The Fable series has always been close to my heart, from playing the first one on the original xbox when I was but a mere foetus, to playing Fable 2 on the 360 of which at this time I refused to leave my room until it was complete.
Everything in my world was beautiful and ripe with wonderful game nectar.
Until I played Fable 3.
At first I was completely ecstatic and my expectations were soaring from playing the previous two games, then disappoint occurred.
Graphics: As I played through the game it became apparent that the visuals of Fable hadn't really changed since the second game which to be honest didn't really bother me as Lionhead have always seemed to make an effort to produce decent graphics. Scenery was beautiful and vast, I enjoyed being able to see for miles around if i stood on top of a hill, rather than it being blank or given the lazy mist look. One thing which I did have trouble with however was navigating during night time, having to adjust my TV settings to make my screen lighter because Fable decided it was going to turn pitch black every time the sun went down was annoying to say the least.
Music: No complaints about the score. All of Fable 3's OST's clearly depicted the situations the character was in, from wandering around the busy streets of Bowerstone to fighting Balverine and Banshees in the Wraithmarsh. Because I'm one for immersing myself heavily into a game the music plays a big part in helping me build up my mental images and emotions towards certain situations.
To put it bluntly I was happy when the Score was jovial and I shat myself whenever sudden bursts of music played when I entered a dark cave.
Character Customisation: The big problem I had with Fable 3 was that you pretty much just had 1 clothing set. In the previous games you could make your character look like anything you wanted him/her to look like. Every store had at least something in that you could buy and dye to a colour that suited you. In my case, DYE ALL THE THINGS BLACK *brood brood.* As you progress through the previous games I found it was always rewarding to think back to when I was a filthy plague ridden orphan girl and how over time I became a sexy demon whore wearing thigh high bandit boots and a long trench coat. Because you play the Princesses/Prince from the offset all of your clothes have pretty much the best armour and look to them and unless a mission required me to do otherwise, I pretty much stayed in my Royal clothes throughout the whole game.
Conversations: In the previous games I used to have hours of fun making my character fart in the faces of my adoring fans or flip them the finger if they annoyed me. It seemed the means of communicating with one another was endless. Words could not describe my disappointment when talking to my loyal subjects in Fable 3, my character was restricted to roughly 4 actions with someone else, the 4 actions being shake their hand, dance with them, give them something or just say hello and hope for the best.
First off, i'm like, the King of Albion. I don't want to be touching filthy peasants, let alone dancing with them and although amusing the first few times it soon became boring. I also soon found out that if i repeated the same actions to someone and/or followed them around saying "Hello!" all the time they eventually asked me to run errands for them. I played my role as royalty rather seriously, and a peasant asking me to deliver a letter to his mate in another town wasn't something I was prepared to do so the conversations often ended with a swift beheading.
Storyline: Personally I saw nothing wrong with the storyline of Fable 3, it followed on nicely with the previous games and had a good flow throughout. Giving you the opportunity to be Royalty with new challenges and responsibilities. The prospect of the story leading up to a great evil coming to your land to wipe you and your people out also made the fantasy aspect of the game more eery and dangerous and gave you more reason to think carefully about your actions as the King/Queen.
Morality: One thing I have always admired the Fable series for was the opportunity to change the world and people around you through your characters choices on his or her adventure. However the morality in Fable 3 seems to have been flipped upside-down and become so messed up that if it were a person it would be an aubergine coloured tramp in a string vest sitting in his own fluids. When your character finally overthrows the Tyrant and becomes king, it becomes your responsibility to look after your kingdom from the fast approaching entity known as "The Darkness" (Crawler on first name terms).
In order to protect your people you must make life changing decisions on their behalf in order to gather as much Albion dollar to raise up good defences and save your people. These decisions however include turning an old building into either a brothel or an orphanage, making universities free or at ridiculous fees. Besides making a potential orphanage into a brothel I made all the right choices in my moral standing so the people of albion adored me, however this meant that I had absolutely no money to protect my city so when the Crawler came knocking at my door pretty much all of my people were killed. So it was a toss up between "do everything to raise money but everyone will hate me and call me a Tyrant" OR "make my people happy and love me only for them all to be killed and hate me because I had no money to protect them." Either way I lost the game. Fable 3 did not want me to be happy. It became apparent that no matter what I did the outcome would pretty much still be the same which after everything I did made me feel like the whole process to get where I was seemed like a waste of time.
All in all Fable 3 was a big let down and what I saw as a waste of money. Although there were some aspects of the game that I enjoyed the cons outweighed the pro's by far.
FAYBUL 3, Y U NO GOOD!?
