Fable III PC Review
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Like the previous games in the series, Fable III is an action-adventure title with role-playing elements integrated fairly loosely into the experience, and as a result, has good mix of exploration and combat. You won't find any skill checks or extra non-combat abilities in Fable III, so the vast majority of character building goes towards improving fighting skill. Battle is simply unavoidable in Fable III, so don't expect to be able to get through the game without dealing a significant amount of death, but it also isn't the focus of the game either. Exploration makes up much of the game, and is fairly rewarding, with lots of extra loot and collectables to find, some of it placed right on the beaten path, and other bits well-hidden, but often revealing new quests, secret areas, and so forth. Meanwhile, being Fable, there is an additional social simulation aspect to the game, which revolves around forming relationships with characters in the game world, and represents the biggest opportunity for freeform play in the game, and the "softer" side of role-playing. The balance between all of these is handled pretty well, and no one aspect of the game comes to the forefront as dominating all others you'll split your time pretty evenly between these facets of gameplay, and will rarely be bored as a result.
Game features and mechanics
Combat is of the hack-and-slash variety, with the player able to specialize in either Strength (melee), Skill (firearms) or Will (magic), which do exactly what they say on the tin. Leveling up is handled both by the acquisition of Guild Seals effectively experience points and through simply fighting enemies. Guild Seals are spent to upgrade the base abilities of the player, such as melee damage, but also allow for the purchase of extra abilities, like higher-level mini-games (used to make money), and additional magic spells; meanwhile, these abilities and even individual weapons can be leveled up and improved through repeated use, though this effect is a bit more subtle, and mainly serves as an additional reward for the player sticking with predominantly one type of approach to combat. Even though by the end of the game I was able to unlock all the abilities and max out my combat levels, I still found that my predisposition towards magic and guns resulted in melee combat being quite difficult for me, and I couldn't enter the fray for more than a few seconds without being nearly knocked out. Stick to your strength, though, and few players will find themselves ever dying (or knocked out, as there is no death in Fable III) as long as they have a healing potion on-hand.
The major problem with combat in Fable III is that it's significantly lacking in variety. There are only a handful of enemy types, and the ones that there are tend to fall into distinct categories: there's the weak trash mobs, the stronger melee soldiers, the distant ranged support, and the magic user that exists to summon in reinforcements and generally make your life annoying. There is little to no difference when fighting different types of enemies beyond these (classes), and whether it's Shadows (ghosts/wraiths), bandits, Hobbes (goblins) or Hollow Men (zombies), you won't have to change your tactics much, if at all. The only enemies who require something a little different are Balverines, fast-moving werewolves, and even these can be defeated relatively easily through dodging. Worse yet, many of the more distinctive enemies seen in the first Fable, like golems, are simply no more, meaning that not only does combat grow a bit tiresome by the end of the game, but it's significantly behind the combat in previous Fable games to boot. The additions of Spell Weaving (combining two magic types together to form new spells) and a huge selection of Legendary weapons initially come across as promising, but can do little to make up for the sheer monotony brought on by fighting the same enemies over and over again, especially as one realises quickly the differences between them are rarely worth getting excited about - I used the same fireball + shock spell combo throughout the whole game and was never put in a situation that demanded I change it. Combine that with liberal regenerating health, and even on the PC-exclusive "challenging" mode I rarely felt my life was in danger. Combat in Fable III has the basics down, but the ease and repetition mean that it quickly becomes routine rather than thrilling, and the potential for a complexity is wasted.
The exploration side of the game fares far, far better than combat, at least. Although not quite a sandbox game, the environments available to explore are typically quite large and open-ended, and progression through the game is not entirely fixed there are several optional areas and many, many side-quests which help to flesh out what is otherwise a relatively straightforward storyline. These quests can be found both by simply exploring the world and talking to characters, or by opening the map screen and choosing them from a list. Although this can feel like it cheapens the exploration side of the game a little bit, the extremely large number of chests, hidden digging spots (highlighted by your faithful dog companion), and other miscellaneous collectables, like Silver and Gold Keys, used to unlock special chests and doors, help to mitigate that feeling. There is a lot to do and see in Fable III, and while some is handed on a silver platter, much of it requires extensive exploring to find, and any fans of 90s-era platformers like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie will feel right at home in finding every last treasure. Fortunately, much of this content is optional and unnecessary to enjoying the game, so you can freely skip by all those things if you wish.
