Fable II

"We can be Heroes, just for one play"

Hype can often make or break a game, and no matter how bad a game is a lot of hype can do wonders towards the sales. Irregardless of the quality, sales will always be how games are viewed by the creators, so hyping the hell out of a game has no real consequences. If the game even resembles the hype by a bit then fantastic, you will be able to sell that many more copies. If the game doesn't live up to the hype then whatever - the hype has already generated the sales and you're happy as can be. The first Fable game landed nicely into the second category and received a backlash not seen for a long time - then again, Fable had the hype machine run through it like nobody had seen before. Peter Molyneux, the genius behind legendary game designers Bullfrog, was guilty of only one thing and that was writing cheques his games can't cash

Fable 2 was released with a lot less hype behind it, less extravagant claims from Mr Molyneux and it looked like you could actually take the game for what it was rather than what it wasn't. It's just a shame that it ended up being a rather dull and lifeless game that is drowning in potential

The game starts with your character (you can choose between male and female at the start of the game but outside of aesthetics it has very little difference) and your older sibling living on the streets. By sheer luck you get to run around doing fetch quests for a while and then after an interesting end to set the game going you end up going off onto an adventure like you've never saw before

Or you would if you didn't then have to do more errands before you can even start exploring. The small map you start off can be explored as much as you like, although areas are cut off until later in the game and you can't leave the map you're in until the game allows you to by completing the quest path. So, one introduction dungeon, a few short battles so you get to grips with the battle system and then you're allowed to go into the first town, only a few hours into your game. You will then spend the next few hours in this same small town

After ushering you through the first few places of the game, carefully taking your hand and easing you through the hoops it makes you jump through, the game then decides to let you go by yourself and just do what you like. The first town has around 10 stores for you to buy and sell at, each of them selling different things. Then you can buy these stores for even more money, as well as just about every single house you can see in the town. Naturally, houses are expensive and the only way to make money is to either sell items, which is a long and ardous task when you consider most of the things you have are garbage, or you can buy cheaper places and make your money through rent

By setting up houses you've bought to rent them out, every five minutes you will receive the rent. As you own more houses the more money you'll receive from rent, but at the start of the game it's a slow process. Helping you out is the various jobs that you can do - most of them consist of mini games that are based around "Press the button at the right time to make money" which is very easy but again it's a long and boring process

So, you grind out money and buy lots of houses and you start picking up lots of money. You can then buy weapons to strengthen yourself up (You'll really want to be doing this) buying potions to not only heal your health but to give yourself experience (Expensive but worth it) buying clothes so people will have different reactions to you (Yes you can make a dude wear a dress and yes, it eventually does stop being funny) as well as changing your hair and then your hair colour and on and on it goes. Most of your clothes and hair dos are essentially worthless however - you can run around in your underwear for all it does to you outside of peoples reactions, it doesn't affect you in battle at all

Then, if you are really getting into it, you can even romance and marry the various villagers in town. Wearing things they like, giving them gifts they like or expressing yourself the way they like will make them like you (duh) and eventually you'll hit the sweet spot and a ring will appear above their heads. Show them a ring (the higher class the woman the more expensive the ring will be) and you're now married. Congrats. Bang your wife a few times and you'll even have your own child. It is a bit weird that a lot of people play video games as escapism but you can then recreate a digital family to annoy you, but I'm sure you can get over it pretty quickly

Naturally, if you aren't home enough then your wife will become unhappy and may divorce you. They also take your child away if you have any, and apparently there is no visitation process in Fable 2 so you'll never see them again. Too bad. Want to go exploring through dungeons to get some fantastic treasure? Better run it past your wife first since she may not be happy that you have spent more than a few minutes away from her. Want to go to a town on the other side of the map? Whoops, quick travelling is measured by using in game hours and they will probably leave you by the time you get back to them in around a weeks time in game

What's that? Instead of doing various inane minigames that don't really account for anything you just want to play the game? Well, I hate to break this to you but the inane minigames are the most interesting part of the game. The story can be summarised with "Go here. Talk to him/her. Do what they say. Alright that's good, now do it again. And again. AND AGAIN" and you quickly lose the whole point of the quest, the slow burning introduction gets cast aside far too quickly for the sheer amount of unneccesary additions to the game

You're meant to be tracking down three heroes so you can all go off and defeat the bad guy who wants to rule the world. Fair enough, not exactly the most original plot but it's unoriginal simply because it works. You get the first hero not long into the game, and you wonder if the game is that short. You then do nothing for a long time and then you get the second hero, and then the game rushes to its conclusion after that with the final hero who gets pretty much no screen time but still ends up being the best character

