Fable III (2010)

I know this one is more divisive (perhaps even mostly disliked?) among fans, but this is another case of biased childhood nostalgia, so apologies in advance.

Fable II remains my favourite video game of all time, and I certainly prefer it to III, but Fable III is the one most of my friends got into. I remember having my best friend come home with me after school every day to sit in front of my Xbox and play Fable III with a bowl of Doritos in front of us for hours, and after that we talked it up so much that more of our friend group bought it and played it with me over online multiplayer. We were all around 13-15 then, so maybe we were just easily pleased, but we all enjoyed it - I have a lot of fond memories of running through the quests with them, watching one of them complete the campaign in only a chicken head and boxer shorts, and sleeping with every friend I had so that my character ended up with, like, 40 STDs and everyone proceeding to call me out for it every time that ended up on someone else's 'friend stat comparisons' loading screens.

I must have completed this 20-something times in my lifetime, but I hadn't touched it since I was a teenager, so it was a really sentimental experience to go back to it recently with my fiancee and play it with her after we completed Fable 2. I could still remember so many of the secrets and hidden routes, even if I couldn't remember why - I'd often find myself pausing as we passed an area because I just knew there had been something there and hunting around until I found the inevitable chest or key my subconscious had remembered.

Fable in general has so much heart, and III is no exception. The humour, the characters, the setting, the creatures - it's all genuinely special, both in general and to me.

I can understand some of the criticisms, but I just... don't feel them.

The Sanctuary is totally unnecessary, sure, and a pause menu would've been so much more convenient - but I didn't really care about convenient, I cared about Cool Stuff, and that was The Sanctuary to me. I loved how it was woven into the story, I loved being able to see all my items on little cushions on pedestals, I loved being able to see my bigass pile of gold grow bigger and bigger the more I played, I loved my wall of trophies and my mannequins where I could see all of my outfits and how they'd look before I put them on.

The morality choices were black-and-white? Absolutely, but it was 2010, and I loved how those choices were weighed down with their own consequences. It's not like it was "do this good thing or do this bad thing" and nothing else - it was "you can uphold your promise to do this good thing and it will help your citizens in the short run, but it will cost the kingdom hundreds of thousands of gold and it is increasingly likely you will not have the resources and funds to protect them when the Big Bad comes to invade", versus "you can break your promise and do this bad thing and be seen as a tyrant in the short-term, but the money you get from it could be funnelled directly into protecting your people and keeping them alive". Yeah, with enough effort and time you can get around it by grinding money through endless minigames or meta-ing your way through the real estate system, but most people aren't going to do that - and the harsh reality of having to choose between protecting your people and making them happy was a really cool idea. There's nothing more brutal than going through your entire game doing good things, everyone loving you, being heralded as a great and kind ruler, getting through the final battle... and then running around the post-game to find your kingdom littered with corpses and empty, broken shops, because everyone was killed thanks to your lack of defenses.

I loved the fact that weapons' appearance changed as you levelled them up and grew your character - e.g. a sword growing longer or developing serrated edges, a hammer glowing with runes, a pistol's design increasingly patterned and fancy-looking as it became more powerful.

As in the prequel, I loved that your morality and your purity/corruption stats affected your character's appearance - a good and pure character having soft features and light, magical swirls sweeping across their skin, while an evil and corrupt character has sunken eyes, dark veins, and a harsher expression. I love that you can mix and match - have a good and corrupt character, or an evil character with full purity - as well as how other things can interact with those appearance changes, such as a good/pure Will-focused characters' magic lighting up their skin tattoos when they're casting. I even loved the angel/demon wing motifs depending on your goodness vs. evil in the latter half of the game, and the fact that they appear when you're charging more powerful attacks.

Golden breadcrumb trail is appreciated as always - I'm guessing a lot of players probably don't like that (I don't recall if you can turn it off, you probably can), but I'm someone who likes knowing exactly where I have to go for the plot, not least because that means I can exhaust every other route and area before going to The Plot-Important One to ensure I'm not missing any items or chests without having to worry about advancing the story or walking into a cutscene when I didn't mean to.

Shops were great, and I loved being able to browse the physical items rather than them just being words/images on a list, though I wish they sold more than a few items at a time and that there was more variety in what a shop could sell (not in the sense that a weapons shop should sell more than weapons, but that I'd like the weapons shop to sell a wider variety of them through the game rather than pretty much always selling the same swords, the same guns, etc).

