Games like Fable are something of a nightmare to review. After all, how do you even begin to judge something that changes so much depending on who's playing it? Within a few hours of launching Fable 3, we'd started a rebellion, got divorced three times, but married four (all to the same person), made a villager fall in love with us, and unintentionally toyed with her heart by getting married and divorced so many times. We set fire to a stylist with effeminate pink hair (accidentally, of course), got arrested for attempted murder, breaking and entering, and trespassing, turned invisible, bought two houses, decorated them, had a baby, named it Marmaduke, and thwarted a chicken uprising by bringing it down from the inside...
This is Fable 3, a fantasy role playing game where, well, you can do just about anything you want. Run a business, start a family, or actually follow the story, and discover the secrets Albion has to share. As the brother (or sister) of a tyrannical King, within the first few minutes of playing Fable 3, you'll be ostracised by your sibling, have to make a pretty touch decision (which we won't spoil), and along the way, become the leader of a rebellion to overthrow your own flesh and blood. To be honest, he does have it coming.
You can tell he's a bad guy. Just check out that beard. Evil.
After being banished from the castle, the game begins proper, and it's up to you to garner support from the towns and villages of Albion, as you build support for your uprising at a grassroots level. Getting the support of the citizens works in one of two ways - the first of which is in the shape of a traditional 'quest'. Around the towns and villages, you'll often find people in need of a hand, and if you help them out of their sticky situation, they'll often return the favour. Ranging from such fairly mundane tasks as finding a missing child, and reuniting her with her mother, to the more bizarre early quest, which sees you sucked inside a book, and forced to recreate scenes from a deceased playwrite's plays in order to win your freedom, there's a wide range of things to keep you busy - although there are a few too many "take this here, come back" quests.
Of course, not everyone's cheeky enough to ask you to do something for little to no reward, but being an odd job man isn't the only way you can garner support. In Fable, even so much as a handshake is enough to change how a villager feels about you, and, as in real life, the nicer you are to them, the more they'll warm to your personality, and the more likely you'll be to win their support. Press A in front of any villager, and you'll be presented with a number of options, the most important of which are the good gesture (a hug, dance, or handshake), and the bad gesture. Depending on how you want to play the game, and what sort of Hero (or Villain) you want to be, the way you interact with the villagers will not only shape the story of the game, but your Hero themselves. Become a bit of a delinquent, and you'll start to look like one too - while the nice, friendly Hero types will have the villagers swooning all over them and their good looks.
Built with accessibility in mind, there are a lot of refinements here to give you a helping hand as you venture around the land of Albion. While you'll often find yourself attacked by beasties and monsters, combat is simple and rewarding, with melee attacks on X, ranged attacks (guns, basically) on Y, and magic on B. Magic comes from gauntlets your Hero wears - and if you're feeling particularly creative, you can wear one on each hand to combine spells. If you're ever stuck, and unsure of where to go, what's known as a breadcrumb trail (basically a glowing line of dots) is constantly visible, showing you where you're meant to be going. The only problem is, it doesn't work anywhere near as well as it really should do, and when it's not completely disappearing, it's often leading you in the wrong direction.
Similarly disappointing are the menus you'll use while out on your quests. While the developers allege they've attempted to "simplify" the menus, what they've actually done is make everything take around four times as long as it used to. Now, you can't simply look at a map - instead, you have to press Start, be teleported to a 3D hub, walk forwards, press A again, and you'll finally find yourself looking at a map. Changing your clothes, or checking on your quests requires a similarly daft sequence of buttons, and it all ends up being a bit of a faff. Menus aren't that scary - in fact, even when done badly, they'd be a lot more useful than this.
On the plus side, the co-operative element has been implemented a lot better, and is easily the highlight of the game. Not restricted to only being a single player adventure, when you share it with a friend, as is the way with most things, Fable 3 becomes a completely different game. Coming with a full co-operative mode, that lets you play both over Xbox Live, or on the same console locally, you and a friend, or your other half play through the story together, with the second player able to do anything the main hero can. Whether they want to change their appearance, dig for treasure, or, if they're in a particularly romantic mood, even get married, the second player has no restrictions on what they can do - which is a pleasant surprise. It's a perfect "girlfriend/boyfriend" game, and, with all the options for things you can do (raising a family, getting married), there's more than a hint of the Sims about it. Just with slightly more swords.
