Fable 2 is Better Than Fable 3

ah Fable 2 widely regarded as the superior Fable sequel I've done a video on Fable 3 going into why even though I did enjoy it when I first played it and even to this day I still enjoy it people don't like it as much and that video did quite well in fact it did far better than a video on my channel has any right to so I thought let's do a video about fable 2. Fable 2 is the reason why a vocal minority of people treat Fable 3 as if it ran into their house murdered their entire family took a [ __ ] in the airfryer and stole the family dog because simply put in execution Fable 2 is the superior experience and considering That's the older game that's probably not the way it should be the games share an awful lot of similarities as they perhaps should but Fable 2 has qualities that three simply lacks is it a perfect game hardly even if only briefly it's got James Corden in it my situation is unbearable but I've got a lot of love for Fable 2 and hopefully this dumb piece of Internet content with a terrible title can convey that in failing that we can have a laugh I guess but anyway please enjoy this perfectly sane 110 relevant video on a 15 year old game because I simply have nothing better to do Like Fable 3 after it Fable 2 begins with a simple Choice male or female and then the actual opening from there is perhaps the most Fable thing ever because a bird poops on your head our protagonist is known by the name sparrow and we have an older sister named Rose and we are homeless children living on the streets of Bowerstone considering the premise of fable is that we're going to have power beyond comprehension one day narratively speaking it makes sense to begin from a place of complete powerlessness our current objective is quite simple we must follow the Golden Trail as there's a bit of a commotion going on down the street Fable 2 immediately smacks us with the cold atmosphere of Bowerstone in what appears to be a particularly freezing winter there's snow falling from the sky and we also get a sense for the type of environment we find ourselves in were surrounded by criminals scammers and one who's trying to Pawn off random trinkets claiming they have magical properties this is truly a magical mirror for as long as you look into it it will make you beautiful I'll take it very wise now just remember the magic only works if you look at it in complete darkness however one apparently actually does mergo has come into the possession of a music box that he's willing to sell for five gold pieces thankfully there's an old blind woman named Teresa here who's willing to help us out by letting us know that it might indeed be magic you know Teresa from Fable 3 the progress Benchmark while in Fable 2 as it turns out she had a more Hands-On role she actually physically existed in the Mortal realm and by extension actually has some form of impact on the story being told she tells us in a cryptic way that the music box is indeed magical and then [ __ ] off so our objective is no longer survival it's obtaining five gold pieces so we can buy a music box so we have to do five jobs each paying one gold piece of Pop we can help a guard collect arrest warrants pose for a photograph clear router Warehouse of beetles track down some stolen booze meet up with this dog and of course assist James Corden in finding love I'm not doing that last one we get locked into this atmosphere of the impoverished District of Bowerstone that we find ourselves in and it's quite nice and the snow if anything elevates that and also creates for some nice visuals even though the games from 2008 I can't help but think this part is aesthetically pleasing and we also start to see the humorous side to the Fable Universe I like that the introduction feels more grounded than Fable 3s and by that I mean we don't start in a castle it very quickly escalates to being in one and then you very quickly shot out the window in this setting the concept of hardship is better understood and you could certainly make a meta argument about the morality system being more compelling this way and also starting as a child means the passage of time is going to play some part in the storytelling anyway after doing the jobs and acquiring the gold we finally get a hold of the music box and Rose decides to make a wish I wish I wish [Music] thank you but where did it go look I love an anti-climax as much as the next man but that one right there after all that hard work is Thoroughly taking the piss we know what Rose wished for she wishes to live in a castle like Castle Fairfax but since the music box disappeared as soon as the wish was made we decided to go to sleep in the night a couple of guards find us and say that they're here to take us to Castle Fairfax so maybe the music box wasn't a scam after all so we're taken to see Lord Lucian in the castle who upon discovering that we are heroes kills Rose and then tries to kill us oh [Music] Teresa and the dog that's been following us find us so I guess we're not gonna die and then we get a nice cut scene explaining to us the opening of the game and then the time Jump between being a child and looking like a scrawnier version of human Shrek with Teresa guiding us this is where we begin our quest to exact revenge on Lucian it's here where we're released on the actual gameplay and it's a remarkable just how many quality of life differences there are between this and Fable 3. for example the pause menu is just a pause menu whilst I understand the novelty of the sanctuary in Fable 3 and I don't dislike it sometimes simple is best in the end of the day a pause menu makes more sense in any game really it