In Fable II, if you’re well-known you’ll attract a crowd of followers whenever you enter a town.
I never got in on the Fable game for the original Xbox, as I was too busy playing World of Warcraft or something during that time period. I ended up picking up the original game several months back for a few bucks since I figured I wanted to try it before the sequel came out. I played it for about two hours total, broken up over several various days. I had a negative initial impression on it at first, but as I played it a bit further it got a little better. The thing I disliked most about it was the game was running in basically low resolution on a 4×3 box on my LCD. It looked dated and the dialogue/humor/etc. was definitely not American. I sort of struggled to understand the nested action/expression system in the game, and it was not very intuitive.
You can laugh, flex, etc. and people you do it to give you a reaction, but the confusing thing is that when you hit the D-pad direction (left, up, or right for a different expression theme), it performs the expression but then switches to the next expression in that group. So say I want to perform a playful expression like dancing. I hit the D-Pad right and when it’s over, intuitively I would imagine that if I hit the d-pad right again, I could dance again. But no, the d-pad right action is now whistling – a different expression but one that still falls under the social category. I had a hard time grasping that for a while and didn’t like how the specific expression assigned to a button would change automatically after I used it. Regardless, I pushed on for a bit and found the combat enjoyable enough to get further into the game. But then it seemed to suddenly branch out too much and I didn’t quite care what to do next so I just stopped playing.
For this holiday season, I expected to be spending dozens of hours in one game only: Fallout 3. Fable 2 was more of an afterthought for me – after not really “getting into” the first one. But when I saw it for cheap I decided to pick it up. And I’ve discovered it’s actually pretty good.
Does Fable 2 Fix the Issues I had with Fable 1?
Fable 2 seems to address many of the issues I had with the first game. The graphics were certainly cleaned up and now optimized to run in HD, and there’s a lot more handholding. I didn’t know about the expressions changing automatically in Fable 1 until I was taught about it in Fable 2. It was only after Fable 2 that I realized why I was so confused in Fable 1 why I couldn’t continue to perform the same expressions. What’s also quite useful is the inclusion of a breadcrumb trail in the game. Any quest, whether it’s the main or a sidequest allows you to set a gold pellet trail (like Pac Man) to the quest location. This is like in the Grand Theft Auto games where you want to set a waypoint to an area of the city and the map automatically draws the lines for you for the optimal path. Very useful. All in all, yes – all of the issues that prevented me from getting further in Fable 1 have been fixed with its sequel, and I’m actually probably going to go back to play the first one now that I understand the mechanics of the series better.
My wife hates the English accents of the characters in the game though. I’m personally fine with them, but I tend to end up playing online games with UK kids that speak like that so I’m more open to it. Of course, I don’t quite understand what half of those kids are saying, but it’s never that bad in Fable II. Could be a turnoff to some, but it was present in the first game as well.
Similarities to Oblivion
I actually felt like Fable II plays a bit similar to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but is simpler and more charming in some aspects. Whereas Oblivion takes itself so seriously the whole game, Fable II has lots of goofy stuff and crude humor that adds to its charm. Various expressions you can do and stuff make the overall feel for the game more for teenagers, but the game has an M rating for obvious reasons: you can seduce women, get married, have children, etc. Seems kind of odd to have such a comical-looking graphics engine to go along with these more mature themes.
I like Fable II’s simple inventory system – you can basically keep everything you pick up without having to worry about some annoying weight limit like in Oblivion. That type of realism just made for annoying gameplay. I can pick up and hold onto anything without worrying about running out of room.
I also like that Fable II has Oblivion’s “jump to” mechanic. Basically any area you’ve already been to you can automatically go to again by loading right to it rather than walking all the way there and spending needless time running back and forth. All that is deducted is a certain amount of hours it takes to get there, just like in Oblivion.
