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First Fable II: Game Episode is live

Details on how it works inside.

Fable II. We're fans, you may remember. Well, those of you who haven't tried it yet can play a decent chunk of it for free today with the launch of Fable II: Game Episodes on Xbox Live's Games on Demand channel.

As you may remember, Fable II is being chopped into five episodic instalments, the first of which comes at no cost other than the time it takes to download the 2GB file.

Lionhead informs us that it covers the player's childhood and period as a young adult, and that all save progress, profile information and items will be kept for future episodes and will work with a disc version, should you decide to buy that rather than hanging on for the other episodes.

All the original game's Achievements make it over intact, too, there's full compatibility with Xbox Live co-op in each episode, and you can still download the Knothole Island and See the Future DLC later if you're so inclined.

The first episode is available via web Marketplace now if you're into that sort of thing.