I only borrowed an Xbox for a short period, but Fable was one of the best games I had played on that system. Microsoft's Fable, the
very RPG that's been touted by its creator Peter Molyneux (that same
guy behind Black and White) many times for being the greatest RPG to
ever grace its way into gamer's aspirations for the evolutionary genre.
Known even before the Xbox's time, Fable once went by the name of
Project Ego. The most gorgeous screenshots YOU'VE ever seen were paired
with details surrounding a fictional world in which you the player
could tone your character to be a man of praise and recognition, or
fear and loathing. In the four years we've been sitting on our fannies
sighing and sweating for the final release date, Fable has certainly
made a name for itself as undoubtedly the most delayed and most
anticipated RPG on the Xbox. Now we, the gamers, have an opportunity to
create a history of our own.
There is a story of great
importance I must relay to you, dear readers. You are but a meager
young lad. You may be forgetful at times, but you are still
undeveloped. Some things you may not comprehend at first. But one of
these days you will catch on. That's that day you will become the man
(or a woman trapped inside a man's body) who will obtain unmatched
powers of might, magic, and mobility. To get there, though, you first
must experience the horrors that happened so suddenly one peaceful day
in the quiet town of Oakvale. It's your sister's birthday, and once
more this day has completely slipped your mind. Or has it? Whatever the
case, lazybones, you're going to get her a present for your father's
sake. The man who made you, and the man you will mourn from this day
forward. Raiding bandits will storm the gates and murder every friend
and loved ones you know. All that is left now is a mysterious hero that
goes by the name of Maze. He will guide you through the doors of the
Hero's Guild, a place where wimps are transformed into muscle-bound
butchers, fat sloths, or even vile masters of villainy. From here on
in, it's your story hero. Go make it happen.
Known reasons as to
why Fable has been destined for greatness for so long points to its
origins. Back in 2000 when Project Ego had its assigned seating among
the upcoming Xbox launch titles, one Xbox shooter game would boast it'd
have revolutionary physics, while another set for a massive platform
setting where you could smash things to bits and pieces. Fable aspired
for something much greater, however. This action-based RPG would hold
its claim as tossing out all the standards that concocted all previous
games in the genre great by slipping into an unconventional and
open-ended roaming land where your own character would be affected by
his every action. Be a courageous knight of sorts, and villagers would
look up to you. Brandish yourself with a tattoo, formulate a haircut,
wear a certain type of clothing, and followers of yours would do the
same. In this respect, it would have been also possible for respect to
turn into fear. Do evil deeds, and townspeople would hide from your
very presence. Instead of attraction, you'd be treated harshly. It was
really a game meant to raise the bar based on how your character's
reputation developed. Due to time restrictions, and most likely the
cost it took to get Fable warranted out to Xbox owners before the
system's death toll arrived, some of the originally admired conquests
this game initially set out to accomplish were all but lost. Despite
this, not all is gone, and what has remained is what glues the relative
entertainment values together.
Like most action-RPGs, Fable's
emphasis isn't heavily dosed by storyline, even though it has
quantities of plot development. More so, Fable's strength focuses on
character growth and the environment for which constitutes the
reflections of your every continued action. This is an RPG where it's
all about you. Your world. Your decisions. Your fate. It's a game where
every town and every road you travel leaves it up to you to decide
where you're headed. And in these ties, you'll face penalties for evil
deeds or solace for good ones. If you're headed down the dark road (the
decidedly easier path), you could stroll down any town's streets or
inside their houses to find cabinets, shelves, and barrels that contain
products. If you're a curious one, you could snatch these items into
your clutches to become your very own. But then you'd have to think
about the evil points you'd receive for swiping or breaking property
that isn't yours. You also have to consider guards too, as in the case
of daylight robbery, or to a greater extent murder, actions in this
particular field can lead to disaster. Get caught in the act of a
dastardly deed, and a guard will approach you with a fine. Get caught
numerous times chopping through townspeople with your sword like a
butter knife through sticks of butter, and eventually you'll rank
higher costs to pay. In situations like this, if you don't fork over
your loot you'll forever be confronted by guards in the town that will
forever hunt you to your demise. Keep in mind, however, that this is
just one example of how one thing can lead to the next. There are
several more possibilities ahead.