The world itself isn't even that big - there's barely over a dozen different areas in the game and each area isn't exactly teeming with activity. Only three of the towns even feel large with most of the forests and mountain passes being twisty turny so it fools you into thinking they are large. The optional quests the game gives you aren't exactly interesting either, as again you're either doing a fetch quest or running errands with only a handful of them even attempting to be fun

The world, however, does look quite good. The houses are painstakingly made, the enemies look fantastic and the animation of them especially is amazing. The details on even the smallest cliff face show a lot of work and effort have been put into the game to make it look so good and graphically the game is top notch

The ingame music tends to be nothing more than an indicator for when enemies are around, as the jump from barely noticable ambient music to the fast paced battle music is hard to miss. The music during cutscenes is tailored to suit the mood - This is a Sad Scene so soft piano music will be played. This is a Funny Scene so it will be more uplifting and jovial. This is a Boring Scene so we'll play the generic overworld music

The voice acting in the game jumps between painfully bad and actually quite impressive. The main characters of the game are voiced pretty much perfectly, while every other NPC in the game is awful. NPCs range from "Rejects from Oliver Twist" in the lower class to "What Americans think the Queen sounds like" to the upper class. This wouldn't be so bad if they had more than 5 people doing voiceovers for most of the NPCs - get used to hearing different people say exactly the same things in exactly the same voice wherever you go. Your character also has a title which people will refer you as rather than giving them an actual name, so you'll also have to get used to "Allo thar Heerow" like you're on your merry way to the cider festival

The main characters, on the other hand, are done by professionals and as such they are really good. Theresa, as your guide, is mysterious but firm, portrayed well by British Theatre Actor Zoe Wanamaker, and the fantasticly camp and impatient Reaver (yes, his name is Reaver. If you listen closely you can hear my eyes roll as I type this) is played to a tee by Stephen Fry, who I'm fairly sure wasn't even aware he was being recorded and was just going about his normal day and the game was changed to fit around that

The difficulty of the game is virtually non existant. If you ever run out of health then your character falls down, but a few seconds later will get back up again with no real loss at all. Your character gets scarred when they run out of health, but since scars can be covered up by clothes and it doesn't have much an effect on you at all it makes running out of health seem like an inconvenience rather than an actual threat. So long as you are buying the best weapons as they come along it's not going to be until the end of the game when enemies even start to deal enough damage on you for yo uto be in danger of losing all your health

Experience works in a different way too. If you hit an enemy with your sword, you get strength experience. If you hit them with your gun, you'll get skill experience. If magic is used then you'll get will experience, and upon an enemies defeat they will drop general experience which can be used in any of the 3 categories. It really is as simple as it looks - strength boosts your health and how much damage you deal as well as giving you fancy new combat abilities. Skill affects your accuracy and speed of attacks, as well as aimed shots with your gun. Will simply powers up your spells, and there are plenty of spells to learn each of them useful in their own ways. Do you choose a wide variety of spells, or focus on powering one up?

You can show expressions to people around the world by using the Right Bumper to select a certain expression. People will like or dislike you more if you show them things they like or ones they don't, and you can even use them during battle if you so wish. You have a dog in the game too, who helps you find buried treasure and even attacks enemies you knock down during fights, and he can help you with it's own expressions too. Again, there isn't much need to do any of this as it doesn't really affect anything

One thing Fable 2 is proud of is their morality meter. If you do good things then you will become a good person, eventually ending up with a halo if you carry it on. However, if you do evil things then you will grow horns and people will hate you. The way you complete certain quests can give you good or evil points, and certain quests change the game around you if you complete it in a good or an evil way. This is a nice idea, but ultimately badly implemented since unless you like things being a dump you will always choose the good side. It's a roleplayers dream, but the entire thing is also so shallow that it's not really worth the effort to put into the game

There's loads of other things in the game too. You can pretty much rule the entire world with real estate, you can furnish each building you buy with furniture from stores to raise the price of the building, you can affect the global economy by buying in bulk from certain areas. You can help the local militia defeat slavers or you can help the slavers capture citizens. You can even assassinate people for money if the job becomes available

But all of that is just there for flavour, and although flavour is important it's worthless when the flavour is slopped all over a turd. Fable 2 isn't a bad game - far from it. It's just a shame that it is so far away from an enjoyable and fun game that it's very sad to see. The potential for the game to be something that Peter Molyneux thinks the game should be is definitely there, but after two games in the series they are not any closer to reaching that goal. But hey, Fable 3 has been announced with plans to make a fourth and a fifth game in the series - there's always the next turn for the hype machine, right?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/09

Game Release: Fable II (EU, 10/24/08)