Fable III puts you in the shoes of the son of the Hero you played in the previous game. Unfortunately for you, and for the rest of Albion, you also have a tyrant for an older brother that now has the throne. The story follows you as you seek to overthrow your brother and make a better Albion for all.
Welcome to Fable II.V as I would put it. Just enough has changed to not make you jump to the conclusion that this could easily have been put out as an expansion to Fable II. Some things have changed for the better (Hooray for playable co-op!) and others not so much. (Oh expression wheel, how I miss you)
So why do I want this game?
You want this game because it is certainly more of what made Fable II great. A compelling story, an easy to learn combat system, and expansive fantasy environments with numerous side quests to explore carry on the torch for the Fable series. The experience system has changed for the better, as those of you who are Fable II veterans will remember the frustration of needing "specific" experience in order to purchase upgrades for various attributes for your character. This has been scrapped in favor of a straight forward system where you're collecting guild seals for defeating monsters, completing quests, and making friends with the townspeople. It's a welcome change from the previous system in my opinion, and one of the changes that certainly needs to stick around for the inevitable Fable IV.
Another of the big changes, the magic system, I'm still not sure if I like or not even with 41.5 hours in the game. Fable II allowed you to assign different levels of magic to your character. The longer you held your magic button the more powerful the spell that you would eventually use. You could slot these different levels of spells with whatever spell type you wanted. So at every level, you could theoretically cast a different spell if you liked. Like many features from Fable II, Fable III removes this ability and instead introduces the concept of spell weaving. This is the ability to combine two spells to create various effects after you obtain this ability in the game. It's a neat idea in concept, but in practice I found myself only ever using Fireball + Lightning to stun my enemies with the electrocution and torch them with the fireball. No other combination seemed nearly as useful. I get the feeling if the other combinations were more effective that I wouldn't miss the level system from the previous game. Unfortunately, this is what we've got, and it seems like an idea that wasn't nearly as fleshed out as it should have been.
Fortunately what we did get is worthwhile co-op! As someone who painfully completed the campaign for Fable II with someone co-operatively, I can tell you that the co-op this time around is vastly improved. Gone is the generic "henchman" for the second player. Instead you can bring your real character into the game and receive all the benefits from playing the game and take them back to your own. The only downside, and this is something that should have been able to have been overcome, is that none of the game events are saved to your file. While this is both a blessing (yay double experience for quests!) and a curse (I'm doing this quest again?) it's a shame that Lionhead couldn't find a way to save your progress even while playing with a friend in their world. Borderlands found a way to do it, there's no reason we couldn't have seen it here as well. In addition to this, probably the most glaring issue, the camera being tied to the host, has been fixed as well. Though I can't seem to get the teleport function to work properly, I'll forgive that for having the ability to control my own camera. Lionhead is nearly there, I'll expect Fable IV's co-op to be without issue.
The last of the major plusses for the game is the Sanctuary. Instead of the standard pause menu and myriad levels of menus to wade through, Fable III allows you to handle all your needs in the Sanctuary. When you press Start, you're fairly instantly teleported to the Sanctuary regardless of what is occurring on screen at the time. The fact that there is nearly no load time here is quite impressive. Here you can head to one of a few rooms to select new weapons, outfits, view achievements, view stats, or generally change any option in the game. Believe it or not, the "virtual mall" approach is light years better than the previous menu system. With outfits and weapons you can easily see what you're about to equip and decide if you really want them or not rather than have to page through even more menus as before.
So why don't I want this game?
Admittedly, this section is going to apply more to veterans of the series than someone who is picking up Fable III having never played either of the previous games. These things don't matter as much if you don't know what you were missing in the previous games, as I think you're more likely to accept them if you don't know that there used to be something better. That said...
First and foremost, the graphics engine looks as though it hasn't been touched since the previous game. If this is a new game engine, it's a completely underwhelming rewrite. While the game in most respects is beautiful, there are very glaring issues with texture pop-in, collision detection, and framerate problems in many circumstances. None of them make the game unplayable, but they're very jarring. I can count numerous occasions where you can see the game go almost from standard definition to high definition after finally loading the proper textures. I've seen more than one occasion where while digging I'll plunge my shovel right through poor Cookie (Yes, named after my real dog) and have her see no ill effect. In Fable II, this was forgivable. It was the first outing on a new console from the series, and an overall great job despite these problems. Now with a game under their belt and nearly two years to the day later, nothing has been done to improve the graphics engine. This is outright lazy, and Lionhead needs to be taken to task for this. If no work was done to improve the game engine, it stands to reason that the two years taken to develop this game were merely to create a new story, add the much balleyhooed ability to "touch" other characters, and remove a lot of features that players actually liked.
Speaking of removing things, I turn my critical eye toward what was left out. Chief among these things is the expression wheel. The new expression system, for the sake of streamlining the experience I suppose, allows for one "good" action, one "bad" action, and one miscellaneous action where context provides. You have no ability to choose what actions will appear for you, you're just stuck with what apparently randomly appears. So if you've chosen the prince, you quite possibly will receive "Dance" as your "good" expression even if talking to another guy. While this is fine if you've chosen to play your character in that fashion, for those of us playing straight characters, it's a bit frustrating. In a game that's supposed to be meant to be all about crafting your unique experience, not having the ability to use all the expressions at your disposal when you like is a step backward.
The dog, sadly, is another piece of the game that just isn't as good as the previous game. In the previous game, you could find upgrades that allowed your dog to attack better, find better treasure, and perform various tricks just as in this game. However, it just seems that the dog has very much lost his importance in the game, and after having him be so integral to the previous chapter of the game, it's both disappointing and baffling that this particular design decision was made. It may be that I haven't played through my "evil" character far enough yet (only 3.5 hours) to see the changes, but before your dog's appearance was tied to your decisions, and at the moment, despite my slaughtering of entire towns of innocents, my dog appears none the worse for wear. I seem to recall many more free available breeds as well, where only two come with the game this time. This may have been added via DLC last time, I can't recall, but I'm certain that we weren't held up for 240 MS Points just for the privilege of adding a few more breeds. A nice chunk of, you know, *game* came along with the MS Points spent for that DLC. As much as I would love to change my dog to a Doberman, it goes against my principle of never buying virtual clothes, which for all intents and purposes is what this is.
The last of my complaints is the constant nagging from Jasper to buy things from the store. A suggestion once in every 50 wouldn't be so bad, but it seems as though every other time I hit the Sanctuary he's telling me that new bits and bobs are available.
The Verdict
Despite problems that should have been fixed and features that should have been included, Fable III is still a great game. Lionhead packed a boatload of content into the game, as evidenced by the 41.5 hours I've put into the game and still not having picked up all 1,000 achievement points. While Fable veterans will certainly get the feeling that something is just not quite "right" about this game, newbies will know no difference, and even veterans won't be able to deny that the hallmarks of Fable, a good story, grand environments, and an overall good time are still in the package.
Pros:
- Grand environments with plenty to discover and side quests to complete
- Epic story drives the game and motivates the player to keep moving the story forward
- Worthwhile co-op
- Improved experience system
- Graphics unchanged since Fable II, with the same pop-in, framerate, and collision detection issues present in the last game
- Magic system could have been improved to make more spell weaving combinations actually useful
- Constant monetization attempts are very annoying... our $60 wasn't enough?
Score: 4 out of 5 stars - Worth Owning
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