Fable II also has a leveling up system that is a tad bit similar to Oblivion, but nowhere near as crazy. In Oblivion, there was no actual preset leveling up mechanism based on experience points – whatever you did leveled that attribute. If you wanted to get better with a certain weapon type, you had to swing it. If you wanted to jump higher, you had to keep jumping to raise that attribute. While it was an innovative idea to level up the attributes that you used most, people thought it was ridiculous at times. Fable 2 keeps the leveling focused on three fighting aspects: melee, range, and magic. It’s a very simple system (perhaps too simple) where the X button performs your melee attack, the Y button performs your ranged attack, and the B button performs your magic. Attack an enemy with any of these three types and they’ll drop an experience orb color-coordinated with that fighting style. Killing the enemy forces a drop of several green orbs, which are usable for leveling any of the three fighting styles and not limited to the particular fighting style that the enemy drops when taking damage. That’s as far as the leveling extent goes that is similar to Oblivion.
I remember there were hundreds of quests in Oblivion. I would go to a new town and there’d be just too many things to do so I’d skip it all and stick with the main quest. I don’t really see that number of sidequests available in Fable II – perhaps two or three at a time per town. It feels like Fable 2′s content is much less than Oblivion.
Major Gameplay Themes of Fable II
The first major gameplay theme I discovered in Fable II that is not present in any other game is how important your status is. While Oblivion scratched the surface of this idea a little bit with getting people to like you to give you discounts in stores, Fable II goes further. Your character seems to have several major attribute bars, but the ones that matter most to other people are: Hate-Love, Thin-Fat, and Ugly-Attractive.
Based on whatever actions you do, how you eat, or how you dress, every other NPC in the game will react to you. If you dress poorly, people will think you’re unattractive, and if you continue to eat fatty foods, you’ll gain a lot of weight as well. Getting people to hate-love you are pretty easy though. If you continue to socialize and play around with people, it increases how much they like you, and if you continue to do good deeds and stuff that also increases your standing in their eyes.
If the NPC likes you enough, he/she will actually follow you around whenever they see you and even give you gifts. It even gets to the point where if they like you enough you can begin flirting with them, propose, get married, and move into a house. You can seduce practically any woman in the game this way, even ones that are already married. It’s pretty neat when you finish a big quest to help save a town and you go into town and everyone is following you and cheering for you and women are throwing themselves at you. You feel like a superstar!
The next major theme that is in this game is good vs evil. Not in the pure player vs enemy sense, but the path the player can take to go through the game. Any little thing he does can be considered good or evil, and moves the player in that direction on their bar. Doing good deeds raises your reputation in a good way, so people like you more, but doing bad ones causes people to begin fearing you more. I tend to play my games with a playthrough of being good first, and then a second one with being pure evil. My inclination is always to do the right thing. But then in this game, I was fooled in an early sidequest that I’ll let slide but I want to share.
I want to talk about it because I don’t think it’s that much a spoiler since it’s not tied to the main storyline at all but worth sharing. Still, if you don’t want to read about it then skip this next section.
—-MINOR SPOILER (Sidequest)—-
One of my early quests required me to assist a ghost so I could become more famous in the area. I went to visit the ghost and he had a simple request. He asked me to go find a particular woman, make her fall in love with me, and hand her his note. The note was basically the note she had given him, which was a hurtful note that she gave to him after I believe he proposed to her and it said bad things. In the end, it probably caused the guy to commit suicide. I thought, sure I’ll help him out. As a guy I can identify a bit with you buddy – and I will help teach her a lesson for you.
I found the woman in town, started talking to her, flirting with her, etc. until she fell in love with me. Then the screen prompted me with a choice: Hand her the note or marry her? I thought to myself from a pure gameplay standpoint, “Why marry her? There’s plenty of women in the game so I don’t need to jump into this so soon.” I handed her the note. She read it and ran off devastated. Job was done so I returned back to the ghost. When I got to him, I discovered that the woman was also a ghost there talking to him and she discovered that he was behind the whole thing. As a ghost, she just ran off and said she didn’t want to see either of us again. The quest ended and I got 10 Evil points. I was like, “What?! I didn’t know doing this was an evil act!” I guess maybe vengeance and seduction could be bad. But yeah, I learned about it the hard way…
—-END SPOILER—-
The last major gameplay theme I’ve discovered so far is the way the money is used in this game. This is the only game I’m aware of that you can literally buy any store, house, or residential abode you see. Every one of these has a piece of paper out front that you can check for how much it costs to buy. Buying shops allow you to get discounts and set prices – lowering prices increases the citizens’ admiration for you, etc. Buying homes allow you to sleep in the evenings, rent them out for money, or house your wife and children. You can also have multiple wives, so buying houses in different cities is a good idea to keep them separated. But yeah, I like making money and buying shops because then I get income from the shops without doing any work. You can also raise the value of the shops by raising the value of the land its on, making you more money and you can even sell them for a profit. Pretty in-depth use of owning property in this game which is fun.
