Game Reviews: Fable 3

I Need to Stop Playing Fable

Peter Moleneaux is great at drumming up hype about how world-changing his games are going to be.  The first such one that was trumpeted up was Fable.  I am generally pretty thorough before spending time with a game, and considering that I didn’t play Fable until I had an Xbox360 (when Fable was for the original XBox which I never owned), I had a pretty good idea about what parts of his boasts were true and which fell short.  Nevertheless, I got myself a used copy and played through it.

It was charming and fun in a simplistic way, but nothing that changed the world like he said (and I didn’t expect it to honestly).  But I don’t have any regrets about playing it and it was different enough to be interesting and, in a way, compelling.

Fable II came out for the Xbox360 a little bit after I was done playing the original game and it was promised that this one would add in the features that were ultimately cut from the first one.  Again, I listened to reviews and they said the game once again came up short from what was promised.  However, there was one design decision that completely broke the economy.  When you purchased property, you would gain income from it in real time.  This happened whether you played the game or not.  So if you went a week without playing, you would start with a bunch of money (assuming you owned sufficient property, of course).

This led to a game that almost encouraged you to not play, and in not playing, made itself easier.  So I would go a few weeks between playthroughs and then forget what I was doing but had plenty of money to throw around.  This diminished the experience and made the fairly easy game even easier.  There were also a few disconnects, such as when your character is imprisoned for ten years, and then you return and nothing really has changed and people act as if you were just gone for an hour.  It led to a situation where the game resembles the uncanny valley, in that it tries to mimic reality but there are enough small differences that the whole thing comes across as a bit unsettling.

 

Fable III

So, after two less than stellar game experiences, why would I want to go and play a third game?  This one promised to change things up a bit.  Where you had the obvious overthrow the corrupt king and place yourself on the throne plot, this game went one step further and had you actually rule and make decisions that would affect the entire kingdom.  It was a concept intriguing enough to put it on my rental queue and give it a go.

Unfortunately, like the first game, this one too had enough broken design concepts as to take away from the overall enjoyment of the game.  The main issue came up after you become king/queen and get to make decisions about how to run the kingdom.  The downside is that all these decisions boil down to money in your treasury.  The idea behind the second half of the game is that you need money to finance an army to defeat the darkness that will swarm the land in a year.  It comes down to one gold piece for each citizen.  If you end up choosing the evil decisions when given the option, then you will get more money but will be seen as the tyrant your brother was but will end up saving more people.  It is an interesting concept and I was hoping to actually have to struggle a little bit when making the decisions, but since it only ends up dealing with money there is a very obvious way around it.

As with the previous games, you can also gain money by buying and renting out property.  This goes into your personal treasury which you can then donate to the kingdom’s.  This also has no effect on how people view you morally.  So the easy workaround is to be good and give the people everything they want while taxing the lifeblood out of them on their rent and shop prices.  By doing this I was able to save everyone and we all lived happily ever after without having to really give the kingdom’s decisions any thought.

Of course, the game tries to reason away why you can’t just tell your kingdom about the incoming darkness and explain to them (and show them examples and testimony of people who have already been ravaged by this danger) that it will be a difficult year of hardship and sacrifice, but after it they will be able to keep their lives, by telling you that the citizens wouldn’t understand.  I think that is ironic since the game also tries to treat you in the same way.

If you want to see a more entertaining reviews, check out Zero Punctuation for Fable 2 and Fable 3.