The original Fable was easily one of the more controversial games released on Microsoft's first Xbox console. No, the game didn't have a hidden sex scene nor did it allow you to perform drive by shootings. Fable was a western style action RPG which allowed you to choose the path of good or evil. The controversial part involves how this game was hyped. The mind behind it, Peter Molyneux, promised it to be the greatest role playing game of all time and that it would be unlike anything we've ever played. Unfortunately it fell short on both counts leaving most (including myself) a bit disappointed. With the release of Fable II on the Xbox 360 I imagined Lion Head studios would get closer to meeting their original promises. While that's true to some extent I can't help but feel they're still holding back on us. With that said Fable II is still a great game.
Fable II
Like in the original Fable you begin part II as a child. What's new is that you can now select your gender. The game begins with your character (and their sibling) living on the streets of a snow covered medieval city called Bowerstone. As orphans, the brother and sister duo are forced to live in a back alley of the slums. One day a mysterious salesman comes to town with a music box, claiming it has the power to grant a single wish. After saving up for it and attempting to use it's magic the two are suddenly invited to the castle to meet with a seemingly kind hearted man named Lord Lucien. Through a tragic turn of events your character is left barely alive and swears vengeance for the death of their sibling, a revenge that can only be taken out several years later.
Fast forward several years of hard training and your character is an adult ready to take on the world. You'll find that Albion has changed in several ways from the first game in this new series. People have forgotten all about the old way of heroes and guilds, and now they live in fear of a fierce dictator. The exploits of the hero from the original Fable seem to have been mostly forgotten, and even the home town in which he once lived is no more. Fable II doesn't dwell on the storyline from the original, and as such, you can get maximum enjoyment from it without having ever even heard of the first game.
Fable II is what I would refer to as a simulation RPG. You have huge amounts of control over your character and face consequences for just about everything. If your character eats too much he gains additional girth, if he's knocked down by opponents he will scar, etc. Right from the onset you can choose whether you would like to lead the life of a saint or a villain, but rather than giving you a plain, out in the open style choice, you instead decide through your actions. You can kill just about anyone in the game, but should you choose to follow the path of righteousness you won't soon go on any rampages.
The basic gameplay is that of your typical action RPG. Through the use of melee weapons (including swords, hammers, cleavers, katanas, cutlasses) you engage in battles with enemies simply by encountering them in the various non-urban environments of Albion. Most often you'll find bandits or baulverines hiding within the environment, and other times they will be simply waiting out in the open for a hapless victim to approach them. Unfortunately for them you're far from helpless. The battle system is quite awkward at first (enemies block far too often, the game doesn't properly explain how to perform stronger strikes) but it's not long until you become quite the formidable foe. Learning new combat skills and becoming stronger make melee fighting much less of a hassle.
That's just a part of the game's combat system - you can also make use of ranged weaponry. Several hundred years have passed since we were last in Albion, and technology has advanced. In an age of gunpowder you are given the option between using fire arms or crossbows. Each have their distinct advantages but it must be said that using a gun is much more interesting. The fire arms all behave differently and are suited for different combat situations. You will find that pistols and muskets are best used up close and personal, but for ranged battles you'll want to have a crossbow handy. It's an interesting system, but unlike in the original Fable I really can't imagine playing as a long ranged fighter exclusively because the enemies close the distance more quickly this time around.
What's really cool about Fable II is that you can play it however you like and your character will develop based on exactly how you do. This is managed through a system of experience points which come in the form of orbs. These orbs all pertain to particular umbrella attributes that determine how strong, fast, accurate, powerful with magic, etc. your character is. Killing enemies in different ways will give you the different colored orbs that can only be used for particular attributes. This is a very interesting set up that Molyneux came up with and it gives you tremendous control over your character. This is easily one of the most cleverly designed aspects of the game.
Realizing that the main quest might be a little lonesome the developers opted to give your character a companion. This comes in the form of the dog, and surprisingly it's an integral part of the game. The furry mut changes just as your character does - his personality mirrors that of it's owner. This means that the dog's personality is completely dynamic, and you're given control over what kind of a dog he turns out to be. The mut offers valuable services throughout the quest - he can find buried or hidden treasure and lead you to it, warns when enemies are nearby, and he'll even help fight them off alongside you. There are several ways to interact with the little fella and doing so will make him even more useful. The dog behaves surprisingly realistic and it wasn't long before I grew very fond of having him follow me on my adventures.
For this type of game it's adviseable to take time out of the main quest to do some of the side stuff, and this time around there's an incredible amount of other things to do. First off, you no longer make money from completing the story quests - you're going to have to perform several jobs in order to make considerable income this time around. These jobs include simple things such as woodcutting, blacksmithing and bartending and more, but there's a darker side of it where you are actually paid to carry out asassinations and perform various other odd jobs. Bartending, woodcutting, and blacksmithing are the primary focuses and you carry out these jobs by taking part in a mini-game that's based on pushing the A button at the right time. It's simple, and it's repetitive, but I think the job feature is definitely interesting. I just hope they come up with more jobs for Fable III.
As soon as you amass a decent fortune you can put the money to work for you in a really interesting way. In this game you can buy pretty much every piece of real estate in any of the various towns, including stores, pubs, and game rooms. You automatically earn money off of the businesses you purchase, but if you own a home you can put it up for rent and the tenants will periodically pay you. The money is automatically transferred to your character and you are reimbursed for each property after a specific amount of time has passed. What's really, really cool is that the game keeps track of how much time has passed even when you're not paying, and you'll earn rent/payments based on this. This means that you'll earn money periodically even when you're not playing. This is an incredible feature in my opinion and adds tremendously to the immersion.