gives you all the information that isn't relevant to immediate gameplay on tap you can't really argue with that games very swiftly lose quality when they attempt to fix things that weren't broken in their predecessors I guess that's one such example for fable 3. I wouldn't say that's a source of props for Fable 2 necessarily it's just good that they didn't think to [ __ ] with that yet as for actual gameplay the combat isn't massively dissimilar to Fable threes after it however it is far less heavy on the kill cam animations and at the same time you have to manually collect the experience orbs which go a little bit deeper than they do in Fable 3. rather than investing Guild seals on a road to rule there are four different types of experience orbs that can be invested into different things so in order to keep your skill upgrades balanced you need to balance your play style however if you don't do that you'll find that in the upgrades certain things will be available to you and those will probably be the helpful things whereas the things that aren't helpful to you will probably be the things you can't invest in simply because you haven't picked up enough of the right color of experience points it's not massively complex often you can invest two different types of experience points into one skill but it's a neat system that at the very least responds a little bit to your play style because the experience points that drop when you take on an enemy depend on how you engage that enemy on a fight by fight basis there are also experience boosts depending on how well you handled it again it's not a massively groundbreaking system but there's just more of an emphasis on giving a [ __ ] than there is in Fable 3. you can't actually die in combat in Fable 2 either but there are at least some consequences so usually the experience orbs will drop mid-fight and then when you kill the enemy so if there's a large group of enemies you're best bet is to deal with them all and then suck up all the points manually because you have to grab them manually if you get knocked out in combat before you get a chance to do that all of those orbs will be lost whereas in Fable 3 if you're knocked out in combat you just lose your progression to your next Guild seal and considering you can get an entire guilty a lot of farting in a random NPC's base which takes 10 seconds by the way that's not much of a loss I gather the experience orbs a bit as I go in Fable 2 so I can't say it's a massive loss in that game for me either being able to die in a game with combat is the only way you can really make the combat challenging in any way but I would say that Fable 2 is a touch more challenging than three so at the very least for me getting knocked out is more frequent in Fable 2 which means it's good to know how to avoid losing experience unnecessarily there's also a greater variety of enemy archetypes in this game to adapt to to keep you on your toes including monstrous trolls that rock up on several occasions and somehow aren't present in Fable 3. canonically by the events of Fable 3 they've been wiped out but that's just game code for we couldn't be bothered putting them in boss fights aren't massively common in Fable 2 but they are refreshing when they Rock up which is rare for me to say about boss fights really but Fable 3 outside of formalities doesn't really have bosses as such just introductions to brutish enemy archetypes and a final fight but there's no light meter or anything to tell you you're progress in that fight you're just swinging your weapon until they eventually conk out and then on top of that what you can actually do in combat outside of your damage output actually depends on how far through progression you are as well there are certain abilities that you pick up as you progress rather than just having them and then increasing damage over the course of the main story so to summarize while the two games have fundamentally similar combat systems fabletooth take is set up to be infinitely more engaging than threes it's not perfect but it does fit away from that the Fable 2 dog is also capable of finding treasure except in this game the in-game economy doesn't [ __ ] itself inside five minutes so that actually has value but for the time being as far as story is concerned Teresa has decided to send us to the center of Bauer Lake where we find an old hero sanctuary of some description though this one actually has a physical location her objective after Awakening our hero Powers is to head to bauerstone which quickly turns into a detour to deal with some Bandits so that's exactly what we do taking the leader's head as a trophy we stick it in our pocket I guess here we receive a choice to free these Bandits captives or let this guy keep them for a fee I chose to kill this guy take his money and free them anyway after all I am what they call an outside the box thinker except in my case the box is almost always on fire but now we can head to Bowerstone for some reason the entry to bowstone was closed 120 miles away upon arrival Theresa tells us via telepathy that she will not be able to meet with us for another five minutes so we need to go off and do some things so naturally I found a blacksmith and started doing the jobs it's a reliable way to make money fairly quickly unlike Fable 3 though you don't level up your abilities in this role through the skill tree or skill path or whatever you want to call this you do so by doing the role and earning a fixed amount of gold to do it which increases exponentially every single time you level up so the positives are the in-game economy doesn't [ __ ] itself in the first five minutes