The Other stuff
In Fable II you also have a dog that travels with you. I thought it was pretty gimmicky when I first heard the news, but he’s actually pretty cool. He’ll follow you and you can pet him, teach him tricks, train him to be better at attacking enemies, etc. But the most useful thing about him is that he alerts you when there’s a treasure chest nearby or there’s a good area to dig. You’ll be running down a path and he’ll start barking and lead you to an area where he starts digging. Just break out the shovel and dig up the treasure. I like that the dog isn’t intrusive enough that you have to watch over it all the time, while it also provides a tangible benefit.
One thing that’s a definite negative on the game is the bugs. People have come across game-ending bugs, and in general I feel that the game is a bit sloppy in terms of its mechanics. I’ve come across a minor bug several times where the targeting system breaks, and I can’t “untarget” an NPC after targeting them. The only thing I can do is quit and reload my game. Thankfully, that’s all I’ve gotten so far but my advice would be to try to play the game the way the developers planned for you to, as testing the game’s limitations may end up killing your game file. There aren’t multiple saves either, so if you encounter a game-breaking glitch, it’s back to square one.
My initial good impressions are wearing off though. It’s weird because I thought the game was fantastic and charming when I first started playing it, but as I continue to play through the game I can’t help but feel that the soul of the game is lacking. Maybe there’s just not enough content. Buying houses, charming people and getting married are all nice little diversions, but they should small distractions in the game. Instead, they’re practically half of the game, sharing the spotlight with the very short main quest. I need to put some more time into it and beat it first, but I will get a review out there eventually. This is honestly one of the first games I’ve played in a while where my interest and enjoyment skyrocketed when I first started it, but then came down pretty hard after a few hours in.
Fable II vs Fallout 3
While I haven’t played Fallout 3, I spent many hours in Oblivion so I have an understanding of what Fallout 3 will be like. If you guys are trying to decide between the “ultimate” engrossing single-player adventure this Fall, it really comes down to taste. Fable II takes place in a fantasy realm where you use swords and magic, run to towns and hang out in taverns, etc. We’ve seen many games with this setting before. Fallout 3 is a bleak post-apocalyptic world where you are just trying to survive and find any remnants of humanity. The setting for Fallout 3 is just not pretty. Running around desolate wastelands certainly aren’t as satisfying as running through gardens with blooming flowers, but that’s really a more aesthetic choice of whether you prefer Fable 2′s tried and true fantasy world or Fallout 3′s bleaker post-apocalyptic world.
In terms of overall gameplay, I believe Fallout 3 will still be more hardcore in terms of RPG stat-driven gameplay. It’ll be harder to play, but for those that are up for the challenge, the gameplay will most likely be deeper and satisfying. Fable 2 is charming in its more simplistic way, and sometimes people prefer that type of game more where you don’t have to think too much when you play. There’s no real cooldown for any attacks – the fighting in Fable 2 feels more like an action game than an RPG. I’d say that Fable II is more an action game with minor RPG elements and major “Sims” like elements where you interact with society. I believe that Fallout 3 is still a hardcore RPG through and through, just inserted into a 3D game engine. I also believe that based on content, Fallout 3 will probably be 50-60 hours worth of gameplay to Fable 2′s 20-30 hours. One can argue though that while Fallout 3′s game length may be a lot longer, it may drag on more and ultimately not feel as satisfying. I can’t judge that yet as I’ve yet to try Fallout 3 myself. But from the reviews, it seems that many consider Fallout 3 to be the superior game of the two.
