Fable: The FULL Series Retrospective

fable a series with roots in morality and lighthearted fun games known for both great success and great failure but how did such a great start and up so off course through this video i'm going to explore the entire fable series i'm going to be diving deep into each of the mainline games and talking about everything else in between we'll look at story mechanics development and try to figure out what happened to the series overall for this video i played fable anniversary on pc fable 2 and 3 on the xbox series s and fable the journey on the xbox 360. i'll also be talking about the cancelled fable legends the shutdown fable fortune all of the tie-in books in between and finally the upcoming fable game towards the end of the video i also talked to some fable creators who had their hand in the fable community skyrion the fable historian and the salt factory so stick around to see what they had to say about fable i'll be spoiling all of the projects listed above so spoiler warning for everything fable also last note if you've seen me talk about the three fable games previously you can skip to the last section to see me talk about fable the journey fable legends and all that stuff hey dad it's me your favorite son and today i want to talk about fable fable began development in the year 2000 by big blue box which was a satellite studio of lionhead lionhead was founded by peter molyneux who had a big hand in fable this was big blue box's first project as a studio and they weren't interested in producing a generic title they wanted to make something unique and wanted to give players diversified experiences they specifically wanted to create a role-playing game that no one had seen before normally in a role-playing game you play the role of some character but in fable you play yourself within the world this was the thesis of fable to allow players to do what they wanted and this was to be reflected in the character itself the world was also supposed to react to the way the player acted creating a realistic environment for the player to inhabit the game's setting was based on medieval europe and the team went out and looked at natural scenes and environments for inspiration they wanted the game to feel like a classic fantasy with tinges of dark the team described the world as being a labor of love putting a large amount of detail into the environments and wanting the surroundings to be as much a part of the experience as the combat was the team crafted over 5 000 animations for the game wanting each to have its purpose and place this was just another way of delivering a world that reacted to the character and a character that interacted with the world danny elfman was involved in the soundtrack for the game being interested in the project and wrote the theme for fable the composers wanted the soundtrack to have multiple styles both fantasy and dark but also trying to have a motif that connected the tracks if there's one thing that i can say looking back on the team's statements and their ideas for the game they were all in sync it's clear that the entire team was on the same page as to what the point of fable was and i think that this is crucial in making a game work most of fable's success can be attributed to this the vision was clear and everyone working on it knew what goal they were trying to further fable was released on xbox september 14 2004 fable would also get a re-release and expansion called fable the lost chapters which added some quests and dlc and would be released on pc the next year fable the lost chapters would also get a re-release as the anniversary edition which graphically overhauled the game and changed the combat releasing in february of 2014. for this review i'll mostly be playing fable anniversary as it's the most accessible easy to use and up-to-date version i'll show some comparisons here and there and illustrate the differences between the first two versions when necessary the largest thing that this version of the game does is overhaul the graphics it makes fable look more up to date than even the third game in the series it looks fantastic and makes it a little more pleasing to experience than the original the anniversary edition also boasted an easy to use new interface which i have some gripes with but we'll get there they included a new save system that allowed the player to save any time and making the ui operate like a book they also included achievements for the first time with even some help from the fans which i thought was a nice touch the game begins with a narrator showing us a mural this acts as the framing device for the entire game the narrator describing the events of the game through these stained glass murals were introduced to the setting albion albion is mostly a green land rich with agriculture farms and small towns dot the continent to the south is the dark wood where dangerous balvarines prowl and to the north is the place where cities like bowerstone and the heroes guild call home a few islands dot the coast of albion witchwood being one of them a dark place that's mostly uninhabited outside of a small city called knothole glade another island hook coast is covered in mountains and snow but our story begins in oakville a small city at the southern end of albion this prologue introduces us to our main character unnamed for now as the boy it doesn't just introduce us to the character and the setting but also the premise of the game the boy dreams of greatness sometimes as a noble knight and other times as an evil warrior this duality shows us that we choose our destiny in this game and we'll be making some big choices here soon we wake up our father chastising us for daydreaming it's our sister's birthday and we have to get her a present our father will give us a couple gold coins if we do some good deeds around town there are multiple things we can do around town i chose to snitch on a cheating man return a little girl's doll defend a boy from a bully and protect a man's crates a good day of helping oakville in the process though i accidentally hit a child younger than me this caused me to be chastised by one of the guards his words rang through my head if you were older you'd be apprehended and fined by the town guards you need to decide if behaving like that is worth it my young friend you need to decide if behaving like that is worth it it wasn't it only got in the way doing good or bad deeds in fable earns you alignment points this either takes your alignment more toward good or evil the alignment system in the first game is pretty elementary and would be expanded upon greatly in the later two games the anniversary edition has three scales that represent your character alignment which is not only affected by your deeds but also your appearance and the spells that you use renown which is increased by interacting with people showing off trophies and doing heroic deeds and attractiveness which is affected solely by your appearance the higher your renown the more known you are across albion as a hero more people will recognize you and you'll also have access to more expressions actions that can be used to interact with others your alignment will control your physical experience and what spells you're able to master having fully good alignment will see you with a halo hovering over your head and having fully evil alignment while seeing you have red eyes and glowing veins with gray skin the more attractive you are the more people will be willing to talk to you or even marry you the more scary you look the more people will scream and run away when they see you my character wanted to be a hero though he dreamed of