however the negatives are the in-game economy doesn't [ __ ] itself in the first five minutes see part of the joy of me playing Fable 3 however unintended it was was going from baking pies in the humble town of Brightwall to owning literally every property in business in the country if you play your cards right you'll have a monopoly on albion's oxygen before it even gets boring and though it is arguably terrible game design it's funny Fable 2 keeps its economy far more sensible it takes longer to work your way up to the big bucks and even then doing a simple job is nowhere near as silly in the amount of gold it actually pays also the QuickTime events in Fable 2 are arguably that little bit less predictable than actually provides some element of challenge that makes you feel as if this isn't a cheat code to getting rich quick it isn't hard but you're just more likely to stumble on occasion and feel really peeved that you lost your multiplier and have to start from scratch again making Mega Bucks isn't at the Forefront of this game's story though so you don't have to worry about that inviting you in the rectum later but with your money you can also invest in property such as shops and houses though you don't need to find any perks in order to do that first regardless it's a good way to get regular passive income that pays through reliably and you can also repair rented houses in bulk there are also sales in shops to look out for to snatch Bargains On weaponry and other Provisions that you might need and that in my opinion is rather nice Teresa finally shows up and decides to show us this spooky structure in the distance as it turns out lucian's up to some naughty [ __ ] and needs to be stopped so we need to mooch to Oakfield to find some allies not to be confused with Oak Veil from Fable one but to get there we need to pass through our old haunt Bauer Stone Old Town however it's changed since Sparrow was a child now it's a respectable District because we gave the warrants to the guard and not a man who can't even spell his own name and this is something that happens sparingly in Fable 2 but is massively appreciated just the same because there are large time jumps at certain points in the story parts of the world change depending on the decisions you make so if you made bad decisions as a child bauerstone Old Town would be a crime-ridden dump but because you didn't do that Bowerstone Old Town is now a respectable happy district and Derek the guard got a promotion you see in Fable 2 your morality actually has some consequences which is nice whereas in Fable 3 the morality system is largely superficial but doesn't run much deeper nor does it have any actual consequences so you can Massacre people all over Albion and provided you're a property Tycoon it won't matter because come the end when you're King you can still afford to be a benevolent ruler whereas in Fable 2 if you're a bad guy you will quite literally grow horns if you make bad or otherwise selfish decisions it impacts the world around you in minor ways or major ways in Fable II however in Fable 3 the worst that will ever happen is every mpcd spawns anyway after facing some Bandits and some Hobs we finally arrive in Oakfield nothing can stand between me and accomplishing my goal of bringing Lord Lucian to heal foreign is another job you can do in Fable 2 and look at the dog you just patiently watches as I single-handedly DeForest all of Albion this job can get a bit annoying when NPCs begin obstructing your view and throwing you off but hey if they want to get axed to death that's on them I suppose foreign this is Roland he rocks up and sings about you throughout the plot anyway the Abbott of Oakfield wants us to prove that we are strong enough to help him and that means we need to build up our Renown to a certain point and the best way to do that is of course side content I have big arms Fable 2 does well to give you natural break points in the story where you can go off and explore the actual open world spaces because there's side content here that simply enhances the experience and it has an impact as you generate Renown you become famous almost for helping people or for being a total tosser but that's a different story and the side content also serves to enhance the unhinged factors of the Fable universe and bring them more so to the Forefront a love interest I have a gift for you it's the decapitated head of a bandit what do you mean she liked it I'm just the luckiest woman in the world I don't think side quests are too big of an issue in Fable 3 either I actually kind of like Fable side quest across the board they're often charming and entertaining and therefore welcome but once we have enough Renown we can return to the Abbott he sends us to meet up with his daughter Hannah Venture into an ancient Crypt and do some questionable things with a massive jug [Music] yes we also get to fight some Hollow Men so it's not a totally wasted trip returning to the surface the Abbott is dead Hannah now chooses to go by hammer and then takes off with Teresa but now he can count the hero of strength among our allies one of the three Heroes that we need to face Lucian the other two being the heroes of Will and skill I have a question how does Roland know where we're going to be before we do also I found a special sock in the woods I'm not entirely sure if I should use it though anyway our next main objective is to track down the hero of will Garth is that a floating inverted square-based pyramid anyway Lucy's boys got here before we did so sadly we missed the boat on that one with chemotherapy Darth Maul in town we never stood a chance there was nothing