Quest design in Fable III, meanwhile, is fairly standard. Just about every quest in the game is 100% linear, except for in cases where you are given an explicit choice (such as to save or kill a character), and while there's a fair number of escort, collection and fetch quests (including the optional relationship-building quests), many of the others in the game are a bit more interesting, involving dungeon-delving, a boss encounter, or a mini-game or puzzle of some sort. Most quests are fairly short and straightforward to finish, the longest being about half an hour, but they also tend to build on each other over the course of the game, so you'll frequently find that a person you helped in the past requires your help yet again down the road, or an area you helped to liberate from some monsters has been built up and developed into a small town. In this respect Fable III does a much better job than prior games in the series, in that it does feel like your actions have an ongoing, if slightly scripted and superficial effect on the world; that these sorts of features are incorporated into both the main storyline and side-quests is also nice, and as a result there isn't a clear dividing bar between the quality of Fable III's content whether you pursue the story relentlessly or take time to go after the optional content, all of it is engaging. The lack of significant choice in how to actually solve problems is a bit disappointing, but par for the course for an action-adventure/RPG.
Finally, there's the social simulation aspects of Fable III. These have existed in all the previous titles, with a fairly rudimentary renown feature in the first game giving way to a much more complex system in Fable II, where each NPC had individual likes, dislikes, and opinions of the player character; advancing one's status with an NPC was relatively simple, but still had a bit of nuance to it. In Fable III, much of this nuance has unfortunately, rather than been expanded upon, been stripped away and over-simplified. Social interaction is limited to approaching a given character and pressing the use key/A button, at which point the player may choose to perform either a (friendly) gesture, (rude) gesture, or) funny) gesture. The specific likes and dislikes are gone, so rather than having to play to those preferences if you want someone to idolise or hate you, instead you simply press the appropriate button until their slider drops or increases. Once you've increased an NPC's reputation high enough, that NPC will give you gifts and ask you to perform fetch quests; eventually you might be asked to go on a date and even marry, in which case you will need to purchase an appropriate home and provide gold for your family's needs. There's also a benefit to having people that fear you, however, as they shower you in terrified praise and pay tribute, so if you're an evil character you can expect that the tiny village you previously tormented will fear your presence and give you gifts, while the more secure towns and cities will send the guard after you for your crimes. It's admittedly a pretty nice touch to see droves of peasants cowering in fear as you strut by.
Perhaps it's just me being jaded, but the social aspects in Fable III don't come off as particularly meaningful. While getting gifts from people is nice, they're likely to do this when your moral alignment shifts into the good or bad territory anyway, so there's little need to bother with gaining fans the hard way; unlike in Fable II, you can't appeal to crowds, either, which means that you'll need to do these mini-games to each and every NPC you want to impress. And while it's nice to be able to raise a family and even have children should you wish it, it's also an additional burden that really doesn't add much to the gameplay; Fable II, different NPCs had different personalities, likes and dislikes, so you could at least theoretically take interest in people based on their traits, but in Fable III, every NPC is effectively identical save for appearance, thus, there is little to no significance to anyone in the game unless you choose to assign significance to them. This could have been remedied by, say, being able to train your friends or spouses as companions, giving them new equipment, and leading them into battle; it would add an additional risk and reward, making the social aspects of the game valuable for more than just simple role-play. As it stands, though, this portion of the game strikes me as both gimmicky and woefully under-developed.
A Fable worth telling?
While Fable III's gameplay is more or less standard for the series, excelling in a few respects and falling flat in others, it's always been the game's unique fairytale charm, absurd and satirical British humour, and focus on choice between good and evil that has defined Fable, so it's high time I got into that. Fable III begins with the player character, either the prince or princess of Albion (sadly, race is not an option), beginning a usual day in Bowerstone Castle. A brief meeting with the player's apparent love interest (the opposite of gender chosen at the start of the game, which is a bit odd considering the game allows for same-sex relations) is interrupted when the player's older brother and King of Albion, Logan, decides to have a group of civilians executed for peacefully protesting against poor work conditions forced on them by Reaver, who returns from Fable II in a significantly less annoying role. When the player is dragged into intervening by his or her love interest, Logan shows just how much of a jerk he is by forcing the player to choose between the execution of either the love interest, or the protestors.