The 1 star off is mostly a catch-all for the petty little complaints I have, the most significant of which is the fact that for some reason this game, in a series known for being progressive and LGBT-friendly, forces a romantic interest on you at the beginning of the game/during the prologue depending on which protagonist gender you chose - a Prince will get Elise, and a Princess will get Elliot. To be fair, you can dodge the romantic overtones by choosing to hug them rather than kiss them, but it's very clear it's supposed to be romantic, especially with the content of the quest that can involve them later on in the game, so I wish they'd just let you select which you wanted. It's not as bad as it could have been because they're really only around for the prologue and only reappear (now involved with someone else) under a specific condition, and it's 2010, so whatever.

Loved the steampunk/industrial vibes, too. I'm a sucker for that, especially with magic woven into it.

Fable II and Sparrow still clear, but this one's still close to my heart. Also, I had a childhood crush on Ben Finn and Reaver, so there's that.

When a game like Fable III hits the shelves you'll see critics lauding the game as a triumph for its hilarity, size and willingness to change the mold, and yet another game will be crushed for doing the same. What do we as players want? The same game again? Do we want it to change? The difference in this perspective is causing critics to appear extremely random in their desires. We, as gamers, deserve better than that. As a result I urge you to enjoy the title for yourself and ignore negative reviews for this game because after several hours (all night) I can stamp it with a seal of greatness.

Fable III has what I will call the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed syndrome. By that I mean you'll have harsh critical bile spewed over changes in the franchise and yet the fans will flock to it because it has a certain charm that just can't be labeled. The humor of the game is as hilarious as it's ever been and yet there are moments of true human drama that should tug at you emotionally. The games engine feels slightly dated at times, but it's never a drawback and might be considered a perk to veterans of the series. The story can feel slightly contrived at times, but there are twists to be found that make it worthwhile. It's difficult to discuss without spoilers but suffice it to say that the story is far more engaging than the so far more critically appraised Fable II.

Everything is improved in every way. From the graphics to the story to the humor to your dog there is nothing that hasn't seen a step up in the series. Enjoy it for yourself and take the game in the lighthearted fashion it is meant to be played. If you don't you will miss out on one of this years top must play games.

As someone who only owns Playstations, I never had the chance to play any of the Fable games when they were out. But now I also play games on my PC, so I wanted to give Fable 3 a try. Of the whole series, it intrigued me the most because it took the fantasy setting and moved it into a Steampunk, industrial setting.

While this is a fantasy game in the sense there’s magic and swords and such, it’s not very deep. There’s hobgoblins and skeletons as enemies, but there’s no elves or orcs or other staple fantasy races. It’s just all humans. That’s not a bad thing, it just makes the game lean more towards the Steampunk genre than high fantasy. The clothing is the biggest indicator of the new time period. Gone are suits of armor and colorful doublets replaced with frock coats and tricorn hats. As a fan of colonial fashion, I was all there for the new clothing choices. The world reflects the new era less. The main city has an industrial city vibe with dirty streets and smoggy skies, but the outlying small towns are a mix of medieval & colonial architecture. Outside of one of the “sorta” bad guys being an amoral industrialist, the fact this game is set in a Steampunk world doesn’t really matter.

I think it was due to the art style, but I always considered the Fable games to be sort of a PG fantasy. While this game isn’t dark or gritty like a Witcher or Skyrim, but it definitely isn’t as kid friendly as I thought. There’s no swearing, but you can buy condoms to have sex with your wife. This game is also extremely English. Some of the lore pulls from English folklore, but the main reason is most of the voice cast is a who’s who’s of B-list English actors. For a video game, it’s an impressively star studded cast. The one I recognized instantly was John Cleese as your butler.

I don’t know if you’d call this an RPG, but if you did, there’s not a deep RPG system to Fable III. You can use XP points to unlock damage upgrades or new spells, but nothing that really changes up the gameplay. The dialogue system is also very bare bones. Even Fallout 4 has more in-depth conversation mechanics. You can interact with every civilian, but just by selecting a few canned options, either being polite, rude, or funny. They only effect how they perceive you, there’s no effect on quests. As a game from the early 2000s, there’s a moral choice system. It’s a typical binary “good-bad” system. Either you’re a complete bastard or a total pushover. This morality really handicaps the 2nd half of the story.

Combat is another aspect of the gameplay. It’s not bad, but it’s also not great. You can focus your character into being a swordsman, a magic user, or a rifleman. There is a little variety in switching between the different fighting styles during a battle, but each style is very basic. You have one button that attacks. The alternate fire button is what varies between the three styles. Magic’s alt fire gives you an area of effect attack, for gun’s it lets you ADS, and for swords it’s your block button. Combat is not what you come to this game for, it boils down to clicking until all the baddies are gone. Were this game made now, it would’ve probably had either a rhythmic combat system or a Dragon Age MMO style system. There’s also not a huge diversity of enemies. Mostly zombies, goblins, and mercenaries.