you could do what An Inconvenient time to make money we know that Garth has been taken to the Spire that Teresa showed us before so breaking him out is just a game of slipping in unnoticed but before we get to that Teresa sends us after lucian's former Butler Jeeves for a thousand gold pieces he tells us the location of lucian's Journal I buried lucian's diary for safe keeping this is the map to its location foreign [Music] he's far too cowardly to double cross you of course there's a troll guarding it because why wouldn't there be but with the diary acquired it's time to return it to Teresa and thankfully it's runic and encrypted so she still has a function I will translate it for you as a result of Teresa's translation of lucine's diary we discoveries recruiting guards out of Westcliff through the arena known as The Crucible our best bet for getting into the Spire then is to be recruited as a guard and the way to do this is by winning The Crucible however before we're even allowed to try we need to build up our Renown though to be fair Hammer didn't really help in this situation why do you need the Strangler part if you're already a Mad Dog well it's intimidating in it seems confusing to me I mean I get Irving the Strangler Gibbons it toughens it up a bit doesn't it but it's not like Mad Dogs you're given name you know I never thought about it before but she's got a point no she doesn't look if you really want to compete go make a name for yourself so the crowd will actually give a flying look that's all you need a bit of luck and you'll be famous in no time no way I'm letting that friend of yours in no she can stay out here and make fun of my name all she likes an impressive display Hammer you have managed to alienate the very men whose favor we need so as you can imagine the only thing for it is to do more side quests the amount of renown you get from a piece of side content increases as you go through the story so doing a side quest in Westcliff is going to get you more renowned than doing one in Oakfield for example unless that side quest unlocks later in the story so there's some attempt to keep how you generate Renown on topic almost as the amount of renown required to meet these checks increases every time you need to do it I have a wizard hat now which means I'm unstoppable the more you go with Fable 2 the more you realize that Fable 3 is just a watered-down version of an incredibly similar experience and I think that's probably one of the main reasons why a lot of players prefer too is not even remotely a perfect game but it benefits from that added layer or layers of attention to detail that Fable 3 simply doesn't have if you wrote down the rough outline however of both games on paper I wouldn't be able to tell you which is which necessarily and as you start adding details from an outside perspective I'd have guessed that Fable 2 was the sequel and not three until you take into consideration the visuals Fable 2 being the older game of the two is actually kind of baffling because this feels like an improved version of fable 3. it just came before it my love for Fable 3 stems from the fact that I experienced it first therefore I went into the game with zero expectations whatsoever and by that I mean absolutely none which is now on Impossible if you're familiar with the franchise going in so going into playing Fable 2 which I did after I played three I know it's backwards I guess I anticipated a more weathered and less fleshed out version of Fable 3 when the reality is it's kind of the opposite this feels like the improved version and that's kind of the thought process that allows me to still love Fable 3. I feel like I hopped onto the main games at least from Rock Bottom anyway moving on once we've picked up enough Renown we can return to Westcliff and fight in the arena spanning the course of eight rounds of intense combat The Crucible tests your patience when it comes to killing things endlessly as you go the intensity of the enemy archetypes that you face ramps up there are traps you can use there's gold that you can pick up if you do the round well you get bonuses it's still categorically what I'd refer to as a slog in the sense that it probably doesn't take up as much time as it feels like it does but it is still quite enjoyable because the game's combat is quite straightforward and yeah I like it so you battle your way through Beatles Hobs Hollow Men Bandits valvarings and a troll before emerging from The Crucible Victorious and likely far wealthier than you were before and now we've proven our combat prowess which allows us to infiltrate the tattered Spire under the guise of being a guard this is the first time we see Lucian since the beginning and oh boy have the years not been kind to this man this portion of the game isn't long for us but we're actually in the Spire over the course of 10 years in-game time if that makes sense as it turns out the guards here are just as much prisoners as the actual prisoners like Garth so we meet with the commandant I am the commandant and we very swiftly discover that he has some rather Nifty fantasies I am going to hit you and you are going to thank me [Music] thank me obey this is going to be the longest winded rescue mission of all time over the course of our time here we get given duties that test our morality in the sense that we've got to avoid being morally righteous because we'll be punished for that and that won't be nice such as three minutes watching these bloke starve to death but finally after a decade in the Spire Garth manages to free himself and then us and then we killed the commandant and finally Escape [Music] after reuniting