Fable III PC Review
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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.
