At Waterloo, during one of those Microsoft info sessions, my name was pulled out of a hat and I went up to pick my prize. Unfortunately I was a late winner, so all I picked up was a copy of Fable for Xbox. It was pretty useless to me since I didn’t have an Xbox. Fast forward a couple of years and now I do, so I’ve been playing through Fable.

Fable was supposed to be an amazing game, where your actions had a direct impact on your character and the world. But when it was released, it was scaled back and all the hype was detrimental to its reception. In fact, it’s not even the best critically rated RPG on the Xbox (that belongs to Jade Empire). It’s not even the best RPG on the Xbox that implemented causality (KOTOR was better). After learning about that, I expected Fable to not be very good.

It wasn’t that bad though, it was fun in a WoW type of way, without the tedious grinding and lame quests, although it doesn’t support multiplayer. The quests were relatively easy and interesting, although some had certain peculiarities that resulted in me failing and having to repeat them. I didn’t mind running around and killing the bad guys either until near the end of the game where I had to fight an unending supply of undead. Part of the reason is because the game is short. I finished the game in about 15 hours (basically over Thanksgiving weekend) including most of the side quests.

The tangential aspects of the game weren’t all that interesting. It was hard to be evil unless I went on a rampage and killed everyone. The real estate and marriage systems were somewhat superficial. The trading system was too complicated. And I didn’t play any of the mini games. Aside from that, the only two criticisms I have is that the game is too easy, and the load/(auto-)save times are horrible. The loads between areas are annoying, but you also have to save the game each time you go on a quest. And if you’ve just loaded the game, you have to (auto-)save the game immediately after it loads…

Fable was a fun RPG, even if it didn’t have causality. I suppose its saving grace is that now I am at least somewhat interested in Fable 2.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games, xbox