Whatever decision is made, the player is shortly whisked away by Walter, a long-standing mentor and advisor to the royal family of Albion, in order to lead a rebellion against Logan for his increasingly tyrannical ways. Throughout the course of the game, which is divided into two parts, the player will first have to gather allies to aid in the rebellion, and later rule over them as King or Queen of Albion. It's a great setup, and it sets expectations high as the promises made during the first part of the game threaten to come under threat during the dire circumstances which arise in the second part it's meant to show that not only is ruling a kingdom difficult, but serves to test the player on providing for long-term needs at the expense of short-term ones. While I don't want to go far into spoiler territory, the unfortunate fact is that, while the story is able to occasionally wring out some surprisingly emotional moments towards the end, it seems to take itself far more seriously and assumes the player is far more invested than it has the right to. While there are no major holes in the story, unlike the prior games, it seems to come at the expense of depth and coherence, and as a result, the ending is wholly underwhelming, arbitrary, and the ultimate villain is left almost completely unexplained. You know something is wrong when a mid-game set-piece battle is more involving and significantly longer than the final desperate struggle against evil the entire game has been building up to.
For as many good ideas as Fable III has, it simply fails to execute on so many of them. The cracks begin to show even five minutes into the game, and they rarely let up throughout its course. The first major choice in the game, between having the player's lover or the protestors executed, is meant to test the player's emotional ties and commitment, the personal versus the common good, but the decision falls completely flat because neither the protestors or the lover are given sufficient development one is someone we're assumed to care about by the game because it's a cute girl or guy, and the others are a vague construction of the innocent citizen being persecuted for simply speaking up. Such a decision doesn't test the emotions or morality, it only baffles, and many of Fable III's choices later in the game fall flat for similar reasons. For such a big part of the game, it's a shame that ultimately the decisions come down to either completely arbitrary ones for characters who are given little to no development, or to binary good/evil choices which end up being trivialised by the game's mechanics.
This problem is only nagging in the early stages of the game, where some railroading is to be expected in order to get things going, but during the second half of the game it becomes nearly intolerable. During this period, the player must rule the land of Albion and raise money for an army to repel an impending invasion; don't have enough money by the time the invasion comes and civilians might die. Unfortunately, as King or Queen, every single decision you are called on to make boils down to either paying money out of the treasury to improve quality of life for citizens, or doing something horrible in order to fill the treasury; some of the choices you're given are so abhorrent as to be comical, like the option to turn an orphanage into a brothel, or instate child labour. There is never any moral ambiguity in any of these choices you're either a reasonable, benevolent ruler or a horrible dictator that everyone hates, and if you try to take the moderate route you'll have people alternately cursing and praising you as you walk the streets, as the game clearly isn't well equipped to handle a moderate ruler. It doesn't help that the game goes out of its way by highlighting just which choices are (good) and which are (bad) by labeling the options in either blue sparkles or red flames, just in case you might be confused as to whether turning a national wonder into a strip mine is going to be frowned upon.
What's worse, these decisions completely boil down to money, which is available in abundance. As with previous Fable games, copious amounts can be made by grinding mini-games or by simply buying up and renting out all property in the world, which poses a very brief initial challenge but soon becomes trivial as you make far, far more money than your expenses can ever incur. For all the fuss the game makes about the need to be thrifty and how you'll have to contribute to the treasury out of your own pocket, it becomes both hilarious and rather sad to see your finances constantly going up far in excess of what the costs of a good life and security for the entire nation incur. It also creates an absurd gameplay-story divide, whereby the clock is supposedly constantly ticking down but only advances at set plot intervals, yet your funds increase in real-time (about every five minutes), so it's possible to stand in the throne room for weeks on end and build up millions of dollars even though the plot states that destruction is knocking at the city gates. If there had actually been a true race against the clock, or the player's bank balance only went up based on plot progress, this problem would have been mitigated and the challenge of raising money could have been much more involving. Better yet, rather than reducing the impact of decisions down to money, the consequences could be more specific - for instance, perhaps your preservation of a certain forest would lead to under-equipped soldiers and thus more casualties, or removing prohibition would lead to lazier workers and thus shoddily-constructed defenses. Instead of being put in tough decisions where you may have to betray your word to the rebels you promised the world to for the greater good, this divide never means more than setting you back another twenty minutes' income. Perhaps this was done to make the game more accessible to mainstream and casual players, but the damage done to the second half of the game ends up being fairly irredeemable when ruling Albion was supposed to be such a key feature of the game in the first place.