Elsewhere, for example, you
can sacrifice followers to a dark cult, or let's say you can
accidentally (or is it?) murder NPC merchants along the passages that
intertwine Albion. Bad isn't always so good though, at least not all
the time. Morphing your character into a wicked, wicked person
literally scares folk throughout the land. Respectfully, they'll cower
to you, but if say you wanted to get married that'd be a problem. Being
the good guy is what most women in Albion really want you to be. If you
grow your character toward righteousness, you'll effectively receive
social abilities with your Renown talents. Renown is an experience tool
that enhances conversations with others. It allows new communication
skills to arise whenever your level of expertise grows bigger. Keep
doing good things, and you can flirt, flex, and fall in love with the
ladies (or guys if you prefer). Keep bringing in the bad, and you'll
learn scarier dialogue traits from sticking up your middle finger to
using vulgarity in which to offend passerby's with. Buy items instead
of stealing them. Protect merchants instead of killing them. You can be
good or bad, but then there are consequences and objectives you won't
be able to achieve without obtaining one mode of the aura or the other.
It's these ideals of right versus wrong that write the laws of Fable
and make the game more enjoyable.
Pursuing enticements to feed
your inner darkness or your bright light, doesn't always happen with
sidetracking your way through the game. There are missions out there
with set goals and structures that will greatly determine your duality
meter more so than ever. Here is where the Hero's Guild comes into play
as something a central area you'll return to from time to time to
accept these tasks and reap their rewards. From within the building's
entrance lies a circular map table that retains quest cards often as
you get further into the provisional story segments. You may be fitted
with the task of guarding a couple of traveling merchants through a
dangerous road. When a third trader that's been injured and infected by
a monstrous Balverine (a werewolf type of beast), do you let him tag
along with the first two men? Or do you leave him to die in whatever
way seems best? A later mission asks you to decide if you're going to
slaughter a fallen giant of a man who has done you nothing but harm, or
to leave him and his minions be. However you decide to do it the easy
way or the hard way, and the right way or the wrong way will always
lead toward kindness or bad. Some of the game's quests are required,
while others aren't. You can venture through the optional paths if you
want to, though you don't have to. It's recommended to do this, as
Fable's major story path isn't very lengthy in complete duration.
Exploring through these opens up the game's horizons, extending it by
giving you more to do. You'll want to do this too. You'll want to
actually unearth the hidden options, because when you do your very
character will be better off for it.
Because...Fable rewards its
players with experience and trinkets galore. Not every RPG game makes
it fun to level up. A lot of times in games you'll be forced into
unavoidable random battles where the combat is fun, but gaining
experience isn't a separate issue you get a chance to deal with. Where
Fable does things a bit differently, is it lets you spend your points
into three major dividends. Returning to the Hero's Guild allows you to
expenditure these points then on the three prospects, as the points are
supplied by how many you've gotten from either the mission's offerings
or the individual enemies you've taken down. Through strength, skill,
and will, you can mold your character around the nature of garnered
statistics you'll receive. Strength is a characteristic in which
determines your field of health, your energy to lift heavier weapons,
and your accumulative toughness. Skill permits you to barter better
with traders, shoot arrows more accurately, and even become speedier in
attacking. Will, lastly, is your magic field. You can make your magic
bar grow, as well as learn bundles of different spells. Heal, drain,
dash, thunder, and even summon magic are just a few of the many
wizardry abilities permitted to Will users throughout Fable. But again,
this all depends on where you're going to take your character. Do you
want to be a magic user or a swordsman? Whichever path you take, you'll
likely want to spend enough points to reach a certain level of
expertise in one attribute more than another. This really makes you
think about how you want your points distributed depending on the
balance of each act that can be influenced through several defining
options.
Experience doesn't appear out of thin air, though. You
gotta fight for your right to paaaaartay! Sorry. With Strength, Skill,
and Will in mind, we retread to the three pieces that enhance your
character's ability to wield steel, arrow, or the forces of nature. You
have three parts in deciding what kind of fighter you are in the game.
You can be a master of melee with swords and axes, a sharp-eyed sniper
with a bow, or a multitasking magician of sorts with magic feats at
your aide. You can be all three things, or two, or one. You can use and
reuse tricks at any point. But, as said before, it's by rising in rank
through the levels of experience that helps you get to where you want
to be. For instance, the only magic you'll ever know of in Fable is a
lightning spell that you'll receive by default during your process to
become a hero if you never follow into the area. All other spells
aren't free, and require relinquishment of your stored points. So, you
could throw all your points away if you're pro toward being a magic
user. Again, it's your decision. If you're more comfortable with melee
or ranged onsets, or all three, Fable is all but a balance act in which
the game's the one pointing out the rope while you're the one who has
to strategize your way across it.
