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Fable Review
Xbox Review by Kieron Gillen
Page 1 of 2.
Page 2 
Honestly: one thing just led to another.
If you want to blame it on anything, blame it on insecurity. I'd decided I was too thin. A 34-year old hero, hailed throughout the realm of Albion and I still had the lithe figure of a boy, since my sporadic snacking hadn't done anything to fill me out. Something a little more determined was needed, I thought, as I cleared the shopkeeper out of meat and sat, gorging myself on thirty or so portions.
I went too far. I was morbidly obese. Oh dear.
So I decided to start my own personal fat-club, and proceeded to run everywhere. It did the trick, at the expense of making me visibly stink. However terminal BO wasn't enough to prevent the romantic adventure I was tumbling towards. You see, if I wasn't running, I'd have never had ended up jogging through the class room, welcomed by the welcoming waves of cheers from the kids and the instantly smitten glance of the teacher. The male teacher.
Now, I presumed that there'd be gay men in the game, but in all my time criss-crossing Albion I'd never seen evidence of it. I had to investigate. Some mild flirting and heroic posturing in front of the class and he's infatuated. He asks for a wedding ring. I, forgetting about my wife on the other side of the kingdom by simply recalling the adventurer's credo "What Goes On Tour, Stays On Tour", offer him one.
We're married. We move into my comfortable town flat. We have the sex.
All of a sudden, I'm bisexual!
Except as soon as I've done it, I realise I probably shouldn't have. I need this apartment for another part of my increasingly unheroic plans and - the cynical part of my mind screams - I didn't even get a dowry off his clearly disapproving parents. I need to be out! So, leading him out on the town, I proceed to flirt outrageously with various adoring women, causing him to spit curses at them in displeasure. I even propose to a barmaid before him. It's not enough. So, at the end of my tether, I lead him back to the privacy of our own home where, away from the prying eyes of the town guards, I proceed to beat the hell out my partner. His cries and protestations grow louder, the blows increasingly hard to deliver as I ask myself What On Earth Am I Doing. "Where did it all go wrong," my husband mournfully cries, before demanding a divorce. Our tie is severed.
I wander out into the street. The greatest hero of Albion: just a dumb bastard wifebeater.
I feel dirty. Genuinely dirty.
I probably should get back to saving the world or something.
So... why have I wasted far too much of my word-count on this anecdote rather than saying how many levels the game has or whether it uses the left trigger for targeting or the right? Well, to pretentiously paraphrase top-potato headed poet "Big" Phil Larkin, to some that says nothing - to others that leaves nothing to be said. Either that little piece of game interests you or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's unlikely Fable is the game for you. It's the fresh-faced poster-child for the irrelevancy is the new relevancy movement.
Which isn't to say that it's all gloss. While clearly in the lineage of the Bullfrog high-concept games, (And can we stop solely crediting all their failings and successes to Molyneux, please?), its constructed around the framework of a solid action-RPG. Think, for ease of reference, Zelda cross-bred with Morrowind. However, if you're solely devoted to Getting To The End in a game, chances are you may find it somewhat slight. Its flaws - and most of those reside in the main action parts - will weigh more heavily, and the relatively short length of the game's main arc could make you feel a little unsatisfied. People have been known to quote ten hours from start to finish, which for any RPG is a little pitiful.
However, to steal a surprisingly funny line from a forumite over at Evil Avatar, boasting about how quick you can finish Fable is a little like a man boasting how quick they come during sex. We're very much in Journey over Destination territory.
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I'd give it less meself, the decision tree thing is pretty inconsistant. First experience of it was the farmer quest where one min I'm helping some theives ransack his barn right in front of him, next second I'm his bezzie and he's asking me to help him out. Just doesn't fit together too well.
Beyond Good N Evil blows it away sadly.
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 10:31
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Yeah.. Fable is great... and it is trying to break the mold of traditional "really repetitive RPG crap". It might not do all the things it promised but it is a start. I am very pleased with the result and in many ways it is a game that is a bit like Nights... you just experience it and enjoy. I would give it a 9 but looks like the pre-Fable hype has reduced it's points potential. A good review!
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I was getting along quite well with this last night (aside from the fact that some of the character art is utterly hideous - how come the box art and POS is nice, but several in-game characters look like demon zombies?) until I hit a mission which I failed. Fine, I thought, it wasn't a main plot mission, I'll go buy some better equipment before I do another one. Except, er, I won't. Because it won't let me back into the game - I have to retry that mission until I get it right. Bah. Still, it's a lot more fun than I expected it to be - it's definitely grabbed my interest much more than Morrowind did, although I can see where the comparisons come from.