User interface, or lack thereof
These sorts of completely avoidable and stupefying design decisions define Fable III as much as its good qualities do, and these extend to the user interface just as much as they do the game's main story hook. Like much of Fable III, Lionhead has gone with the mantra of (simple is better) and largely attempted to eliminate menus, maps and other interface elements in order to involve the player better in the game world. This attempt has resulted in the Sanctuary, a sort of pocket dimension which serves as the player's home base and pause menu, where rather than selecting options from a list, the player runs from place to place, interacting with "physical" objects. Instead of an inventory, there's shelves, racks and display stands for your clothing and weaponry, which at first comes across as a neat way of visualising the player's equipment. The problem with this, though, is that there are so many items available and so little space in the Sanctuary that there is no way it would be functional or intuitive to hunt through fifty different clothes racks to find the one outfit you like. The solution? Yep, menus. Lionhead, in their quest to eliminate the interface, ended up having to resort to menus in the end anyway, but because of the way the Sanctuary is broken up into several rooms, it's actually far less efficient than even the poorly-designed list inventory in previous games, especially given that the need to visually display everything can result in more time wasted as objects must load in, and only a few can be shown at once before the player must turn to the next "page" of items anyway. What starts out as a reasonably interesting feature quickly reveals itself as poorly-thought-out, and ends up being a chore to use rather than a convenience. Interfaces have always been a necessary meta-element in games, and players accept that. The Sanctuary, in concept, isn't an awful idea, and would have been great as an optional feature, but as the only way to exchange gear, spells, clothes and so forth, you'll ironically find yourself using and swapping out far fewer of them because doing so is just so clunky and time-consuming.
Fable II turned some heads back during its release when it eliminated the mini-map in favour of breadcrumbs, basically a GPS system made for a fantasy game, which displayed a glowing trail guiding the player to his or her next quest objective. This system returns in Fable III, but the lack of quality world or level maps makes it even less bearable than in Fable II yes, there are maps available, but in a counter-intuitive move, they are highly abstract and don't even accurately represent the locations they are meant to depict, thus, there's no real reason they should exist in the game in the first place. The breadcrumbs are marginally effective in bringing you to the right place, and fast travel helps mitigate some of the problems, but these have their own issues to boot. First, the breadcrumbs are white, rather than yellow or some other colour, which means in certain situations you will actually struggle to see where they're leading you (mostly a problem in snowy areas of the game). Second, they can only point to one objective at once, and thus can't be used as a general wayfinder because they only point you in a direction, rather than give you an overview of an area like a map does. Third, half of the time, these map replacements don't even work. There were numerous, far-too-frequent occasions where the game would fast-travel me to the wrong location for a quest, only to point me across an entire region of the map to get to the correct place, which I could have fast-traveled to anyway. Sometimes the breadcrumbs couldn't even keep up with how fast I was moving, or led me in the wrong directions, or even circles in one instance. While I appreciate the feature, and it has its place as a component in the game, it's just that a component, not a replacement for a proper world map or mini-maps. Much like the Sanctuary, the lack of functional maps seems like a small thing, but it eats away at you and compounds with other problems over the course of the game to the point where sometimes getting from point A to point B can be a hassle even if you've visited those locations in the game world a dozen or more times over. Combine that with certain interior areas which feature multiple levels, multiple entrances and exits, and levels with a severe lack of visual landmarks, which all make mini-maps a near-necessity for proper navigation, and you have a recipe for a game where the player is dependent on half-functional systems that should only be there as ancillary convenience features, rather than replacements to tried-and-true methods.
