Thanks to the recent "It's free, so play it and stop
whining" promotion by Microsoft (no, not using the $, that's over done and
nobody cares anyway), I managed to experience the game series for the first
time. It's hard to judge just what exactly the game is trying to be and how it
is going about it when it jumps and changes so frequently.
Cohesion seems to be absent, at least initially, as from one
moment I'm running around a castle having woken up with a dog in my bed (literally),
to deciding the fate of several people on an enforced execution session. It
does raise a few eyebrows initially when you consider whether to execute a few
nobodies you've apparently never seen before or you have to execute your
"childhood sweetheart", which you apparently have known all your life
but in game, you just met and spoke to for a few seconds before determining
whether to have him killed. This might have worked had there been more time to
develop the history (supposed or otherwise) of the inter-character relationship
and led to a harder hitting impact on the choice. And making no choice kills
everyone, so the truly evil people are the ones who walked off for a cup of
coffee during the unskippable scene. I relish my evil coffee thank you.
The next thing I know, I'm running through a crypt with John
Cleese cowering audibly behind me while I'm immolating bats. A short while
after, I'm negotiating future peace promises with people while learning to cut
down creatures and shotgun people in the face. Which brings me onto the combat.
Fighting in Fable 3 is a mishmash of using magic, a gun or a
melee weapon, each set to their own button, holding down the buttons allows for
stronger charges and hits from those weapons. Movement and dodging is fairly
fluid but combat tends to descend into running away from enemies until you've
enough health to continue flailing combos and long ranging magic and guns
before the enemies get close up again for more health draining. It's basic and
it's just too simplified and could have been a lot better with perhaps a combo
system with melee filtering into switching up combat moves would have made for
a more interesting series of fights instead of playing keep-away while the
health-regen is playing doctor.
Thankfully combat for the most part can be ignored and in
some cases, run past, to get to the waypoints and skip the large fights
altogether. Given that most of the levelling system is purchased unless you're
trying to get the legendary weapons upgraded, combat seems to be almost
entirely forced and unnecessary. Given some of the later developments in the
game, it makes one wonder why it's there at all when you become ruler and have
to start actually making decisions on ruling a kingdom.
The game is entirely in 2 halves, the first half is running
around, exploring brightly coloured and picturesque locals, appreciating subtle
humour and playing "name that voice" with a large myriad of voice
actors and celebrities from Stephen Fry to Michael Fassbender and Simon Pegg
(rate them yourselves, I like them all, except that one... yeah... him...).
Developing a large ownership (or not, your choice, but I DO recommend you do
this) of buildings and stores to gain cash, doing quests to gain favour or
partnering up in online mode, getting married, having kids (which you can
ignore, another bonus) getting married again, divorce, adopting kids and
handing them back.
Then suddenly the game takes a dark turn and introduces the
eldritch abomination threat from out of nowhere. The game then quickly becomes
a game of "rule the kingdom" with the aim being to fend off the
threat within a year. This is done my making sure you've got cash in the
treasury while you'll be offered choices in the kingdom that ultimately boils down
to being a shitbag and breaking promises (more cash for you) or being a kind
and considerate individual that makes the "right" choices and leads
to you having no cash for the final boss fight. (Or take the hidden option of
donating shitloads of cash of your own money to make sure you have more than
enough before the fight, straight after day 121... I don't get the time skip
myself... and lets you do what you want, kill whom you want and just cough up
on the final day).
In essence, there's two games here and it's as if two
developers came up with their plan for Fable 3 and instead of picking one, they
chose both at the same time while someone occasionally sprinkles humour around
the game. There's a variety of depth behind the two layered surface if you're
willing to hunt for it but the effort doesn't balance the rewards that the game
provides. You can spend days playing this game just for an occasional punchline
and in some cases, have it go straight over your head. If the game had chosen
to be one thing rather than everything at once, it could have been a much more
enriching experience with a fuller and longer lasting impact, particularly for
the choices and decisions that are made within the game, depending upon whether
you're playing as a dick or trying to do the best (dick route is amusing at
times and turfing out orphans to make a brothel is entertaining).
Eventually the game becomes a contest of how big an e-dick
you can be when you're shown leader boards of how many groupies you've fucked
at the same time to how many STDs you've caught by jumping the bones of the
local crabs breeding ground, to how many locals you brutally slaughtered while
trying to get the "I can kill people for cash" achievement. (More on
such achievements in a later entry).
Overall it depends what you're looking for if you're going to
enjoy this game, if you're looking for subtle references and a shallow morality
series of issues, you can find them happily here. If you'd rather look for
something deeper with more of a focus on what it's trying to be, you would do
well to avoid this interesting experiment.
Don't kiss the dog, it looks weird.
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