Fable Anniversary (2014)

A remastered version of the original Fable, designed to bring the original experience to modern platforms while preserving its identity. Rather than reinventing the experience, it focuses on updating visuals, audio, and performance, which makes it feel more like a polished re-release than a full remake. So don't expect a big improvement on this regard, and I highly recommend against this game if you can't tolerate outdated graphics. And my reasoning behind this is that it was considered outdated even by the time of the original release, 2004 already had better looking titles, so again, if graphics are important, don't both with this one.

The game takes place in the fantasy land of Albion (not to be confused with "Albion Online" though), where you guide a hero from childhood to adulthood, shaping their personality and reputation through choices. But don't expect a very dense and organic journey, you mostly skim through the childhood phase in a matter of minutes. The morality system is central to the experience, allowing you to act as a benevolent protector or a cruel opportunist. And by the standards of the time this was one of the most revolutionary experiences. Another unique feature was the change in appearance depending on your actions. While this system is fairly straightforward compared to modern RPGs, it remains effective and gives the game a strong sense of identity.

Visually it improved lighting, higher-resolution textures, and updated character models make the world feel more alive, even if the underlying structure is still rooted in early-2000s design. The environments are colorful and stylized rather than realistic, which can feel like a gimmick of the time but honestly it i simply its charm and unique art style. The OST is one of the game’s strongest elements, enhancing both the whimsical and emotional moments throughout the journey.

Gameplay is where the age of this remaster becomes most noticeable though, the combat combines melee weapons, bows, and magic, giving flexibility in how they approach fights. However, the mechanics are quite simple, and encounters rarely demand much strategy or skill. Enemy AI is limited, and combat can become repetitive over time. The leveling system, which lets you spend experience points on attributes like strength (STR), skill (DEX), and will (INT), is easy to understand but lacks the complexity and customization depth. Particularly I decided to go with a Paladin build, focusing on physical damage and protective spells.

Despite these shortcomings, the game’s charm carries it a long way, the humor, distinctly British tone, and quirky side activities give it a personality that stands out even today. This was one of the games that made me laugh out loud the most, and in the most genuine way, though I may be biased since I'm pretty much very aligned with this kind of humor. You can buy houses, interact with villagers, get married, or simply cause chaos. And for today's standards this is the most common features in RPGs, but back in the day this was incredibly revolutionary.

My experience engaging with these mechanics was very limited, because I'm not particularly drawn to this kind of features. Mostly I focused on going the "good" route, trying to do as little evil as possible, even more so because I wanted to create a build using defensive spells. And depending on your alignment, you are not able to access certain spells and abilities. But I highly recommend it if you like to mess around with role-playing mechanics, it is one of the first ones to implement this approach with a decent enough depth. The game doesn’t aim for realism or complexity, but rather for a light, engaging experience that prioritizes fun and expression.

As for the narrative, the story is straightforward but effective, following a classic hero’s journey with memorable moments and characters along the way. It doesn’t offer the branching depth of newer RPGs, but it maintains a consistent tone and pacing that keeps you engaged. The world-building is also a highlight, with Albion feeling cohesive and full of small details that contribute to its fairy-tale atmosphere. Despite its simplicity. I enjoyed the plot-twists and the main quest quite a lot. But my biggest problem is the lack of memorable characters, hopefully this is also another aspect that was improved in the sequels.

In the end, this game is best seen as a nostalgic experience or an introduction to a classic RPG that influenced many games that followed. It doesn’t fully modernize its mechanics, and its limitations are easy to notice by today’s standards. However, its charm, distinctive morality system, and approachable gameplay still make it enjoyable, especially for those who value atmosphere and personality over complexity. And if you also enjoy the british-style of humor, this is a no-brainer recommendation.

3.5/5

I had never played any of the Fable games prior to this, so this is my first foray into the series.

Fable Anniversary is a remastered version of the original Fable from the original Xbox, including the post launch DLC. Given it's a remaster of an early launch title from the first xbox you should definitely set some expectations when going through this adventure. The updated graphics in this package still look pretty good even 10 years after this edition released, and I did not encounter a single bug through the entire game (which sadly is rarely the case anymore).

Fable has you starting off as a small child, whose village gets attacked and you are seemingly the only survivor from your family when someone quickly arrives to help you and quickly teleport you away. You start off your journey then training and slowly learning more skills as your character visibly grows up, eventually turning into an adult. Bits of your family's history/legacy are slowly revealed throughout and as typical, things were not what you were led to believe. What makes this game stand out a bit (especially from others at the time) is the morality system, where actions you take or even missions you accept can make your character become more heroic/good or evil. As you gain more favor in either direction, NPCs will interact with you differently, skills or missions may open up or lock out depending on your morality score. I had only played through this once, going for a good character so I'm not sure exactly how different things would sway in the other direction unfortunately.

Combat in the game is pretty basic. There are a variety of bows you can use for long range and different melee weapons that all feel maybe slightly different from each other, as well as magic abilities you can use to aid in battles. This is where sometimes it would get frustrating as a product of its time, as if you are facing multiple enemies you can get stun locked to the point of being completely unable to do anything until you die and have to try again. Luckily, I think this only happened once or twice but definitely got really frustrating at other times.

Not realizing this edition came with the DLC, I rolled credits for the main quest surprisingly quick. For as much hype as I heard about this game, I was expecting the journey to last a little bit longer. With the DLC included, I completed the game in about 23.5 hours, including a lot of post game achievement cleanup.

If you can find this game on sale and looking for a fun little time capsule, this would be worth your time!