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One note to the reviewer, there is a key combo to locking into friendlies (in case you want to attack one), so, if you during a heated fight, lock into one, it's because you pressed another key (not sure which) along with lock-on. Pretty sure it was in the American manual (I downloaded the PDF), I just didn't commit it to memory :S
Can't wait to get my hands on it :D (Oh, and good review, reviewing Fable, not Project Ego ;)) |
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it doesn't matter who did the box art. Notice that's not "Jo chen" style, but "Fable's" style (big hands, big feet, 4 toes, etc). The cover style and characters are based on concept art from BBB (and the kid looks exactly alike), and the 3d in game models are also based on those concept arts.
Why are some NPCs like zombies? I dunno... maybe they ran out of time to make more NPCs :D I'm pretty sure that if you saw the NPC concept art you'd see they all have lot's of personality. |
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captain-future
08/10/04 @ 12:00
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For those of us who understand that while true non-linear storytelling is never going to happen
enlighten me, please. |
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The first part of this review is hilarious and makes the game sound very promising but I am still undecided about this one. I hated Morrowind but could see myself liking this.
I notice its a bit on the pricy side (44.99) - might have to wait till its been out for a while. Maybe I should just buy Gradius V from Play (17.99) and stop messing about. |
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captain-future, because all the paths of a story need to be hand programed by a human (a computer cannot create anything, instead, branching paths are all pre created by humans programers, and then the player takes them based on skill, or chance (computers are able to randomise numbers with aid of the internal clock, and this is the only thing they are able to "create")). So, the storytelling will always happen according to the programer (no many how many paths they programed into the game). You'll never have a game where you can create your story - you'll always have games where you can choose one out of the many stories the developers programed for you :)
(I think that's what he was referring to, might be wrong) |
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BremXJones
08/10/04 @ 12:27
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There's no actual defined story in any of your examples (Edit: Point addressed to Marlina). I was never stupid enough to claim that a non-linear game couldn't exist... just one with something resembling a traditional narrative*.
(Or rather, something resembling a traditional narrative that lasts the full length of a game, if we're being picky) I'd agree with most of the arguments posed in this thread, however... but I was talking about a slightly different thing. EDIT 2: Specifically I *really* agree with Aubrey who notes that any game takes the form of a story once you've progressed through it - that is, all the possible actions cement into the actions you did take, which form a linear sequence of memories in your mind. It's a really modernist - correct my literary theory if I'm wrong - form of story, but a story nevertheless. KG *Rome's an interesting example in that every game creates its own non-traditional story, due to its dramatic treatment. A decent battle in Rome has at least as much Drama as even the best pre-planned RTS plot, because the context is *real*.
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 13:31
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non-linear gameplay exists. But you mentioned games with no story telling what-so-ever. Game freedom will always be impaired by the game design. You'll always be able to do what the actions developers put into the game (regarding glitches, sometimes devs are unaware of something they might be creating, but they were put there by a human).
Now the problem, is that the story side of the game will always be bottlenecked. You can kill alot of people and get cops chacing you in GTA3. As you can throw away all your equipment in a RPG, and fight the boss naked and barefisted. But the game will still be bottlenecked by what the developers invisioned. In other words, once you activate a cutscene in GTA3, the police will disapear and everything in the cut scene will act as planned. In the RPG, a FMV pops up, and your character is fully clothed with his weapons against the boss. Now people can get away from this, programing more game reactions. Better grafics mean no need for fmvs (for example, Fable doesn't have fmvs, only cutscenes). But no matter what, the narrative will never be anything you can create, only control (and only control with the freedom provided by the developers). So you cannot "create your story". You can choose your story, and that's the best we'll ever have. |
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Well but what is story? It's a narrative. And it needs a beginning and an end. Sims lack both a intro and an outro. See in Fable the story ends, and the game continues. I hardly see myself parading in front of school kids with nothing but my briefs on as "story", but more as a gameplay experience.
That's just small details, which don't matter for the "story". And games aren't able to make stories. Even if developers devoted time to story randomisation, the story turnpoints would always be programed by them. No matter how many they programed, you'd always be forced to take one of their paths, and never be able to create your own. You are in jail, you can use a spon or a fork to dig... but just because they programed the game to let you do that. You can't throw the fork at the eye of a guard, and pull his keychain though :) |
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BremXJones
08/10/04 @ 12:36
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Heh. Sorry, Marilena. The previous posts don't show up when editting, so I got it wrong entirely. Though with my tendency to make mistakes, I'd have probably done it anyway.
Anyway - arguments aren't about winning. It's about mutual finding of the TRUTH, so everyone wins. KG |
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BremXJones
08/10/04 @ 12:40
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"I hardly see myself parading in front of school kids with nothing but my briefs on as "story", but more as a gameplay experience."
