Oh dear... I found out about this game many years ago, back when it was project Ego. Back then the thought of it excited me beyond anything I had played before. But I told myself (after the bitter dissapointment of Black and White) that the hype behind the game would be FAR from what the game is actually like. Part of me wanted to believe the hype, part of me wanted to believe that somehow, somehow they would pull it off. When it finally came out i was like a child.. eager, excited, couldn't wait to put it in my Xbox... What happened then is the greatest dissapointment i think I have ever had with any game. Yes Fable looks good, yes the 'epic' feeling is there, but EVERYTHING else is missing. The townsfolk don't react in a convincing way (they just repeat the same crap again and again) The creatures are not intelligent they are thick as hell, the world does NOT feel alive, it does NOT change the way the hype said it would, and your character development, although fairly Stat filled is not exciting at all. I felt not one ounce of pride at the villagers calling me hero, I felt like i was playing a linear game that had nothing but hundreds of scripted events. It is not immersive it is DEFINATELY not an RPG and quite frankly I lost interest in it so much that I quit it about 3/4 of the way through and havn't played it since.
As if all that is not enough there are aspects of the game which are just ridiculous! The 'keys' you have to find to open certain chests, are hopelesly hard to find, the interaction with the inhabitants is nowhere even close to how the hype touted it (it just feels like every other rpg game) and being evil (just like Black and White) is virtually impossible. The fighting is decidedly average, and the whole game user interface is simply not user friendly; it takes you AGES to suss out what everything is and what it does. There are tons of weapons, armour, Items, books, you name it it's in there... But its all just faceless, it doesn't add to the immersiveness of the game, it detracts from it. There is no 'inventory' as such, just a list of items that you can step through one at a time, with descriptions at the bottom of the screen. The relationship ability (to be able to flirt etc) is as far as im concerned broken. And not only that but if you do want to pursue the line of buying a house and having a wife and kids, bloody good luck to you... The first female that fell for my character in game was NEVER seen again the entire rest of my play time. Subsequent attempts to woo the characters in the game seemed fruitless and COMPLETELY ad hock and random. I never once felt that I was in a 'living, breathing' world that I could interact with and 'change'.
So much is unexplained (the manual is pathetic) and although not really too tricky to work out, you just find yourself not bothering. The scars you get for fighting? BAH! Random at best, and not even worth a damn. You quite simply DO NOT feel like your character is living, growing and receiving them at all!
The control system is confusing at best, very often you'll fall over your own fingers during a fight and rack your brain trying to remember what you assigned where.. You'll OFTEN use the wrong emotion to convey your feelings, because all the icons look similar, and trying to controll traders on an escort mission is just painfull.. But worst of all, in my opinion are the voice overs. There the same people that did the voices for Black and white, there the same people that just DONT FIT in this sort of game, and whatever anyone says - for a game that wants to claim its the best rpg ever, you NEED decent voice overs. I didn't feel that any of them really 'worked' in the game... Wow, i ranted for quite a while huh, this would be considered a 'flame' almost everywhere on the net, but I couldn't help it at all... To me, Fable is one of the biggest let downs of my last 15 years of PC/Playstation/Xbox gaming, Im sorry Big Blue Box.. You failed, very badly :( and in almost every way that it was hyped. I could stay and rant for a lot, lot longer there are many more things to say about Fable that right now slip my mind. When will software houses understand that what makes a GREAT RPG, is almost everything they ALL leave out. Static characters with scripted responce just doesn't do it anymore, what we want is an interaction that has never been created by any of them, wagging chins and minimal animation is not enough to draw you in... And as for the story in Fable... Oh Dear...
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