There are a number of other minor problems plaguing the interface. Just about everything has been made context-sensitive, which means it's impossible to check how many health potions you might have until you're actually in combat and need to use one, or to check your finances without either teleporting to the Sanctuary and running into the treasury, or trying to buy something. There are certain items, such as trade goods designed to be bought and sold for a profit, and gifts and toys for your family members, which simply aren't visible in any way unless you try to actually use them. The game will also give you handy icon pop-ups related to your family, quest status, and so on, but these aren't always accessible easily and only seem to appear when the game decides you need to know, not when you actually want to know. While these little issues are less a problem over the course of the game, they're just slightly annoying enough to grate on one's nerves from time to time, and once again shouldn't have passed playtesting, or, frankly, even the first draft of the design document.
On the other hand...
I realise I have spent quite a bit of time ranting about Fable III, and many of its shortcomings. It is frustrating, whimsical and unsure of what it wants to be, and at times absolutely bone-headed in some of its decisions, and I believe it deserves to be called out on many of these things, because they are problems which have embodied the Fable series, and to a lesser extent all Lionhead games, for many years now. I also want to stress that Fable III is not, contrary to my ranting, a bad game. If you are able to look past these problems with Fable III, you will find a highly enjoyable and lengthy game with witty and occasionally hilarious dialogue, a stable of celebrity voice-actors who inject a good deal of personality (including John Cleese and Stephen Fry), lush and even beautiful visuals, intuitive controls (interface excluded), some excellent music (the desert theme stands out for very good reason), and more than enough content to keep most players satisfied for the 40-50 hours it should take to find all the game's secrets and complete all its quests.
Fable III's world is also quite large, and varied, and does not suffer the same problem previous Fables did with their (objects in mirror may be bigger than they appear) levels, nor does it feel bloated or inflated beyond what is necessary, and there is very little obvious filler to be found (at least if you accept the social sim side, mini-games and so forth as legitimate game elements). There's even a few quests and new areas that open up after the main story is finished, meaning players who want to see everything will have something to look forward to after the credits roll, with the world bearing the scars of the final decisions made on the throne. And, if you have a friend with the game, Fable III almost begs to be played co-op, as there are even certain game features which aren't accessible without a friend. As much as I was upset at all of the problems in Fable III, and as much as they ultimately harmed the game for me, it is still impossible to deny that Fable is fun to play. The problem is that all these problems are in spite of the issues I have detailed above, which largely stem from Lionhead's ill-fated attempts to reinvent the wheel. They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I think that statement applies quite well to Fable III.
What about the PC version?
Of course, Fable III originally released months ago on the Xbox 360, and it's only now that I've gotten around to playing it on the PC. Many of the problems with Fable III have already been well documented by others, but what of the PC version of the game? Is it improved? Is it a better experience? Are there new features that make playing through it worthwhile, or worth buying over the Xbox 360 version? The answer to those questions is (kind of.) The bar was set fairly high years ago by Fable: The Lost Chapters on PC, which was a great improvement over the original Xbox version of the game, featuring some excellent visuals that still hold up well today, a configurable interface with plenty of hotkeys and other convenience-saving features, and a good amount of new content which helped to expand the woefully brief original campaign. While it didn't receive any updates after its release, for the most part it was a stable, bug-free port that didn't feel cheap or rushed.
Fable III doesn't reach the same quality level of The Lost Chapters on PC, but it comes fairly close. According to Lionhead, the control system has been completely revamped, and I believe it. The game moves fluidly, features highly customisable keys, and barring some mouse smoothing, has few blemishes in that respect. The interface has also received a few changes to make it more palatable to the mouse and keyboard, such as a new weapon selection system (on the Xbox the three main face buttons map to each weapon type), although most of the menus are still laid out identically to the Xbox 360 version, and some of the conventions, like holding buttons down to confirm selections, unfortunately remain. You can also plug in an Xbox 360 or similar controller and it controls just like the console version, which is a nice touch, especially as the game is very well suited to it (unlike The Lost Chapters, which had no gamepad support). Likewise, there are a fairly large number of options to be found for customising visuals, more so than your typical console port, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to toggle anisotropic filtering or anti-aliasing just yet. One would find it hard to confuse Fable III for a native PC game, but I have seen both better and worse, and Fable III definitely tends towards the (better) side of things.
