Fueled by the small amount of excitement surrounding Fable III’s PC release (roman numerals deployed for additional classiness) I finally broke down and, rather than waiting for the potentially Superior PC version, purchased it for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Video Game System.
Turns out the game had nothing worth waiting for. I’m sure the PC version would have fixed one major issue, the frame rate tanking every 72 seconds (rough estimate), but that’s just one on a digital versatile disc loaded with more problems than it contains fun, and most people like fun more than they do problems.
The first of these issues, ignoring the terrible engine, is the interface. All of it. Any useful data has been removed from easy to access places and instead dumped into a small hub location which pops up in place of a pause menu. Frustration levels within this area peak when, after being forced to wander around and stare at walls to access the required information, everything typically culminates in the appearance of a bloody menu.
Sometimes it’s the friendly kind of menu used to navigate thousands of electronic devices around the world, other times it’s a completely unintuitive floaty piece of crap. However, the fact that menus still pop up all over the place suggests there was never any intention to remove them from the game completely, so quite why I must roam around a dull room containing a butler advertising Lionhead’s horrendous Fable 3 DLC is beyond me.
Once navigation of the pause menu room is complete it’s time to visit the map, which offers no navigational help whatsoever, but does allow you to pick from a list of mostly boring quests to complete. Select one, let it teleport you to the nearest location and begin following the gold breadcrumb trail of fun. Would you rather find your own way around the world than follow a glowing line pointing straight towards an objective? Tough, the quests have no where near enough location based information to make that a viable option. Instead just hope the gold trail never randomly disappears at a rare fork in the road.
Continue following the trail, sometimes halting movement to allow the game to stream in more of the world (unless you wish to play with a vomit inducing frame rate), and enemies will be encountered. Some will have the nerve to attempt to block your attacks and keep you locked in the dull combat encounter for slightly longer than is necessary, others will just stand still and let you tear them apart with one press of an attack button, and some may even exchange a few hits with you.
Don’t worry too much if that last thing happens, health regenerates so the worst case scenario is roly-polying around the world for a couple of seconds as the enemies fail to deduce a solution for such trickery. Just hope don’t fall through a wall or get stuck in an animation, avoiding bugs is one of the more challenging aspects of Fable 3.
Still, staring at the glittering gold trail is probably one of the more interesting way of getting to the desired destination. Alternatives include holding an NPC by the hand and dragging them around, which somehow manages to look worse than the hand holding included in a certain 10 year old PlayStation 2 game, or following around an NPC who refuses to run as they have some important dialogue to read through.
Perhaps the reason for some forced character following was to give you a chance to look at the wonderful environments. If you enjoy candles then they certainly can be wonderful, the game appears to be full of the damn things. I’m fairly certain someone done a pass on the dungeons at the last minute and decided to stick a candle in every barren space discovered.
Later, after following around gold trails and engaging dumb enemies in combat for long enough the end of the game will approach. Stephen Fry and some other person begin reading from a bland script in a format which is supposed to represent a debate. It’s all in place so the game can offer a vast array of moral choices in quick succession and the choice to pick between the floating good icon, or the floating evil icon.
I forced myself through the readings with the hope that at some point a writer may become inspired and realise this is the perfect place for some humorous interaction between characters. That never happens, all I found was one person reading a couple of paragraphs of dialogue about promises made, then Stephen Fry responding with a couple of paragraphs of dialogue, typically making the same points about saving money as the last time he was speaking.
At this point the best option is to stand around for several hours and accumulate vast amounts of money so that the best ending is achieved. Once that’s over activate the last couple of moral choices and fight the evil bad end boss. Beat him by using the same tactics as every other enemy in the game.
Quite stunningly Fable 3 feels like a major step back from the previous games in almost every area, but it does still have a dog, and I can still rename him Molyneux. The dog does still have path finding issues though, and normally only points out treasure in the world after I’ve started running towards it.
Feeling I may have been too harsh on Fable 3 I’ve decided to interview my friend with whom I attempted to play some co-op (it bugged multiple times).
Rik asks: Would you like to say anything positive about Fable 3?
Clifford responds: I liked what it could have been.
There we go then.
Excellent internet site, determined several something entirely new! Subscribed RSS for later, aspire to see much more updates exactly like it.