The fact that Fable has been in development for the last four years (then referred to as “Project: Ego”) gives it the overwhelming disadvantage of being a game that has a lot to live up to. Regardless of the fact that there isn’t a game out there quite like it (and therefore has minimal competition), Fable is a game that has to excel in any and every way it possibly can if it’s going to live up to the tsunami of hype that the initial title and concept has generated over the last four years. So of course, in terms of facing the hype, Fable isn’t the game it was originally touted as being. If you expected the same game that was bragged up a few years ago, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

What Fable does do though, is create a world that is believable. Fable creates an interesting story. Fable is chock full of unique characters. Fable contains a battle element that isn’t decided by hidden dice rolls. And perhaps most importantly, Fable is a game where the main character is perceived by the world (and the player) according to the choices he makes throughout the adventure.

Obviously, the world that Big Blue Box attempts to have players believe is actually among the biggest of Fable’s gameplay mechanics. Though the game consists primarily of hack and slash-style combat, Fable is what you make of it. In short, players who find more to do than kill things will find that the game doesn’t actually revolve around combat at all. Technically, you can blow through the game’s main quest in less than ten hours; hardly the epic RPG you’d expect.

But therein lies the beauty of Fable, which consists of plenty of things to do besides endlessly hacking away at creatures and following one heavily-scripted path. There are a bevy of side quests that you can take on, and you actually don’t have to take any of them at all. You can tackle them any way you like, and if you feel like macking on the ladies, you’ll find that it’ll take you time and a bit of effort to find a wife (assuming that you want to go in that direction). With enough gold, you can buy property and spend more gold to decorate the home. Or if you want, rent it out to someone else and collect the extra money. You can get a different hairstyle or tattoos, which alter your attractiveness. You can try to gain renown, which determines how the locals feel about you, and there are dozens of ways to do that. You can complete some quests, or do favors for some of the denizens of the villages. You can show off trophies (the heads of your kills) to those around you, and much, much more (which basically includes any of the above options). It can even come down to simple things, such as buying a round of drinks for the local bar fly’s.



However, the world can see you in a bad light too, and they will react accordingly. Instead of taking a quest to help prevent a raid, you can take the alternate quest that makes you one of the raiders. Kill the townspeople, and you’ll find that it’s almost impossible to woo the ladies (they’re all afraid of you). People in town will drop their crates just to get away from you, and you’ll find that fair prices on equipment will become harder and harder to find. Even the taverns are reluctant to welcome an evil soul. As you gain different kinds of experience, you’ll even gain new gestures that accompany your behavior, like flirting, burping, farting, shooting the finger, and more advanced commands like telling others to follow you (which come in handy at certain points in the game).

In terms of trades to take up, you can build your character’s attributes as you see fit. By building up your character’s thieving abilities, for example, stealing and lock-picking become simpler, which is good for an unwelcome visitor who will otherwise have a hard time in towns. But mastering combat and magic is important too, especially since the combat controls aren’t nearly as refined as a game that’s been in development for so long should be. While not unplayable, the combat system is clunky, especially when concerning the use of the bow. The lock-on targeting system helps out in this area, but the whole combat element needs more polish. The amount of weapons and armor are fairly meager too. Rather than having the broad selection of equipment like in other action/RPG’s, Fable contains only a modest armory that, at best, is merely adequate. You can slightly alter the way the equipment performs by adding gems to it, but again, Fable’s system only touches down on the idea, as if the developers wanted to include as much as they could, but didn’t have the time to truly execute the idea to the fullest.

Where it does work though is how the combat system comes together with how you are perceived. If you turn out to be an evil fellow who can’t travel to any town without killing one of the locals, your thieving abilities will come far more in handy, since you won’t be able to get any deals when bartering. In short, no matter how you act, the game has a way for you to get around any potential pitfalls. How you are perceived won’t kill the game for you. Fable tracks a ridiculous amount of statistics, ranging from how many times you’ve had sex to how far you’ve kicked a chicken. Much of it may be nonsense, but it nevertheless is entertaining. Some is even proves to be useful if you know what to watch for. Needless to say though, Fable is not a difficult game by any means.

One of the game’s most touted features is that how you act will determine what you look like, as the game makes changes to your character’s appearance as you do good or evil deeds. The idea is that upon completion, every player’s character could look completely different from one another. The only trouble is, you could likely end up with a look that you aren’t satisfied with, or you may gain some sort of appearance detail that you have no idea how you got. If you do gain an undesired look about you, there may actually be no way to undo it.

What Fable gets better than most games is its enriching atmosphere. Instead of the lifelessness you get from other games that place inhabitants in the world but does nothing with it, Fable is chock full of creatures and people who actually serve to be more than a mere prop. When evening comes, guards and town denizens can be seen walking throughout the village, illuminating street lamps one-by-one. The same can be said about your wife, should you have one. She’ll light the table lamps inside your home, or turn them off as day breaks. She’ll also leave your home and mingle about the village, engaging in conversation with other folks. Bar maids will respond to customers asking for a refill on their drinks, actually walking to their table and pouring liquid into the customer’s glass. It’s as though each character in Fable would have a story to tell if you were able to ask.



Graphically, Fable looks better as the game progresses, but doesn’t have the initial knockout beauty one might expect. Textures are fairly muddy, and in terms of special effects, they are nothing special. A glowing aura surrounds light sources and certain characters (and you too, depending on the conditions), which add an enormous amount of beauty to what could otherwise be considered bland. Character models are very detailed, with the majority of the detail being in the main characters of the game.

The world itself is where the game begins to show its graphical prowess. Individual blades of grass (and not just a few…. there are hundreds of them) and tall weeds will sway in the wind. Bushes have actual moving parts of each bush, not two simple bush textures meshed together. The world actually seems livelier because of it, and the art style of Fable certainly contributes to the beauty too, which creates an atmosphere and ambience all its own.

The problem is that the game moves at a framerate that, while always playable, is fairly unstable. Combat especially, can be quite choppy depending on the conditions, and though there are some neat effects going on at times, there isn’t enough happening onscreen to justify a framerate any lower than 60fps. This would be more acceptable if the game world were on the epic scale of games like Morrowind, where the entire game world unfolded before your eyes without any level-like pauses in the action. But sadly, this isn’t the case. Fable instead, is largely made up of small chunks of land that are set up like corridors, and each chunk is separated by a significant load time. You are limited to where in these chunks of land you can travel, so many of these areas feel exactly like moving along corridors, even though it first appears that you can move around anywhere, thanks to invisible walls.

Fable succeeds beautifully in the audio department, offering outstanding musical scores and excellent voice acting. While the sound effects themselves are pretty standard, the rest of the audio more than makes up for it with atmospheric music that fits the setting like a glove. The voice-overs, while clichéd in their heavy English accents, nevertheless get the point across that you’re living in an epic fantasy world. There are a lot of repeated voices for particular characters, but as chatty as they are, for as many as you encounter, it doesn’t dampen the ambience.





Article By: Brendon Hivner