What's also pretty incredible is the economy system this game uses. Each town has it's own economy and your actions have direct effects on it. Supply and demand play a huge part in this and you can make a killing by simply delivering low demand goods to an area where the demand is greater. This is a very interesting system that is one of the few features that were properly implemented - this is one of the few elements of the game that lives up to it's promise of making Albion feel like a living, breathing world.
One of Lionhead's big points they've advertised in Fable II is the social aspect. Every single character in the game has their own name, likes/dislikes, personality traits, and sexual preference. Interacting with them is done through several actions you can perform from a menu brought up by the right bumper button and each falls into a category such as funny, social, flirty, etc. The NPCs' reactions to your expressions depend largely on their personality. You can have a lot of fun with this with several comical expressions such as farting or dancing, but the social aspect isn't nearly as fleshed out as I had hoped it would be. While the reactions do determine how much characters like/love you the effects are never huge which makes the whole expressions system feel like a waste of time.
What's really interesting is that your character can get married to an NPC, surprisingly, of any gender as long as you match their sexual preference. You can even take things a bit further by having a child with said wife (or husband, if you're a female), but keep in mind that this child will always be the opposite gender of your hero. My problem is that raising a family isn't terribly interesting in Fable II - and it's really not worth the allowance you will have to pay in order to keep them happy and healthy. Should you choose to you can have more than one spouse but only if they live in separate towns. Outside of some somewhat interesting interactions with the spouse and child characters the feature just isn't that interesting. If you prefer you can forego marriage and simply have one night stands - just be sure to use condoms or your character might get an STD.
The game itself is pretty fun and there's a lot to do, but Fable II suffers from a few rather glaring problems. First off, the main quest is one of the shortest RPGs I've ever played in my life. This was my major complaint with the original Fable, but this one is even shorter. The length of the original was somewhat reasonable seeing as how it was the first game of that type that Lionhead had made, but there's absolutely no excuse for how short the main quest is in this sequel. When the credits started rolling I actually suspected it was a joke ending, and that the quest would resume any minute. Boy was I wrong. In order to get your money's worth you're going to have to enjoy the optional content.
My next problem is that this game was promised to be open world, but in reality it's far from that. Travel is extremely linear - the areas in between towns are designed as a simple path to follow with a few branches and areas to explore, but it's incredibly linear. The way the game is set up feels incredibly restrictive with very little emphasis on exploration, and this aspect goes against the premise of this game and makes the short length of the story that much more painful. Furthermore, you don't actually get to do most of the travelling in Albion. Once you reach the edge of the zones in between towns the game tells you how many miles, and how long it will take you to get to the next area. If you proceed the game simply accounts for the distance and length of time and warps you to the next area. It's a very obvious poor attempt to make Albion seem bigger than it actually is.
The least of these major problems is that the game just doesn't have enough items. You'd expect that, in a game all about customization, you'd have hundreds of options for clothing and accessories but that's far from the truth. If I had to guess I'd say that there's less than 20 outfits in the entire game, and most of them are entirely too dull and many are very similar in appearance. Being given more options to customize your character with is something I'd prefer over an enhanced social aspect, but unfortunately this sequel proves that the developers aren't very interested in overhauling either of these features.
At least the graphics have been properly upgraded. Fable II is a very slick looking game with highly detailed character models and great looking environments. The animation is a bit off, but it's easy to look past this. The art style is the perfect evolution from that of the original game, slightly more cartoony and colorful, but darker and more sinister at the same time. What's nice is that every piece of equipment you put on your character actually shows up on him/her while you wander around Albion. One thing that turned me off a bit is that the game seems to have only around 15 different designs for the denizens of Albion, and in cities inhabited by close to fifty different people you'll see a lot of identical twins wandering the streets. This is minor though, because Fable II is still a beautiful game.
Fable II's music is very fitting of the setting. All of it is pretty glum and mysterious, and after hours of listening it's easy to get tired of the somewhat depressing compositions. I think the game could have benefitted from some more upbeat music because the general tone is a little boring. The voice overs suffer a similar fate - they are very fitting but get tiresome quickly. The exaggeratedly raunchy accents, in particular, will really start grating on your nerves as time goes by. This is particularly bad because villagers will repeat the same lines over and over and over again - you'll soon find yourself avoiding them just so you don't have to hear them speak. The sound effects on the other hand are really well done and seem to be real samples of audio for the most part.
Controls leave a little to be desired, but they get the job done. The only real problem I have is that your character's weight was taken into account while they were tightening up how he/she moves. This makes it difficult to make quick turns or to slow down quickly. This realistic approach is appreciated, but it does feel pretty awkward when you first begin. Besides that everything else is easy enough - Fable II gradually teaches you how to play and becomes easier once you unlock new abilities.
Final Recommendation Fable II is short. Without all the side stuff to do this would be one of the shortest RPGs in existence. This is why I can only recommend it to the type of person who loves to venture around, complete side quests and in general experience everything a game has to offer. I'm not saying it's not an entertaining title (it most certainly is) but you've really got to make your own fun to get maximum enjoyment out of this one. I would give it three and a half stars, but because that's not allowed I've rounded up.
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