Having had some time to consider how my expectations may have affected my Fable 2 experience (look at me being all self-aware and introspective) I decided to give Fable 3 a try. (It helped that I had absolutely reached rock bottom in terms of games I was interested in playing, the lack of interesting releases in the last year is astounding.) So, in the name of second chances I made my way through the Xbox marketplace, found the demo and began downloading.
Skip forward a few hours to the next day and now I’m getting ready, TV’s on, Xbox is signing me in to my Live account….I’m ready for this. I have an open mind and agile fingers. Let the button mashing begin!
Except it doesn’t. Because the demo stopped about 15% into the download. Turns out I had completely filled my hard drive with arcade games, DLC, and yes, with more saves than would be considered rational by most people. In order to continue I had to head to the system settings menu of my Xbox where I deleted 1.5 G of (mostly) saves so I could continue the download.
Having played through the demo I felt like it was a game worth playing through. After a couple of misfires, I managed to find and buy a copy. When I popped it in I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Fable 3 demo creates a save upon completion that allows you to continue the game from that point forward while getting any and all achievements and items that you earned in demo play; a small bonus but convenient and it almost makes up for the fact that you can only play the demo once per gamertag.
Now, having played through Fable 3 in its entirety (I’m actually about 1/3 of the way through a second playthrough on the hunt for more achievements) I can comfortably say that I liked it.
For starters, my female character is NOT entirely unattractive and in no way mannish. It is obvious that she is not an afterthought in the game design. And while her vocals are still very much full of Fable’s typical satirical drawl, the acting isn’t horribly bad.
I consider it an added bonus that I am not immediately annoyed by any of the NPCs though in typical Fable fashion the NPCs are all incredibly unattractive (excluding some of the unique ones with whom you can’t have unscripted interactions anyway - with one exception). They look like a bunch of caricatures of stodgy dolls that walk and talk like real people. I know that they have a branded image to maintain but do ALL of the NPCs have to be unappealing? Do all of their clothes have to be fashion nightmares…not to mention the hair? 50 years of game time has passed since Fable 2, surely that’s enough time to allow for a graceful phasing out of the heretofore icky but popular fashions. And you’re supposed to love/want to protect these people, potentially marry them? Fortunately, the random villager/worker NPCs are also not all that annoying and generally stay out of your way unless you actively choose to interact with them.
On the upside, unique NPCs like Jasper, Elliot/Elise and Walter are quickly introduced, and to my surprise they are passable, even amusing at times. (Which is good because if you continue playing through the game you’ll be seeing them a lot.)
Combat, while incredibly overpowered – particularly magic - is enjoyable and look incredibly cool. The quests are engaging. The graphics are well executed for the most part, and the overarching story is interesting and well paced (with the exception for that end bit which felt contrived and rushed).
Having said all of that there are some petty issues that I feel NEED to be mentioned.
1. The interaction mechanic is as annoying as ever, time consuming and bugged. For instance hand holding either forces you to slow down in your travels or to drag your companion behind you. Assuming you don’t just lose them when they get stuck behind a tree or another person or a rock or a gust of wind forcing you to back track to find out where you lost them and then button mash the interaction buttons in the hopes of making them follow you again. The “follow’ mechanic of previous games worked better and they shouldn’t have changed it.
Other interpersonal interactions (which actually give you XP in this installment of the series) take up far too much time and frankly the 500th time I’ve danced with a random villager is the 499th time I’ve considered throwing the controller through the television screen. Especially since each such interaction is generally only worth ONE seal….one unit of XP! ONE! End game each unlockable ability is between 40 and 100 seals. I spent 2 hours hunting down villagers to dance with so I could get the XP I needed to open the final chest. That is REDICULOUS! Compounding this torture is the fact that for the most part you can’t skip cut scenes or animations in the game. So you have to sit though the entire interaction animation, and then exit out of interaction mode each and every time you want to get ONE XP seal. (This also makes multiple playthroughs a bit of a pain, I simply don’t want to re-watch cut scenes today when I just saw them 2 days ago. If game developers make only one change to improve their games, they should make the bloody cut scenes skippable.)