The story of Fable III is what intrigued me, along with the setting. The first act of the game is a standard “plucky rebels fight evil tyrant” plot line. I know it’s easy to write games casting you as an underdog rebel, but I am getting tired of that storyline. I feel like every conventional story has been told that you can tell with the rebellion storyline. Anyways, you are cast as a prince who’s brother is a tyrannical dictator. Things go sideways and you end up cast out of the castle and joining the resistance. But the rebellion storyline is just the first act of this game. Once you overthrow your brother, act two has you managing your kingdom, and you made some promises to some people to reach your position. You also learn that your brother was a “hero of his own story” villain. He was being so cruel in order to prepare the kingdom for the coming assault by a Cthulhu monster. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t put in the work to really sell that. He has a speech that’s a little too cackling villain vs misguided hero. This story is all very surface level. I think partly due to there being sparse dialogue, possibly due to the high profile cast. Your player character is voiced, but he doesn’t really say much. You could be a silent protagonist and it wouldn’t effect the story much. The prince doesn't have much input on the story, outside your moral choices. He mostly gets told what to do.

As the king you are tasked with preparing the kingdom for the same evil invasion your brother was preparing for by amassing wealth, but you also want to be a more benevolent ruler than your brother. Basically are you going to be a Democrat or Republican king. Investing in your people means your royal treasury collects cobwebs, but building up the treasury means breaking promises & being an asshole like your brother. As someone who enjoys playing games that require diplomacy and tactical political maneuvering, the second act felt like it was just on the cusp of being interesting, but everything had to fit into a good/bad dichotomy. There were certain “bad” options that weren’t terrible, but I know the game would take it to the extremes to really make you look like a jerk. Reaver, the industrialist, always suggests the evil option of making money at the sake of people’s comfort, and as a good guy you have to constantly reject him. It would’ve made for a much deeper experience if you had to balance the approvals of your subjects to make the right choice while also not getting overthrown yourself. Heck, your brother just falls off the map after you become king, even if you spared him. He’s had experience with the Cthulhu monster, having him be you somber advisor, reminding you of all the danger coming your way as you spend gold on nature preserves.

Of course, there’s an easy way to cheese getting money to fill up your treasury. You can personally buy stores and houses in the villages you visit and get a monthly rent from them, much like in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. I bought a bunch of property and just let my game run overnight to collect as much money as possible, then donated it to the royal treasury.

The ending doesn’t stick the landing. Due to the light storytelling, the ending just seems to roll up on you and the real bad guy isn’t that fleshed out. His motivation isn’t fleshed out beyond being the living embodiment of darkness. A force of nature type of villain is doable, but like much of the story, it never has enough time to flesh him out. The ending has the Cthulhu monster possessing your mentor and forces you to kill him. When you kill your mentor, that’s it, it apparently kills the monster as well. For all the build up given to this monster as an unstoppable force, he dies pretty easily.

All in all, this was a fun little game that just fell short of an interesting story and that couldn’t be saved by the simplistic combat system. Still the world space with it’s colonial/Steampunk aesthetic was a welcomed shake-up to the design of fantasy game worlds.

Since I'm finally playing the first game, I decided to check if I'd rated II and III yet, and saw that I hadn't.

To be honest, I loved the hell out of this game. I know I played through at least twice, but I think I was actually on a third playthrough last time. I know that it got a lot of hate from series fans, and people were disappointed in several aspects of it, but I enjoyed it a ton. I had played II at that point, but not the original game, so that could be why.

It's been a few years, but I do recall a few things I did not like:

• the expressions wheel was no longer a crowd-affecting tool (and you had to go into a separate screen to interact with each individual person)
• no Gypsies :( (Dwellers were okay, but I loved the Gypsies) ((That word isn't really PC, but that's what they're called in the game...))

I loved the combined magic. I used the Vortex and Blades spell combination a lot, which I found to be ridiculously fun.

I loved the dye options for clothes and hair--not to mention the number of hairstyles.

I was also really a fan of the menu "room." I felt like it was a neat way to interact with your inventory, clothing, weapons, abilities, etc. Plus, John Cleese.

THE CRAWLER. MY BOIIIII. I loved the voice so much I remember looking it up and all I could find was that it was uncredited.

There are probably a lot of other things that I'm forgetting since it's been so long, but I'll update this when I get around to replaying again.