Fable III Preview

The editors at Edge have put together a three-page preview of Fable III and, as expected, there’s plenty of commentary from Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux to go with it.

The decision to move away from the more turgid traditions and abstract strictures of the RPG doesn’t just come from Molyneux’s antipathy. Lionhead has statistics detailing how people played the last game, and surveys which suggest that many of the previous game’s fussier elements were ignored by the vast majority. (Some of the things people found confusing were very core to what you think Fable’s about,) says Molyneux. (Things like spending experience points you’d think everyone likes that, but actually not that many people really understood it. We asked: ‘˜Did you think about how you were going to spend your experience?’ And, well, the answer was: ‘˜Not really’.)

As such, levelling up is something now indicated in purely visual rather than numerical terms, and you increase skills by using them. Weapons grow more powerful the more you wield them and indicate something of your character: use a blade to shed innocent blood and it will eventually morph into a demonic barb which growls when you pull it from the scabbard; do good and unsheathing it will elicit an angelic chorus.

As this weapon fetishism suggests, combat still remains central to the main story missions. We discover this for ourselves during a dangerous sojourn to Albion’s neighbouring continent of Aurora. It’s here that we hope to drum up further support to overthrow Logan, but our plans are set back when a sea battle sinks our ship leaving us to wash up on Aurora’s shoreline with only our dog and faithful mentor Walter for company. Aurora itself gives Lionhead’s artists a chance to stretch their legs beyond the pastel pastures and green glens of Albion our first encounter with it suggests an antique arid empire with askew monuments and vast, shattered statues, half-sunk in boundless sands. Early reports that it was based on America have obviously been misleading.