Different is how I'd describe
Fable's mechanics of control. It's easy, but then it's hard. Somewhere
in between, though, you get a real feel for it. Actually, it's
surprising how second nature Fable functions once about half an hour or
so is spent familiarizing with the button sequences and menus. Fable
actually uses every one of the Xbox controller's buttons fairly
regularly, while a few not so much. But how they're used isn't either
complicated or conventional. When in combat with enemies, you have
three sets of properties at your finger tips always ready -- these
being melee, ranged, and magic attacks. At any point in time, you can
switch among the three options by clicking or hold down onto buttons.
The white button unsheathes your sword tool, black takes your bow off
your back, and squeezing onto the right trigger reveals a four-way
pattern for spells you can align to the four face buttons. Using melee,
you can lock onto individual members by holding down on the left
trigger, attacking with the X button, and blocking and rolling around
with Y. Ranged is probably the most time consuming of the three to get
a grip of, as once your bow is out, you can click onto the left analog
trigger to scope out what's ahead closer. From there, only holding down
onto the X button will release your shot. Hold it down long enough, and
you'll score stronger strikes. These three components are all performed
in real time, so it may sound a little ambiguous at first. And it will
be until you find a natural selection in your own performance, as your
hero's performance is really reflective upon you.
What you can
do aside from what you are meant to do is another major theme strewn
through the game. Fable isn't just about sorting out death to others,
it's also about taking your time in the world that welcomes you to
understand and unearth all its secrets. Want to fish in the watery beds
planted throughout the land? You can do just that if you're one of the
lucky ones who explore every nook and cranny there is possible in the
game. With fishing you can pluck the fish right out of the water, or
even dig up items like tattoo and barber cards, or silver keys. With
tattoo or barber cards, you can approach a tattoo artist or a barber in
the game to ask them to design the fashion as seen on the card itself.
From a mohawk, to a beard or mustache, going bald, or getting a form of
art printed on your body of flame to lizard patterns, there's a whole
mess of items like these to have your way with. Silver keys, on the
other hand, are used to unlock treasure chests you'll notice in the
game. Only with the right amount of keys is it possible to undo their
lock mechanisms. You'll also find specialty demon doors in Fable, with
each requesting a certain show of attention. One door wants to see you
become evil. Another wants you to be fat. Slay guardian protectors for
one elsewhere, while you'll present another with a gift. To say the
least, Fable's big in terms of the leisurely time you're able to
partake in outside the needs of the game. You can get married, gamble,
and even sign up for fist-fighting tournaments. There's really kind of
sense of a game inside a game for Fable.
Staring may be a rude
lot in life, but not for Fable. Look at the game all you want...you're
going to like it. In this fantasy setting, it's all real. Real in a way
that you'll enter a forest and the sun shines through the leaves,
lighting up the weeds and grassy patches like real life would depict.
The game is real in a way that descending into a gloomy cavern or
walking along an orchard road, you're going to notice an almost surreal
perfection. Water that you can and sometimes can't wade into at times
is always shimmering, and splashing when you step in and out, and just
looks divine. Apple bushels and red roses flourish in places, while
inside towns there are colonial-like houses, shanties, shops, signs and
lamp posts. There are true-to-life texture works that bring out the
rich detail in wooden bridges, stone walkways, charred walls, statues
and numerous other things to draw your attention to in the game. If
there's any complaint at all, it'd be that there are noticeable pop-ups
as you roam throughout Fable. You'll walk or run a lot in the game, and
catch sight of the upcoming scenes filling in the blanks as you go
along. This minor quibble doesn't affect the game's performance much
(aside from the occasional slowdown), but it does happen to rear its
ugliness at times, and is somewhat bothersome.
From boy to man,
your character (as do other characters in Fable) looks genuinely
attractive. I can't tell you how your very own creation may be gussied
up as, but I can relate to you the alterations that have been undergone
by my own hero. Once I was a scruffy haired kid, who with a darkened
temple turned into an older man of similar nature. Gradually, I clothed
and armed myself with new attires and weaponry. For the moment, my
guy's hair has been parted down the middle and of medium length. My
hair's lightened too. I almost look like a natural blonde. My style of
clothes is all made of mostly blue and brown leather -- from the torso
top right down to the spiked boots. Located on my back is a
flame-imbued Obsidian Greatsword, while a dagger is sheathed on my
right arm. Even though I can't use it, I suppose this gives the game
the full effect of heroism. A halo and a flock of lighted butterflies
glow above my head for the good-mannered character I have been leaning
toward.