with our no doubt now senile dog All That Remains is to find the last hero the hero of skill turns out it's some pirate fellow named Riva yes that Reaver however to get to his location we'll need to pass through wraith Marsh which will be dangerous so Garth proposes we head to his Tower so he can bypass that altogether instead we get ganked by an isosceles triangle and then teleported to the center of wraith Marsh Anyway come on what was the point so now we've got to fight our way through some raids the good news is they're piss easy to kill they're just a little bit irritating we also find our way to actual Oak Vale from Fable one though it's beyond destroyed now and completely abandoned but it's a nice opportunity for Teresa to lob some lore at us so I'm all for it though to be fair it is quite difficult to hear her whilst slicing up Hollow Men but after a short Journey we arrive at the delightful Hamlet of Bloodstone it's a wretched Hive of scum and villainy so in other words it's Prime real estate we head up to riva's mansion and you guessed it he wants us to prove our worth by gaining Renown Before He'll even give us the time of day that's it scoot off you go vamos give egg so naturally now's a great time to go off and do side content because you kind of have to for example I help out a man named Toby who insists that he can save the town if he sits down and has dinner with a prostitute this guy is definitely not suspicious in the slightest we can also go and gather some pirate treasure it really doesn't take long to amass the Renown required to win Reaver over and we'll probably line our pockets with some delightful gold in the process and now we've got to do Riva a favor too unlike the other Heroes he's not very morally righteous he gives us the dark seal and tells us to head to a spot within wraith Marsh so we do indeed head to the shadow Court basically we need to sacrifice our youth so Riva can retain his that or we could just give it to this woman here basically Riva has sacrificed our youth if you keep a hold of the seal your eyes will go red and you will look old silver being here lowest big time for that but when the sacrifice has stopped me will come this [Music] Upon returning to Riva Bloodstone falls under attack by lucian's forces so he quickly flee through riva's rear passage regrouping with hammer and Garth and now we have the three Heroes and can finally take on the great Shard and then we return to Hero Hill where whatever this happens to be is interrupted by Lucian who steals the other Heroes tries to shoot us again just like he did when we were a child except this time the dog gets in the way I like to think that he just wanted to die at this point unfortunately the dog's sacrifice was completely in vain because Lucian as it turns out has indeed discovered reloading dreamlike sequence of kicking chickens shooting bottles and beetles later and we find ourselves back at the tattered Spire where we must locate and put an end to Lucian he appears to be up to some that so of course we then get stuck in and then shoot him and call it a day lucian's now eternally kept so we've accomplished our mission Teresa presents herself to offer us a reward we can choose to restore the lives of all who died during the construction of this fire however we could choose to revive our dog instead or we can just have lots of money so naturally I chose the dog and then the Spire does a thing and then our decision gets scrutinized by the other Heroes and with that done Teresa then kicks us out of the Spire The World is Yours to enjoy but the spire is mine be gone [Music] and with that Fable 2 is finally concluded Fable 2 is a terrific short RPG with an awful lot of charm it's still massively enjoyable even 15 years later I can see why many players will hail it as Superior to Fable 3 but at the same time I still love Fable 3. even if it is for all the wrong reasons and even though my entry point to the franchise is still my personal favorite I cannot dispute that technically speaking Fable 2 is the better game the gameplay is more in depth it doesn't try to fix things that aren't broken there's more emphasis on the morality system which actually has some variation of consequences that matter and the in-game economy isn't on drugs with regards to the new Fable in the works at play around games I feel as if Fable 2 has a lot of lessons that can be learned from Fable 2 is by no means a perfect game but it's a perfectly captivating short RPG and that's all it needs to be because in the end of the day video games are about having fun and I find fun to be abundant in the Fable titles anyway thank you all for wasting half an hour of your lives on this pointless bit of Internet content I massively appreciate that sacrifice if you enjoyed this video maybe hit the like button maybe if you want hit subscribe share the channel or the video with your friends comment some mad stuff down in the comments section I really don't mind if you like history maybe check out my History Channel decades via the link in the description I recently mooched over to Berlin to check out the history behind the Berlin wall and it was massively fascinating and hopefully I turned it into a half decent video but if not no worries there'll be plenty of content coming this way too but anyway until next time take care and goodbye [Music]

Channel: Fizhy

Views: 238,871

Keywords: Fishy Yarpster, Gaming, Gameplay, Banter, PC gaming, Fizhy, Fishy, Fable 2, Fable 3, Fable 1, Fable Anniversary, LionHead Studios, Fable, Playground Games, Fable 4

Id: H6TyB3iRvZg

Length: 32min 1sec (1921 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023