Fable may be one of the most appropriately named games ever made. For years, it appeared that Peter Molyneux’s pet project was little more than the stuff of fairy tales. You’d hear a whisper here, a rumor there, see some conceptual art or maybe a screen shot, but it seemed like it was never actually going to arrive. When the game finally hit shelves, it felt more than a little surreal to have the reality of it in my hands. Wow, I thought, this is Fable. I’ve been looking forward to this day for years, and now I can finally, finally, play the game I’ve been longing for. How much is it gonna suck?
Don’t think I’m a cynical gamer, because I’m not. It’s not like I go into every new gaming experience wondering how awful it’s going to be. But Molyneux was taking on such a huge project with Fable, the potential for suckitude was large. Starting with the basics of RPG gaming, the questing, the leveling up, the equipment, and so forth, Molyneux expanded his vision both outward and inward by resting the weight of the Fable’s gameplay on the development of a single character. The shtick, as we’ve been reading for eons, is that you start off as a young boy, then age and change as the game progresses. More to the point, you change depending on how you play the game. If you get up close and personal during the fighting, you’ll get scars. If you sneak around at night a lot, you’ll have pasty white skin. For every choice, a consequence, that was the tag line. Think about that for a second. We were told that every single thing we did in Fable would be considered by the game’s engine and affect the ultimate outcome. In the middle of all of that, we were supposed to believe that there would be engaging combat, an intriguing storyline, and the stunning graphics and music that you’d expect from a high-profile title.
You see what I mean when I say the potential for disaster was enormous?
Fortunately for everyone, Fable delivers on all counts. The story is simple, but sucks you in right away. As a young boy, bandits raid your village, burning it to the ground and killing just about everyone in sight. They torture your mother and sister, attempting to discover your whereabouts, and when they fail, they take what’s left of your family with them. If that doesn’t stir your revenge gene, not much will. As you’re heaving your guts out (in a vibrant, though somewhat nauseating cut-scene), a mysterious man comes to take you away to the Hero’s Guild, where you are to be trained in the Heroic arts: swordplay, archery, and magic. The Guild will eventually serve as home base for your adventures. You can come back to rest, to stock up on supplies, or simply to pick up your next quest. It’s also where you’ll use your acquired experience points to (buy) new skills and spells.
Your time at the Guild also introduces you to some of the game’s more amusing diversions, such as flirting with a barmaid, then farting in front of her. (Hey, give me a break.you ARE only about 12 when you get there.) Ok, ok, seriously, the Guild is where you encounter your first side quests, shopkeepers, and Demon Door. The side quests you’ll encounter throughout your time in Fable range from simple fetch quests to difficult dungeon crawls to bizarre trips to the barber. Shopkeepers all tend to carry the same merchandise, but their prices will vary wildly, allowing a savvy Hero to make an extra bit of coin by buying low at one shop and selling high at another. Demon Doors are one of the more charming aspects of the game. Each door has its own particular requirement that must be met before it will open for you, such as being fat, being married, or being sufficiently evil. You don’t have to open all of the doors in the game, or even any of them, but they guard such tasty treasures, it’s in your best interests to try.
Once you’ve grown up enough to venture out into the world, you’ll take on a few introductory quests that ease you into actual combat situations, instead of the artificial setting of a practice ring. Quests come in two flavors: optional and mandatory. The mandatory ones are those that advance the plot and follow the main story arc, while the optional ones are really just there for fun and profit. Completing all of the mandatory quests won’t take you very long, perhaps 12 hours at most, a fact which has turned many message boards into irate bitch-fests. People, give me a break. Step away from your collection of Yuna and Rikku porn for a moment and realize that an RPG does not have to clock in at 40+ hours of gameplay to be good. Especially when the game in question begs and pleads to be played over and over again.
Yes, you heard me, I’m talking about replay value, not exactly a common element in today’s RPG market, I think you’ll agree. Fable provides you with countless ways to play it, and they’re all a blast. Do you want to be evil? I mean, so evil that you’re the kind of person who eats live baby chicks? So evil that you grow horns and attract flies? Or do you want to be good to the point that light shines down on you from heaven and butterflies follow you around? (Before you answer that, I think you should know that your food of choice as a good character is, blech, tofu.) Each side has a lot going for it. Evil players, for example, will have a lot more freedom when it comes to acquiring items. You know how in every other RPG ever made, you can wander around towns, looking through pots and bookcases for items? Well, you can do that here, too, but it’s an evil act. You are stealing, after all. If you’re good, random passersby will come to your aid in a fight. Just out of nowhere, Fred the farmer and Ted the trader will start giving your attacker a smackdown. How cool is that? Certain spells, weapons, and even food have alignment modifiers, and just about every situation has both a good and evil approach, so you can adjust your morality as the situation requires. For example, a woman begs you to rescue her grandson from the nymph who has captured him. Whilst searching the nymph’s cave, you come across a bandit she captured some time ago. When you meet the nymph, she says she’ll give you the boy if you can find another human to take his place. Well, sure it means certain death.but he IS just a bandit after all, right? Fable is full of such moral ambiguity, and doesn’t consider evil-doing to be a bad choice at all.
Fable is stuffed with tiny details that don’t really affect the outcome of the game, but make playing it a delight. You can buy a house and rent it out if you want to earn a little extra gold. If you want to spruce it up, you can hang some the trophies from your adventures on the wall. You can have several wives (or husbands, since Fable has no problem with gay marriage) at a time, and it doesn’t count against you. Of course, if you neglect your spouse, he or she will likely divorce you unless you kill them first. You can find hidden items by fishing or digging, you can enter a Fist-Fighting Club for cash prizes, you can even have sex. (The game even keeps track of how many times you do the nasty, and with which gender. Neat!)
I was a bit surprised by the cartoony approach to Fable’s graphics, with each character having oversized hands and feet, but the overall effect is quite charming and you won’t miss the realism at all. The sound puts the graphics to shame, though. The musical score is excellent, but that’s fairly typical for an RPG of this stature. The sound effects for the combat and spells are perfect, and the characters you meet are extremely well done, thick accents and all. The best sound effect by far, though, is the townspeople calling your name as you go by. Once you gain a certain amount of renown, your title will be known to all, and either cheered in glee or whispered in dread, depending on what kind of Hero you are. Fable’s practically worth the price of admission for that alone.
The game isn’t quite perfect, though. The world of Fable does feel a bit on the small side, and although there’s a handy teleportation system that zips you to various hot spots, you can do it all on foot fairly quickly and easily. Also, the saving system sucks, because you can’t save your game in the middle of a quest. Well, you can, but all your quest progress will be lost, and you’ll have to start back at the beginning. You keep any items you may have picked up along the way, but you’ll still have to redo all the work. Some of the mandatory quests can take an hour to complete, and sometimes that just isn’t convenient. Your entire training at the Guild, the first hour or so of the game, is considered a quest, but you don’t know that until you’ve completed it. The first time I took Fable for a spin, I only had a half hour or so to play, and wound up having to redo all my training.
All in all, though, Fable isn’t what I was expecting, but it’s more than I had hoped for. It’s absolutely brilliant, and if you don’t already own an Xbox, you might want to consider picking one up. Yeah, it’s that damn good.