But when you tell someone else about that, or recall it, it becomes a story. In the same way if you went to the pub tonight and told everyone about the debate you had today online - Man's a natural storytelling animal. And that slice of life fiction, without the artificial constraints of trad narrative, is very much acccepted in the world of literature. But they're not trad narrative, and wanting to meld trad narrative with true freedom is missing the point. The second a narrative has a true end - any end - then any moral decisions along the way becomes essentially pointless. Except that it makes life more interesting and the story resonate closer to you, which is the point of Fable, Deus Ex, KOTOR, Planescape, etc, etc. If a gamer's only looking for the optimum tactical decision, they're going to be disappointed. But my take's always been that videogames are more than just *games*. Er... I'm not sure if I had a single point to make in this post. I think I may just be dodging work. I'll stop. KG |
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It becomes a story about something you did on the game, not a story about the game. And that's the whole point. Significative things, like a main NPC dying, will always be coordinated with developer pre-programings, Maybe you can kill him earlier or not kill at all (in Deus EX for example) but that'll influence the path the story takes, not create a path of your own. If you want to tell the story of the game, you'll tell the story the game tells, not the details you modified along the way. You can say you marryed 3 women and 2 men, but that did not influence the story, and it's just really a detail in your hero sheet. And even if it did, the choice was presented to you by the developers. Not because you found something, but because they've put something in there.
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aubrey, yea, I know that they don't have to program every way. Not with reactions and gameplay at least. (the famous story of the B&W creature eating his (still attached) arm when he was without anyfood, in the alpha times of B&W when creatures could still loose it's limbs).
But with story, it's another matter. Because story evolves both scripts, and usually dialogue. Both of which are tightly controled. And if you look at the above example you'll also see that the freedom they provide needs to be very carefully monitored. Why? Because the creature had the freedom to look for food. And the freedom to explore. Since he was weak it decided to eat it's own arm because it was qualifyed as an object and they can eat any object (rocks and poop included). The thing is, all the inteligence disapears with the unexpected action. There are no animals, and I mean NO ANIMALS who'll eat themselves when starving. The reason for this, is that if they eat one of their legs, they'll probably die soon, not due to hunger but due to loss of blood, infections etc. The creature, only took a path that was available to it, on the complex matrix of choices programed into the game (and the programers only laied the lines, the matrix interceptions were "automatic")- but, when the programers realised creatures would eat their own arms when ungry, they reprogramed the arms values when still attached. The whole point is, that unexpected gameplay usually turns the experience into something amazing the first time, and crap the times after (because let's face it, the creature would go limbless prety fast the way many of us treated it). So, although developers don't create the interception points on the matrix created by the lines they made, they try to monitor them all, to make sure an aberration of gameplay does not occur. |
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BremXJones
08/10/04 @ 13:04
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Lowering tone attempt: You can fart, belch and drink yourself into vomitting in the game too.
KG |
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Thamuhacha
08/10/04 @ 13:15
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Conversations like this are why I love this site.
Excuse my marketing persons ignorance of programming but, .... Couldn't it work something like this: Any action you perform illicits a response from an NPC (either apparent, or invisible). The NPCs relationships with the game-world (its inhabitants, objects, ideas) will restrict (or shape) their responses to your actions. Wouldn't this, if done properly, shape a story? For example (simple example) you offend person A by hitting person B. By saving person A during a goblin attack (or something) you win back his trust. But person B now falls out with person A as a result because he still hates you. Maybe interactions of this kind are purely part of a situation development OUTSIDE the story that is running alongside. But couldn't a certain level of AI simulate "histories" that arise from these interactions? And therefore shape what you have to DO in order to ACHIEVE objectives. That's a story.
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 14:16
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BremXJones
08/10/04 @ 13:21
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I think you've just described the Sims 2, actually.
If you squint. KG
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 14:22
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Thamuhacha
08/10/04 @ 13:51
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>I think you've just described the Sims 2, actually.
Have I? Shit. I am just trying to understand the difficulties from a non-designer's perspective. And failing. |
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methinks thamuhacha has a pretty good point about the whole non-linear storylining stuff. pretty much every story that we read or see in films and tv is essentially a re-telling of a story that has been told thousands of times before. given enough r&d time it should be possible to design storyline engines that can take existing gameworld characters, throw in some new characters, pick a general plot outline or even a couple to intertwine making things more interesting, and flesh it out with random factors here and there.
however to get it anywhere near as immersive as a well written storyline by a human would be a LOT of work, especially when you consider that things like witty dialogue are the sort of things that differentiate between the good and the pap, which would be both very hard to get a computer to generate and speech synthesis is nowhere near the quality of even cheap voice actors yet. for the time being though, most of the developers and designers are interested in graphics ai and physics so it may be a long way off yet. |
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Seing that nobody noticed and being unable to write something related to the currently debated subject, I'll go wildly offtopic and say:
Hey Renzo, how are you doing? Still lurking? Edit: Or am I just confused? Your profile says this is you first post.
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 16:52
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Morgan Dreenaf
08/10/04 @ 21:26
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>Shinji
You are soooo f***ing right!!!!
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most recently on 08/10/04 @ 22:33
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captain-future
08/10/04 @ 22:15
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@CyberClaw and @Aubrey and other posters regarding "non-linear gameplay". thank you for your thoughts - it's a great thread.
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Chris Gardiner
09/10/04 @ 13:00
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Excellent review. Played loads of Fable yesterday and am really enjoying it. It's like Shenmue - to get the most of it you have to take it easy, poke about, and have fun.
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deathgibbon
09/10/04 @ 16:24
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Rented Fable yesterday and played the hell out of it. Not fantastic, but not bad either. 8 out of 10 seems a fair score. The combat's a bit button-mashing to me but is still enjoyable. Good interaction with the villagers is good, but the guards are pain in the arse. Especially if you're in Bowerstone. The game didn't seem to be going anywhere if you ask me. Complete a quest, wander around a town, go to Guild, get quest. Wouldn't buy it myself, but 8/10 seems about right.
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Shinjie, that's because you weren't evil enough. My hero (with the title Deathbringer), who is completly evil (there are many levels of real evil - first level, the horns start to show up, with skin stretched over them, then, they grow, and the skin bursts, and you see the dark horns bellow and the ripped skin arround, at this time the flies start going arround you, and both your hands and feet start to mutate, finally the horns will grow bigger, your will eye glow will turn red (I supose you have the shine in the eyes since you are a sorcerer), and you'll start to have a strange smoke red/blac coming out of your feet.)
If you are completly evil (smoking), people won't address you by your title anymore. They'll just say "ooooh", "ooops" or "Master" in case they are forced to address you (like for instance, if you chase them after they flee at your sight and engange conversation) :) Just in case you are wondering, I finished Fable once this weekend (in 3 days), and it was a really enjoyable experience. I only have 2 legendary weapons, and only opened 2 demon doors, and have arround 10 unfinished sidequests (plus 5 or 6 ones that I missed my chance at accepting). It's a short, but sweet game. I'm keeping this character, to complete it as far as I can, getting all the weapons, suits, etc. but Fable's enjoyment is in creating many characters and aproaching the quests from different perspectives. Personally I finished a totally evil guy, with a good mix of fighting, will and thievery skills (not archery, but thievery), and I'm playing a neutral (I do the things that I want at the time - so it evens out, I'm no goody 2 shoes) warrior (mostly fighitng skills), and a wizzard (mostly will with fighting skills for support). The fun is to keep playing the game over and over again :D I know I'll finish this 2 characters as well. |
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Royal Fool
11/10/04 @ 11:36
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I don't know.... I did enjoy the time I spent with the game, but I just didn't feel like finishing it. I got as far as marrying that Lady in Barrowfield, but no further. I already had a massively overpowered weapon, 7-7-8 in Strength stats and great armor and also full renown. What else was there to do, apart from tediously going through the bad plotline?
I tried fishing. Boring and badly implemented. I tried treasure hunting. The clues led me nowhere, and randomly digging garnered me nothing at all. Randomly kill stuff in the countryside and towns? Sure, but it had gotten boring enough while I was doing the main story. Get loads of cash? Had that already. I just gave up. It's a very limited game... beautiful game, but a short and limited one nonetheless. I'd give it no more than 7. |
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Thamuhacha
11/10/04 @ 11:47
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>What else was there to do, apart from tediously going through the bad plotline?
(Disclaimer - haven't played it yet) I think this is a problem for some RPGs. You can do the plot, and see not much else, or go off and explore first. If you go off and explore then you do have a tendency to be so experienced by the end that the final bosses are easy. Seems to me that designing these things is creative, but the balancing is just stats, stats stats. Still looking forward to playing though. |
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Royal Fool, you don't have to marry Lady Gray. She's a bitch anyway. That's not even part of the plot ;) (I marryed her, and beat the crap out of her after finishing the plot).
You can try finding the legendary weapons. You can try to open the demon doors (some of them have legendary weapons behind them). You can try to kill a whole town and buy the houses :D I dunno, I know I'm still having fun with my initial hero. As for digging, there are some places you should instinctly dig. Places some statues point to, certain camps, removed land, etc. sometimes you'll find silver keys. If you marryed Lady Gray, I suppose you just did the arena quest... which tells me you are yet to visit at least 1 village. You can't visit it unless you move the plot forward. |
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