Ahh. Nuff said.
Like the Sims, as we mentioned in our intro, Fable 3 has a similar level of freedom - you really can do what you want. Start a shop, start a family, or murder all the villagers in town - you're free to do as you please, but your actions won't necessarily be without repercussions, as we found out. When strolling into a stylist's shop, while Sarah was perusing the beards (for her female character, of course), I got to work showing off my magical skills, casting fireballs in every direction possible, and setting fire to the crates in the shop - all while the pink haired, effeminate stylist simply stood back applauding my vandalism. Just to be daft, I started firing fireballs at him - and he just kept clapping. Then, I noticed that at the bottom of my screen, a little green circle had appeared with a sword in it. Wondering what it'd do, and continuing to fire fireballs all the time, I pressed down on the d-pad, and the circle turned red. Suddenly, the stylist was no longer applauding, as my fireball smacked him in the chest, and he flew through the air, before slumping loosely over the shop's counter, for all intents and purposes, dead, and lightly singed.
I was devastated. This was a Hero character - he's meant to be a good guy! Not a murderer! Weighing up my options, I did the only reasonable thing you could do in that situation. "Run!" I shouted to Sarah, even though she was sitting right next to me, as we turned to leg it from the shop, but no sooner had we started to leave than the local constabulary arrived, with stern expressions on their faces. "Attempted murder" they told me, and I paid a hefty fine, whilst staring at my feet, feeling guilty.
The next day (in Fable time), we were given a quest. Simple enough, we had to disguise ourselves as mercenaries, and head into the mercenary camp to talk to their leader. The disguise consisted only of a beard, and a few tattoos, which we were assured we could get from the local stylist - and so we pootled off down there, hoping he'd forgive us for our misdoings the previous day. The only problem was, when we got to his shop, it wasn't open. We went back to our house, and slept 'til the next morning, but the shop was still closed. "It was only attempted murder," I tried to convince myself, distraught, "He can't really be dead, can he?". But days went by, and the shop didn't open - while I, despite being overcome with grief, started to wonder if this could be a bug in Fable. After all, why let me kill someone if I needed them to complete a quest? Perhaps this was just the game's way of punishing me. Seemingly letting my bad habits rub off on her, Sarah had a flash of genius, and tried to break down the door, but it was my mallet that dealt the final shot, as we ran inside, and tried to steal the items we needed. Except, we couldn't. And then the police came again.
There are plenty of weird and fantastical places to discover.
Filled equally with things that'll make you cringe and grin, or laugh and frown, the tale above is a great example of how free form Fable 3 is, and how you really can do whatever you want. Whether you follow the story, or just want to mess around, making your own adventure is at least half of the appeal - and there's so much to see and do that you can lose yourself in its fantasy world for days at a time. And perhaps that's one of the best things about it.
While it certainly suffers from problems, including an awful menu, that makes everything take four times as long, and actually makes it more difficult to track your quests than before, and a ridiculous motion blur system, that seemingly only blurs things that are barely moving (we're at a loss to explain why it even exists - do people look better sprouting four arms as they stroll past? Does making the screen look like it's been slathered with grease make the game somehow better?), which also makes the game a trip into hell for people susceptible to motion sickness from motion blur, there's still so much Fable does right that you end up overlooking the flaws. It's big, it's brash, and it's different to anything else out there - and, for the most part, it works.
Seeing as we couldn't leave the review without telling how our tale turned out, we're pleased to report we had a happy ending. Thankfully, a few days later, the stylist turned up back in his shop - his hair still pink, showing no ill effects of the roasting he'd received just weeks earlier. It turns out he wasn't dead after all, but the best we could come up with was that he'd temporarily fled the town, terrified at what had happened. He didn't hesitate to serve us though - and I think he's forgiven me now anyway. He certainly didn't complain about our dance.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