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

For game number 30 I decided to go with Fable Anniversary. This is a remake of the original Xbox game Fable and it includes the dlc for it. I played both the story and the dlc (which is a direct follow-up to the main events of the story).

Fable is a fantasy RPG where you play as a hero who lost most of his family in the prologue of the game and were then adopted and raised by the heroes’ guild. After becoming an official member of the guild you are told to just go out and become famous. For some reason the guild does not care one bit whether or not you are good or evil.

The setting of Fable is in the most generic fantasy countryside that you could ever imagine. None of the settings are exactly memorable. You go through a fantasy forest, a fantasy swamp, a fantasy graveyard, etc. Also, while there are some towns, there are no big cities in this game and these towns all have only a few quests happening in them and very few NPCs to interact with.

The way you get most of your quests is by going back to the heroes’ guild and accepting quests at this scrying pool thing. This really takes any of the fun out of questing and just leaves you with generic “go here, kill that” quests.

Combat is not fun at all. You will mainly be using your melee attacks which consist of pressing a single button, while occasionally slinging a few (honestly cool) spells and shooting some arrows. The magic in this game is pretty decent and shows some cool spectacle.

The best part of Fable is being an absolute menace to society. You are allowed to role play as a terrible person and kill tons of people, while making insane amounts of gold off of their corpses and now-vacant houses. This is ultimately pointless in terms of progressing the story though.

In contrast, the worst part of this game is that it runs at 15 fps. I’m not kidding. This game is horribly, horribly optimized and runs like absolute crap. I almost constantly had a headache while playing this game. There were enemies that hit me and I couldn’t do anything because I was battling the frame rate.

I thought Fable Anniversary was going to be a fun experience going back to the original game in a well-loved trilogy. What I found was a horribly generic fantasy world, stale combat, and headache inducing framerates. Maybe this game is fun if you go and play the original version on the original Xbox… but I had to slog through this game and I will certainly never pick it up again. (3/10)

I spent 12 hours and 49 minutes playing Fable Anniversary

I have spent a total of 318 hours and 11 minutes on the Road to 360 challenge so far.

I am 10% of the way to 360 Xbox 360 games!!!!

Next game: Dead Space

My start with the Fable series was with Fable II in high school. I really enjoyed it, and enjoyed III even more. I never got around to playing the original until the past two weeks when I finally got GamePass (other than a brief stint on PC a year ago, during which time I barely scratched the surface, so I don't really count it).

I will put it this way: the game is solid, and I appreciate it for being the start of a series that I've really enjoyed for a long time, but it is easily the least enjoyable at this point. I don't have the nostalgia of playing it first, of course, but it's a matter of mechanics/gameplay. I would maybe have rated this higher if I'd played it first and had nothing to compare it to, but having played the sequels first, I know what little tweaks to the gameplay have been made to improve the experience.

I did quite enjoy seeing the characters and story that I only had some familiarity with from the sequels. Experiencing the Hero of Oakvale's journey, learning about Theresa and Jack of Blades, and seeing the land of Albion before it grows into what we see in the sequels was really great. The game also looks really, really good for its age.

Melee has always been a downside to Fable combat for me, which is kind of funny considering I'm usually more inclined to run in and just hack away at stuff in games. With F2/F3, though, I always stick to Will and Skill (magic and ranged weapons). I think it's probably best in F3, but regardless of entry in the series, the amount of times your swings are blocked is just stupid. There's almost no point in putting experience into it in this game because it's absolutely atrocious, though I did max all of the Strength skills in order to get Huw's sword (and of course health and defense are important). I could be fighting some shitty bandit that I could kill with one shot from my crossbow, but I'd decide to fight with a sword, and, even at max strength, they're parrying fifteen swings before I hit them.

The magic is okay. Cycling through them is kind of annoying, but at least you have a decent selection available to you all the time. I didn't try everything, but I used a shitton of Lightning and Enflame. I will still forever prefer the combined Blades/Vortex in F3, but the spells here are not bad. Only real complaint is if you have a bow drawn, your Hero is constantly trying to reload the bow while you're trying to spam spells, unless you put the bow away first. Sometimes that would take three presses of the button to holster (?) it before he'd actually do it.

Targeting is wonky. I don't remember if it was in F2 because I only played it once and it's been like a decade, but I know in F3, there's a button to turn the safety on and off. This way, you won't accidentally wreck some poor merchant or villager who happens to walk by. Half the time I'd be fighting some bandits off who were attacking a group of merchants, and I'd go to change my target and it would latch onto a merchant. There were times they were safe when my Lightning spell obliterated a group, and there were times that it decided to just kill the merchants as well. This was a frequent frustration while playing this entry.

I also found myself really missing the appearance customization options of F3, and while I was trying not to play this while making comparisons about everything, you basically have to be a bald, clean-shaven monk with very specific clothing choices to not be considered scary or ugly. There's nothing wrong with baldness, but the game is very limited in options in this regard, and I was further limited by not wanting people to be afraid of me. Most outfits regardless of alignment were still "scary."

I played a thoroughly "good" route, making all of the halo-earning decisions. I do want to play more Fable (and I also have all of the books and e-novellas to read), but I'll probably play F2 soon because I've only played through it once. I don't really want to revisit this one, and I'm not going to try to do everything, like all of the Demon Doors and whatnot.

Steam Curator

Though it may not be quite as great as you remember it being, Fable is still a solid action game with some engaging systems. The claustrophobic world design frequently has you butting heads with loading screens, swapping between abilities isn't as elegant as the control scheme would make you think, and the game really limps into its final act. Despite all that, the moment to moment gameplay, interacting with the townspeople, and fighting some bad guys feels good.

For my full thoughts, check out the video review: