THE STORY
Time has marched on in the kingdom of Albion, taking its people out of the Middle Ages and into the Industrial Age, but the land is suffering under the rule of a tyrant king and revolution is in the air. It is up to you to place yourself upon the throne, but the head that wears the crown is heavy. What kind of ruler will you be?
Taking place years after the events of Fable II, you take the place of the son or daughter of Albion’s last Hero and king. After their death, your older bother has taken over the throne, and ruled the land with an iron fist. After seeing the brutality and madness of your older sibling firsthand, you escape the castle and vow to return with an army to win the throne for yourself. However upon becoming king you learn that a great evil is about to fall upon the land, giving you one year to prepare. Sacrifices will have to be made for the kingdom, and you’ll have to be the one to make them.
The story, all things considered, is rather good, albeit none too original. Fable III doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, but there’s something to be said about a good, familiar story. Rather than feeling re-hashed or dull, it comes across more like slipping on an old, worn-in shoe. Everything is familiar.
THE GAMEPLAY
The funny thing about the core gameplay is that it works, and it doesn’t work. There are tons of battles as you might expect, but sometimes you will be firing your gun at nothing, to swinging at thin air while some enemy rips you apart. While not a constant issue, sometimes you will grow frustrated with the temperamental targeting system. An interesting counter-point to this, however, is the revamped magic system. Several spells have been removed from the game entirely (like Confusion) and others have been turned into drinkable potions (like Time Control). What you are left with are six spells that can be, though an interesting new system, be mix and matched into combos spells. There some sick fun in mixing Flame with Whirlwind and sending burning tornados at your foes; or Lighting and Ice and stunning your victims before raining down frozen daggers of sleet upon them. Add in melee and guns, and combat will be kept pretty fresh throughout the game.
And speaking of temperamental systems, the fast travel feature and area map in this game may be among the worst I’ve ever seen. To start off, you have no mini-map of any kind. If you want a lay of the land you need to pause, go to the map, and click the area you want. Like before, the land of Albion is broken up into sections between loading screens; and while this makes the various “Collect So-And-So Many Whatevers” quests easier, the world never feels like a living, breathing thing. It’s always just stages. The problem here really lies in the fact that your maps are in no way accurate. Instead of an actual view of the land, you get a cartoonish general layout that passes over all but the most major details, lies about distances and terrain, and in no way tells you what exits go where or even where you’re standing. By extension trying to fast travel anywhere is a joke. More often then not, you’ll be warped to the very beginning of a level, even if you specifically picked out a destination on the map. However, sometimes you WILL end up exactly where you meant to warp to, and there seems to be to reason as to why sometimes this happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s a frustrating mechanic to say the least, made only more so by the fact that three games later, Lionhead
still has not yet implemented a better waypoint system. To get to quests, you’ll still be following glowing yellow sparkles down paths, but it’s a glitched system. I can’t even count the number of times the lines I was supposed to follow would vanish entirely after a battle, forcing me to re-accept a quest two or three times before it would show. Often, instead of telling me where to go, it would instead lead me back to where I had already been several steps ago, like the game was taunting me with its broken design.
Still, despite these huge problems, more often then not I found myself up into the wee hours of the morning telling myself I’d do just one more quest or make one more royal judgment before going to bed.
The second half of the game where you take the place of king is where the game really shines; giving you control over the entire land you get to choose the fate of your kingdom and you watch it change based on your every action. Make moral choices and your people will love you, but your treasury will suffer. Make immoral ones, and you’ll be branded another tyrant, but you’ll have gold. And money, just like in real life, is the true power. By the end of the year you need a set amount of gold to save your land, any less and a large chunk of the population dies. The less you have, the more citizens you lose. Now, you would think that this would make all the choices you have to make all the harder, and you’d be right… IF you weren’t allowed to dip into your personal funds for the treasury. Which you are.
If you’ve played a Fable game before, you know that your real money doesn’t come from fighting monsters (they give you none), or even doing quests (the people are cheap). No, the REAL cash is in real estate. You get paid every five minutes real time for every shop, stall, and house you own. By the end of the game, I had well over twelve million gold pieces on my person. To put that in prospective; I could have saved TWO Albions with that much money and still have enough left to go buy lunch. By the time the end of the game rolled around, I put all the needed funds into the treasury from my personal account, thus freeing me to make all the good decisions. I saved the world and everybody loved me. Thank you, money!
THE AUDIO/VISUALS
The graphics are pretty, sure, but they’re not going to be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. And in a time where graphics just keep getting better and more life-like, it’s hard to get too excited about a game that’s just okay. Every now and then you made stop to look over some vast ravine or sprawling desert, but a second later you’ll be moving on.
Like the graphics, the sound is passable, but not special. The music is atmospheric, but forgetful, the sound effects fit, but lack and real oomph, and the voice acting is great, but fails to come to life because of the script.
There are two unique items of note, however: the first being that the roll of your faithful butler is voiced by Monty Python star John Cleese, and while he brings a wonderful performance to the table, the game fails to capitalize on the fact that it’s FREAKING JOHN CLEESE! Give him a few more funny lines, for the love of god.
The second interesting thing is that, for the first time, your character isn’t mute. However, after the opening s/he has so few lines that they might as well should be. You spend so long playing him or her in silence that when they do speak, it’s almost jarring. It’s a waste, really. Either give the character a voice and make use of it, or don’t.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Fable III might very well be the best of the Fable series, but poor navigation, wonky fighting, annoying bugs, limited freedom, and several poor choices drain the life out of what could have been a better game. There’s a lot of potential here, but in the end Fable boasts a big show that it can not entirely commit to. While still enjoyable for what it is, it’s hard not to imagine what could have been.
PS: Lionhead, having to repair houses one-by-one to keep the occupants paying rent is a pain in the ass. Don’t do it again.
THE REPORT
SKIP/
RENT/BUY
1/2/3/4/5/
6/7/8/9/10
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