GAMES: A kind, noble ruler...who married a whore. FABLE 3 : Xbox 360

As I previously mentioned in my Fallout : New Vegas post, I try to be an upstanding person in the realm of pixels and polygons. More often than not, it is because I feel I should but also because it is my belief that the good half of the game got more attention than the bad half. So it is in my best interest as a player to go after the best piece of game.

In Fable 3 I once again marched down the path of nobility with my prince's chiseled chin held high.

The game picks up where 2 left off, just one generation later. You are your son. From 2, that guy, you're his son. Your son. Whatever.

The Molyneux promise I heard early on for 3 was that your actions would have direct effect on the look of your kingdom. That I didn't really see. When you finally ascend to the throne (I'm trying not to give anything away, but you should have figured that out) you are asked whether you want your castle decorated in good or evil. While I'm curious what evil would have looked like, I went with good and saw no change.

I was kind, I was immensely giving, I slaved over a firey hand and steel blade for hours to give these people freedom and what thanks did I get?

Near the end everyone hated me anyway, even though I was virtuous and kind. But, just because I bought every store and most houses in the kingdom, people hated me.

I had a few loves out there, ya know a Prince has got certain needs. My first marriage ended in shambles, childless with a drunken wife.

So the second time around I married Stacey the Whore. Partially, okay, MOSTLY because I thought it was funny as hell. Every time I come home I am greeted by "Stacey the Whore."

But, in addition to my laughter I got 3 STDs and a black daughter. So perhaps the laughing wasn't worth it.



Fable 3 has some graphic issues, but more and more I'm curious whether the graphic popping that I'm continually seeing are poorly made games or my suffering 360, which I'm betting will die in the very near future.

Regardless, the graphic pops didn't matter to me, I had fun.

Combat was fun, frustrating to come up against a pack of balvarines without any health potion, but still fun.

New weapons all have different modifications you earn by performing certain tasks, that give certain perks. Like kill 200 hallow men and earn +30 to damage against hallow men.

The addition of the Sanctuary made weapon/spell/clothing switches a breeze. Start magically pulls you into this lobby where your butler stands ready and multiple rooms lead you to whatever you want to change. Clothing is purely aesthetic but, like I said, different weapons can have different perks, so changing them up can help in battle.

You can also combine spells, like fire and ice, to make icy fire balls. Or something.


Now, there is an inventory, but I never knew how to get to it. That is stupid. Nothing ever told me how to get it, potions and food will pop up when you are injured, but other than that you have to do some LT + RT magic and dance around in a circle or something.

How about this Pete? Back button. It didn't really do anything anyway.

Also a map button would have been nice, not that the maps (available through the Sanctuary) were overly helpful anyway. It barely matched the actual world.

The quest list is accessed in a similar fashion, which was also annoying.


The BIGGEST issue is the complete lack of control for interactions. What a mess!

Interactions with people is a huge part of Fable. You have to gain followers, friends, enemies or all. You do this almost entirely through interactions like Hug, Scare, Hero Pose, etc.

But you get three buttons when the interaction menu comes up. A, Y and X

A is good, Y is middle, and X is bad. But the action that comes up is, well, I was going to say random, but its not. It's chosen by the game.

So Dance came up on A almost all the time for me. I know it's a game and I'm not stressing about this, but I'm not big on me (or my videogame equivalent) dancing with dudes.

Because it's not like a little kicks, let's joke around dance. It's a fricking slow dance, with a kiss on the hand at the end. Come on!



The halves of the game, well it's more like the first 3/4 and the last 1/4 are different, you battle for the first part and the last bit you are the king and have to make kingly decisions.

That was a cool thing. Because you can promise all you want throughout the election, but once you get to the throne you have the grim realities of running the country. So you as the bastion of Hope may wear away quite quickly.

Because as a ruler it is the end game you have to keep in mind. So hearing the proposals for using a small swamp town as a place to dump all your kingdom's waste might sound cruel, but the economic gain is tempting.


FABLE 3

4 of 5 as a game
3.5 of 5 as a sequel

Beat it in one rental, considered going back through on evil, but figured the main quests wouldn't change and they wouldn't be as fun a second time.