2. Has anyone ever heard of a HUD? Or a mini-map? You know those interfaces that let you know where you are in the game/battle/quest? I don’t so much mind the phasing out of Player Character Health bars in favor of the screen darkening mechanic. I understand the desire to keep your screen as clean and uncluttered as possible. I don’t even mind the fact that the pause menu has been removed from the game (now when you press the start button you are teleported to your hero hideout – the Sanctuary - where you can change your appearance and weapons, view trophies, interact with other Fable 3 gamers, pick up presents left for you, manage your real estate and teleport to other locations). None of this particularly bothers me.
But it makes me completely crazy that I never have any idea where the hell I am in an area and that I have no convenient way of figuring it out. There is NO useable mini-map. If I want to view a map I have to press ‘start’, be transported to the ‘Sanctuary’, walk ahead a few feet, interact with the map table, select the general location, zoom and make a best guess as to where I am, then exit the sanctuary and hope I remember some useful detail from the incredibly undetailed map. But in the end I may as well try to divine my location by the stars – because NO WHERE does the map indicate where I am actually standing within the area! There is no ‘me’ icon on my map. This probably makes perfect sense since I am no longer technically in that area at any time when I can view said device, I am in the bloody Sanctuary. How a game which relies this heavily on exploration ever got released without a useable mini-map I will never comprehend. It is apparently one of the great mysteries of our age.
In terms of health bars, for as much as uncluttered screens are aesthetically pleasing, it is incredibly helpful - for boss fights in particular- that you know how much damage you’ve done and how much more you need to do. It helps with potion and item management and general strategic planning of fights. Of course, Lionhead decided to challenge us by removing functional enemy health bars in favor of aesthetics. Now we have no idea how much longer a fight will last and no reasonable way to determine when using resources (like potions) is necessary and when it is a waste. I can deal with that though, if you give me back my bloody mini-map. I want a mini-map update.
3. In internet communities everywhere gamers complained en masse about the fact that their families would disappear. Money would still be paid for upkeep and you were still technically married with kids but you could never actually find their avatars. So your family would get more and more depressed and eventually your spouse would ask for a divorce (if you didn’t already do that). But divorce costs you half of your money and your children - whom you will never see again. I think it also costs you morality points but don’t quote me on that.
In Fable 3 this problem is mostly fixed (unless you settle your family in Bowerstone Old Quarter. I believe there are some issues in that case). However there is a bug that pops up from time to time that prevents you from interacting with your children – who become understandably upset. I managed to wait it out and it reset itself though others haven’t been so lucky if forums are to be believed. The bigger issue for me came when I settled my family in Millfields, the most exclusive neighborhood in the game (barring the palace). It turns out that it is also the most dangerous neighborhood. On returning home to my husband, Eliot the unique NPC, one sunny afternoon, a message popped onto my beautifully uncluttered screen. My husband had been murdered and my children were taken to the orphanage because apparently Princess Hero that I am, I am also an unfit mother. Revolted by this chain of events I tried to load an earlier save – but there is only one. Every new save DELETES previous saves. Also stupid. And annoying. My current save game was post spousal death, so I had no recourse other than vengeance. After dispatching bandits who dared attack my family (under the not so watchful eye of the guards who were both plentiful and in the immediate area) off I went to the orphanage to reclaim my children. But since there was no obvious way of hiring the nanny I had heard so much about, I returned to the sanctuary to check my game history. When I returned my children had disappeared. Let’s just say that I did a lot of random killing in game for a few hours after that to relieve the stress and Albion’s underworld suffered greatly.
In the end Fable 3 is not a game I feel deserves rave reviews, there are too many elements of the game (largely the ‘innovations’) that feel choppy, incomplete or that are otherwise inconvenient or annoying. But it is a game entirely worth renting or picking up on the cheap somewhere for a play through or two. I feel much more satisfied with this game than with the second installment and my expectations for the series are rising again.
I wonder how that will affect my view of the upcoming Fable incarnation.
*The title quote is not mine but it well suits my purposes so I stole it (from a guy named Adlai Stevenson).
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