That's not to say I haven't walked the path of the dark
side. I have, and it was very intriguing. Coming in contact with guards
who protect villages, to chopping my wife with my sword, to brutalizing
travelers for no particular reason other than to gain sinister
leanings, I was having a wonderful time. I even decided to play along
dressed up in my bandit outfit while this venture occurred to me, as I
thought the bandits would understand I was on their side for the
moment. Wasn't happening. Gradually though, over a lump of time I
started to notice my hero's face scar and darken. My hero became very
pale and bald. Devil horns were strewn from my head, as my eyes lit up
red and a bloody aura flowed with and from me as I ran along in my
newfound nefarious steps. When I entered into towns then, the ones that
didn't already have a price for my head, folk scurried away. Others
would calmly shiver in front of my sight. It was truly good to be bad,
baby! Of course, Fable isn't always about you. There are other people
in this tale. They can never match the versatility your own character
possesses, but other humanoids and troll-like, wolf-like, evil
fairylike, rock-monster-like, and other things do appropriately do
justice to the gratifying formula for which encompasses Fable as one of
the, if not the, best looking games on the Xbox.
If Fable's able
to handle itself in the ring of play and poise thus far, you're
probably wondering how it does for its round about sound. Not great but
very good is where I'm thinking this spot is situated. For the bits and
pieces of audio, Fable touches on all the right bases for one thing.
Yank a sword from your backside, and the effect of steel sliding out is
produced. Clang metal on metal or metal on wood, and there are distinct
banging noises to be heard. Smash things, from shattering glass in
windows to the breaking of a door will ring true. Mush through water,
over grassy meadows, traverse bridges, and charge along grainy
walkways, and you bet there are likened pitches of sonic fibers in
these in-game sounds. By way of heaven or hell, the soothing but slim
selection of music tracks in Fable is another example of its finer
qualities. Though, epic or classic are not the terms to use when
defining the embodiment of Fable's musical score. It is clear, however,
that the thick bodied tempo of these harmoniously paced and
orchestrated sets are definitely enjoyable without being seated at the
benchmark. Instead, Fable's flowing rhythms of fanciful peace
throughout town squares and its menacing buildup of doom when enemies
arise sit right next to it. Even as the music in the game isn't very
differential, it's music that you're going to both notice and enjoy.
And that's saying something good about it.
Decent at best,
Fable's voiced sessions are of weakness and of tolerability. English
chaps and chicks spin these vocals in sameness and in lameness at
times. Every hero has a title. You can purchase a title from the game's
title vendor to achieve a name that suits your character. Of these,
such titles of assassin, ranger, liberator, and even arse face pile
into the list that'll affect your status for outsider's responses. If
you were so inclined to collect on a fearsome name, folk throughout the
town will comment. Just the same, they'll mock sillier titles, or stand
in awe and praise at the bolder ones. There aren't more than maybe a
few variations on the actors, though. You'll hear a lot of the same
words spoken too. It's not really bothersome, but sometimes it is when
people applaud and repeatedly say, "Yay!" Their throat starts to
exasperatingly deepen, which is awkward. Those who talk the least are
the monsters that can howl, roar, and giggle, and your hero who can
only apply his renown abilities through voice actions. Renown, the
talent to scare, shock, or even fall in love with others, allows you to
assign your talents to the d-pad control. Place the follow command
there, and your character will quickly speak out in his heavy English
voice, "Follow." He can thank, laugh, sneer, or flirt too, with an
exaggerated, "Hey!" Outside the gameplay, your hero doesn't say a word.
Not that it's important, but this further goes to show that emphasis on
the tale at hand cannot be weighed on a scale for grander proportions
at all.
By
no means has Fable reached the hierarchy status its developer's
Lionhead Studios and Big Blue Box Studios were hoping for. Though,
instead of dreaming for the big, the bald, and the beautiful, I think
what gamers should be doing is halting their search for the stars and
look under their very noses. Fable has finally gotten its butt out of
the development door and into store shelves. It's out there and it's
waiting to be played. No, we didn't get everything. What we got is only
just one of the best damn RPGs the Xbox has to offer. And that's fine
by me.
