When the original Fable came out four years ago, there was a gruesome crash of the notorious Molyneux hype train that left a lot of players bitter and disapointed. I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t pick up Fable til at least a year later.
My only expectations going in was some regurgitated hype from a kid I ate lunch with in high school. Even so, I was still unhappy with it. It seemed to fail at delivering its most core ideal: choice. The opportunities to express your moral compass seemed few and far between, something made all the more noticeable by the game’s short campaign.The main joy I derived from Fable was being so evil that my footprints turned to blood, a feat easily achievable by repeatedly decapitating Albion’s respawning guard population. Even this was tainted however, when I discovered some combination of sword restricting safe zone and my character’s feeble 60 year old fists rendered me incapable of killing my wife. So Fable went back into its box, never to be heard from again.
With a letdown like that, I was a little skeptical about revisiting Albion, but I’m glad to report that I found myself pleasantly surprised. There’s been a lot of new choices thrown into the mix, and while it still has its flaws, I found it much more engaging, and replayable, than the first.
The first thing that struck me when playing Fable II is just how visually stunning it is. Maybe it’s just the breath of fresh air from the grey and brown and dark all over that’s taken over nextgen games, but Fable’s storybook stylization and bright palette really struck a chord with me. The art direction as a whole is very consistent, and, even more importantly, very consistently polished. Across the board: animation, spell effects, environments, characters, all very nicely done.
As we all know though, a good RPG is never all about the graphics. So let’s talk about what’s new on the character sheet of Albion’s new hero. For one, this iteration lets you choose your hero’s gender. While by the end of the game this choice may actually look irrelevent (more on that later) it is, nevertheless, a nice gesture. Further customization of hair color, tattoos, and clothing is on lockdown until the adult stage of the game, when your character’s body also becomes a canvas for their morality.
Being good or evil is much the same and pretty self explanitory. If you’re good you kill bandits, don’t cheat on your spouse, and perform sock puppet shows for children. If you’re bad, you join the bandits, sacrifice your spouse to the shadow temple (YES!) and train your dog to urinate on children. Playing the neutral party in this game can be a very difficult balancing game, and really just sort of forced. Fighting bandits one minute and sacrificing the traders you saved from getting robbed the next? A little strange. Of course there are ways to fine tune your morality (and physique). Eat organic vegetables? Good and purity points abound! Tofu is practically saintly. Pies are literally sinful in this game, and eating animals is downright evil. Funny commentary on modern society? Oh, yes. Just a little annoying when you’re emulating Korgoth the barbarian and you want your character to get good and drunk without instantly gaining twenty pounds and a bad reputation.
Abilities are still split up into strength, skill, and will, but there have been some changes as to how they impact your character. You can now upgrade anywhere and anytime you want, which is a welcome addition, and you no longer age every time you level up, instead tying the aging to the actual storyline. The leveling system is simple enough for anybody to jump in and play with without a manual. You use an ability, you get experience in that category, you buy more abilities, you get better. Certain abilities also have a profound impact on your character’s appearance. Strength will make you buffer, skill taller, and will, uh, more glow in the dark. While this shallow approach makes it easy to customize your character, it also has a potentially unfortunate side effect if you’re not careful. By the end of my first playthrough, my generalist female character was not only twice as tall as the average citizen of albion, but her broad shoulders and trunklike calves made her androgynous at best. Combine that with her husband constantly commenting on her strength in bed, and I found myself too disturbed to play her any longer. Realistic? Somewhat. Equal opportunity between sexes? Absolutely. Gross? Yes. I’m a girl, and I appreciate the effort made here to include body types that are not the stereotypical video game vixen. But could her muscle at least have gone to her thighs instead of her shoulders, seriously? I picked a female character so that she wouldn’t look like a man.
Anyway, enough of that tangent. There’s also a very distinct imbalance in this part of the game. While you (my boyfriend) may have dreams of being an evil lesbian spellcaster (to avoid looking like a man) you’re going to find your life very difficult, because 90% of the enemies you face are going to charge straight at you and attempt to beat you to death the old fashioned way. While at higher levels this may not be as much of a problem, it makes every battle without a sword very drawn out and difficult to start. You could argue that this is just something that happens in RPGs, and that a level one wizard in D&D has the exact same problem. The difference is, of course, that in D&D you have 3-5 other characters to use as meat shields, and you don’t have to navigate a terribly clunky spell interface while being evicerated in real time.
Your one constant companion is, of course, your dog, who varies from golden retriever to hellhound based on your moral decisions. He doesn’t attack constantly, just when you’ve already done most of the work, so his primary functions are to hunt treasure and be adorable, both of which he does with admirable gusto. There’s even a series of self-help books available for your dog, which teach him everything from how to roll over to the best way to rip out a bandit’s throat. The dog’s novelty might wear off a little bit after a couple of playthroughs, but if you have ever caught yourself squealing “Puppy!” in your life, you really can’t help but love him.
So we’ve covered all your adventuring staples, what about the other side of the game? Buying houses, chopping wood for a living, impressing villagers into giving you presents? I honestly found that this was the element that added the most replayability to the game. The game is very different if you wait til the end of your adventures to settle down or if you shack up with the first dancing gypsy you see. If you’re a loner with no interest in the domestic, you can spend all your money on swords and guns and hair dye and just keep moving on to the next thing. On the other hand, picking up a house and husband/wife to put in it has substantial initial investment, and then requires subsequent upkeep payments. Not to mention you have to actually show up occasionally to give them some loving and their favorite present. Of course, if my experience was indicative, finding a man with a good personality, a job, and good looks is harder in this game than it is in real life, so you may not even have to worry about it.
One thing that seems decisively unheroic is that it is actually much easier to make a decent amount of money by doing something conventional, like serving drinks at a tavern, than saving the world. In fact, it’s too easy. Get yourself a couple levels of experience in any job and you can easily pay for a house by the time your shift is over. That is, of course, if you can stand to play the mini games that long, which are all variations of hit the “sweet spot” on a bar with a changing range and a moving dot. Not the most entertaining thing in the world, especially after you’ve served your 40th pint and heard the same lush say “The perfect amount of foam.” after 29 of them. This seems like a mild case of over-design, where they were afraid the player didn’t have enough to do being heroes so they started throwing in day jobs and pub games and broken economy simulators.
It’ll have to do though, because the storyline is not what will not keep you coming back for more. Like the original Fable, there are only so many big choices you can make, though I will say that they are at least a bit deeper and harsher than before. The main campaign is lengthier, but the narrative is still nothing to write home about. It’s generic fantasy at its best. It’s well acted, and presented in a nice package, but it’s still predictable and cliche. You do have the option to skip conversations, and the missions themselves can be a lot of fun due to the inherit hyperactivity of the combat system, so playing through again isn’t a drag.
I’ll say this as my final note though: this is a game that knows when it’s doing something bad. It regularly makes fun of itself, and it’s got that hip, cheeky sort of humor you expect when reading item descriptions in Sims games. It knows it’s a stereotypical fantasy game, it’s got problems, and it’s cool with that. It thinks you could be too if you’d give it a chance. I say, if you’re debating Fable II, go for it. There’s a lot to do, you’re bound to at least like some of it.