Unfortunately, there are some things that bog Fable III on PC down. The most obvious red flag for some players is Games for Windows LIVE, which many players dislike. I don't share this sentiment, but it's not my preferred DRM/distribution platform either; your mileage will vary here, so whether achievements and in-game DLC shopping are worth it is up to you. For the record, I had no problems stemming from the Games for Windows integration whatsoever. Rounding out the new features, improved visuals aside, is the new "challenging" difficulty mode, but as mentioned earlier, it's still not up to par with the curve other games can provide - it's what Fable III's normal mode should have been from the start. Additionally, there were a few bugs I ran into, including very occasional audio skipping, and what seemed like a memory leak, which caused performance to drop until I Alt+Tabbed or restarted the game, but I'm not sure blame for the latter lies on Lionhead or NVIDIA and AMD for their video drivers. Some users have also reported save corruption, but this never happened to me. While the PC version does have some additions made exclusively for it, it's also the same as the Xbox 360 version in terms of content, as well, so as far as I can tell no bugs have been fixed in the transition to PC, but these are fairly minor and mostly come down to occasional issues in level geometry like flickering textures. Whether or not Lionhead and Microsoft are committed to fixing up the few remaining problems for the PC remains to be seen, but those issues that do exist are documented fairly extensively by players. In my opinion they are not game-killing, but they do tarnish what could be one of the better PC ports I've seen lately.
As mentioned, The Lost Chapters came with a whole lot of extra content, effectively serving as an expansion pack on top of the base Fable campaign. This, however, is 2011, and we are in the age of DLC. As such, Fable III has not received any such expansion pack, but rather a collection of add-ons, some more worthwhile than others (anything from new outfits and hairstyles to additional quests). While the Xbox 360 Collector's Edition DLC is included with the PC version, and several free DLC packs have been released for download, unfortunately PC players will have to shell out money for the two more substantial updates, the Understone Quest Pack and Traitor's Keep. I downloaded and played both of these for this review, but I'll keep things short and to the point. The first DLC, Understone, despite its lower price, is underwhelming in the extreme, and does not feature sufficient new content to warrant purchase by most players, taking only about an hour to blaze through, including its mini-games, one of which is recycled from the main story. Traitor's Keep, meanwhile, takes place after the main story has been completed, and is of far higher quality. Dealing with a revolt at Albion's top-secret compound for the most dangerous and insane criminals in the land, it features several new full-sized areas to explore, is a decent length, and feels every bit as well-made as the rest of the main game. Microsoft really missed an opportunity to sweeten the pot by including the bigger DLC packs with the PC version of the game, but as it stands Fable III is still very much a complete game even without them, and for players who enjoy the game, I can recommend that Traitor's Keep is a very solid addition.
Closing thoughts
It's very clear right off the bat that Fable III is a game designed with accessibility in mind, but its accessibility has come at an obvious cost. Almost every feature of the game has been made to be easier to use, depth has been stripped down to the bare essentials, and even the story seems to take a back seat, with the plot being linear, underwhelming, predictable and anti-climactic. Despite all of those problems, Fable III manages to be a lot of fun at times, and I did not regret my time playing it, even after a good 40 or so hours play through most of it. Maybe it's Fable III's enthralling, beautiful world, or the well-written dialogue, or simply the feeling of rising up from the gutters (less literally in Fable III's case) in order to become a living legend, but Fable III is, in spite of its flaws, still an enjoyable game, which is why it's so frustrating to see fall flat on its face in more than a few places. For every good idea there is a bad one, and there are so many places where it fails to utilise its full potential. While this is par for the course for the Fable franchise, and admittedly the franchise has always been pretty ambitious, these failings have been consistent for years now, with few signs of improvement, and I don't think Lionhead can get away with making yet another Fable game with all the same flaws, even if those flaws are the result of a genuine intent to improve.
I can recommend Fable III, but with a very big (but) attached to it, and with the advisement that you may want to wait for a lower price if you're still on the fence. While there's more than your money's worth in Fable III, the numerous design issues and over-simplified mechanics simply can't be ignored by even the most forgiving fans. It's the worst Fable game, no question, but that doesn't mean it's an outright bad one, just underwhelming, and maybe a little out of steam after all these years. It's fairly inevitable that there will be a Fable IV at this point, so hopefully when it does come, it will finally remedy so many of these problems that have come to a head in Fable III, while preserving those very same things that make the franchise iconic and enjoyable.
