Fable III
Review
The best in the franchise
by Ryan Cope
reviewed on X360
The road to heaven or hell (cntd)
Although this is a step forward for the Fable series there is in fact a down side. Fable III takes a few steps backwards from the legacy that the originals had set up. The game sets players on a journey that intends for them to be good. The story itself is an example of this, to raise a revolution against tyranny. Of course it could be for the reason of revenge but other signs point towards goodness. For example, when the hero finally becomes King or Queen the good decisions can sometimes have a bad effect on the bigger picture while the evil ones can be positive in the long run. The reasons for this are to be experienced by the player as there are secrets integral to the story that impacts it in a surprising twist of events.
Decisions made as the ruler of Albion are money based. Players will be faced with whether or not to turn an old building into an orphanage (which will lose money) or turn it into a brothel (which will gain money for the royal treasury, something that will definitely come in handy since there’s a reason you’ll need as much as possible). Because of this players aren’t really given moral choices that affect their hero specifically or anyone else on a personal relationship.
However, to judge Fable III’s morality choices on this alone would be unfair since, as stated earlier, there are some brilliant moments that really do make players stop and think about what ramifications their choices will have on the world.
Followers
In order to start a revolution, one must gather faithful and loyal followers to his or her cause, and to do this one must make promises and do favours. Followers are a big part in Fable III as gaining people’s trust gives players more support in taking on their evil brother. As the story progresses there will be integral people whose trust needs to be gained in order to build an army. To do this players must take on missions, from killing mercenaries to fetching old relics. The hero must make promises to other leaders in order to gain their support, but these promises will be hard to keep once you become King or Queen. One quest that reoccurs though is getting the ‘little’ people on your side.
Some points require a certain amount of followers to be gained before player can progress. Side quests that help the community in some way will earn you X amount of followers, while simply going around meeting people and befriending them will add to your numbers as well. This is a much slower route though that requires interaction with each individual separately in order to gain their trust.
Touchy, Touchy
Peter Molyneux boasted about the touch system in Fable III and how it would make players feel they could interact with the world. Did this succeed? Not really. While physical interaction is certainly more engaging and holding people’s hands to take them places can be positive, it doesn’t quite pay off. For one, when grabbing or holding a person their hands are hardly ever actually connected, due to a bug that makes it look more like the pair of you are linked by invisible handcuffs.
Interacting with people has changed from what Fable II players might remember. Instead of being able to activate emotions anywhere at any time, such as whistle, dance, fart or roar, players must enter into an interaction with a single NPC. This is positive if you want to focus on one person rather than having everyone around you experience you emotion, but is negative if you want to gather many followers at once. The emotion options now work as two or three selections that float around the NPC’s head (like in Heavy Rain). Press and hold the X button for one option or the A button for another. The longer the player holds the button down the better the results will be from the interaction. This means that, unlike in Fable II, you can never fail and mess up an emotion. By doing this it becomes much easier to interact, yet takes away the risk of messing up a conversation like in real life. The only other problem with the way players interact with characters is that there’s no possible way to change the choices of emotions that you have available to you, leaving you frustrated time after time as you only want to shake the soldier’s hand, not romantically dance with him.
I need a place to think
Every hero needs a place to relax, put up their feet, have a coffee and muse about what state the world has gotten itself in. Superman had the Fortress of Solitude, Batman had the Bat cave and Albion’s prince or princess has the Sanctuary. A magical place in a secret location created by the hero’s father, the Sanctuary has everything one needs for adventures and revolutions. If you have played Fable II you will know that the menu system was like a junk heap on fire. Lists upon lists dominated the screen with no simple way to traverse them other than to scroll endlessly until finding the desired item.
8.5
fun score
Pros
A fun, entertaining, innovative move for the RPG series, with some beautiful moments, great story and brilliant voice acting.
Cons
Did not live up to its hype. Can be buggy, frustrating at times and everything that’s good seems to have a bad point.
