-saves, you're stuck.

Overall:
The game is longer than the first, and to get most stuff done on one character takes something like 35+ hours, I could see some people getting 50 hours on one save. This includes buying property like castles, maxing out the jobs, doing all the quests, getting morphed all the way, hunting gargoyles and opening demon doors/chests. The story mode is about 12-15 hours straight through, but that's not really the selling point for the game. Most people will probably want a second play-through to experience a different gender/alignment, so it's definitely got a decent amount of play value and replay value. I also imagine downloadable content along the way can help expand the game, but it's a major shame they didn't add a little online focus to keep people invested in Fable II for longer than the month it'll take most people to get what they want out of it.

So, Peter Molyneux and Lionhead have set their focus on a certain gaming experience, and nailed their mark. Fable II is a fun game to play and you may experience some emotional tugs along the way as well as enjoy exploring a decent sized world with your dog, and making choices that will affect the world and more important, how cool your guy looks. However, with this focus, the game lacks certain peripheral vision and common NPCs, the map and online play aren't nearly as well done as they could be. As a result, we get an easy, fun game that provides a unique experience and is a little bit better than the first Fable without making people forget about the original.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/08, Updated 02/24/09

Game Release: Fable II (Limited Collector's Edition) (US, 10/21/08)