it and this cemented that in his mind he scrounged together enough money to buy some chocolates for his sister exactly enough money three gold i bought the chocolates and took them to teresa but as we left tragedy struck bandits arrived in the town stealing teresa and the boy's mother the father fought to protect his kin but he was no warrior and fell mortally wounded the bandits rip the house apart but could not find the boy through torture and threats his mother and sister remain silent and their furious attackers took them both killing his father in the process at this moment maize arrives a powerful mage with glowing blue veins pulling the boy away from his father's body mays saved him and offered him a place at the heroes guild his life had been ripped away from him but maize represented power the power to be able to protect the ones he loved the power to save everyone hmm i thought you'd have a stronger stomach than that come on save your energy boy it's not me you want to fight you might not realize it but i just saved your life there's nothing left for you in oakville and if you'd stayed you'd be as dead as the rest of them come with me the boy accepted and met the guildmaster the one who would be responsible for his training he gets a dorm of his own that he shares with another student after the guildmaster leaves he cries waking up the next morning we're introduced to whisper our dorm partner we race to meet the guild master and begin our training there's a large training arc here introducing the mechanics and aging the character forward a few years the guildmaster trains us in the way of sword archery and will which is the magic of the fable world this whole chapter of the game is pretty long which at first i found annoying but i realized that it's quite central to the narrative over the course of a couple hours we naturally learn how to find side quests and complete quests on our own we're also getting comfortable with the controls and systems it's a good way to slowly deliver multiple systems to the player without throwing them in our lap all at once it also serves to gently familiarize you with the world and the characters making you grow closer to them it's the best way to let the player identify with a character who's being trained in a hero school without just skipping over the whole thing we train with the guildmaster and fight whisper as our final test we win of course and thunder a legendary hero watches over our practice revealing himself to be whisper's brother the combat systems in fable are pretty simple and we'll get in depth into them later but for now i just want to give you a brief synopsis in fable you have three types of fighting melee ranged and will melee is simple swing your sword and hit the enemy you can lock on or freely attack like most everything else after you get a small combo going you can use the right mouse button to activate a flourish move this does more damage and normally knocks the enemy down or breaks through their block you can also block with your weapon by holding the middle mouse button or roll out of the way by clicking the middle mouse button archery is pretty simplistic using the same lock-on system and letting you control the power of your shot by holding the left mouse button longer you can also right-click to go into a manual aim mode will is by far the most expansive of the combat systems because it also can affect the other systems you hold shift to bring up a secondary menu of spells and can cycle through them there are a ton of spells in this game which we'll get into but you start off with only lightning which will do light damage to enemies repeatedly all three of these combat systems are pretty basic but that doesn't mean that fable doesn't have interesting combat there are a ton of options for you to build your character around and a lot of different ways to go with it it's really up to you to decide which of the three you want to specialize in and this decision is made really by just using that system more the only problem with this is that all of the systems don't feel equal we'll see in a bit that melee and ranged can definitely be used on their own they're self-sufficient level them up enough and you'll be slashing through enemies and bosses like it's nothing but will doesn't really have the same luxury it definitely feels weaker than the others and i mostly used it to complement them rather than act as its own source of damage before we get to our tests the guildmaster asks us if we'd like to continue with training and the story advances a bit aging us up what looks like a few years after training with the guildmaster in these three disciplines we take graded tests for each of them and being exceptional grants us some great early game weapons before we graduate we go with whisper to spend some time in the woods there she spots some bandits and the two of us take them out fledgling heroes ready to deliver justice upon the world before we can graduate maize gives us our final test having us attack him with each of our combat abilities yes quite impressive for a novice maze tells us that our abilities were impressive for a novice the powerful mage that saved us from the bandits giving me his seal of approval was all the motivation that i needed i would be like him one day whisper and i graduate together receiving our guild seals and the ability to take on quests for ourselves the guild master tells us that our choices good or evil will change the fate of albion forever or strike fear into their hearts these are dark times the shadows of albion are stirring and strange winds are blowing your choices whether they lead you down the path of good or evil will change the face of the world he echoes the words of the guard from oakville at this point we're introduced to the quest system which is surprisingly robust you can take on new quests from the map table in the heroes guild these can be main quests which are gold side quests which are silver or bronze quests which are the same as silver except they are obtained from people and not the heroes guild whenever a quest is received you may take boasts with it boasts are an incredibly interesting system that i've never really seen in another game at least not like this these allow you to stand outside the heroes guild and brag about your future heroism this will see you accepting additional challenges by wagering gold and if the challenges are completed you receive additional renown and gold if the challenges are not completed the gold is lost these boasts can be anything from doing the quest with no armor to not taking any damage this really incentivizes the player to focus more on combat and be more engaged in the quest itself it also encourages replayability in the game itself knowing that there are more challenges to be undertaken it's inherently a risk reward system where your reputation in albion is on the line i take my first quest and head out wasps are attacking the picnic area outside of the heroes guild i slay them and defeat my first boss the wasp queen with the gold from this quest it's finally time to choose a title this is how the npcs in the game will refer to us throughout our playthrough normally you can change your title whenever you feel like you can gain new titles throughout the game from completing certain quests huge feats or just buying them i decided to pick one title for each of my characters and use that to refer to them throughout the video i chose sabre because i felt like this most represented the journey that i wanted this character to go on a sword in the darkness a protector a peacekeeper we also gained some experience and it was time to level up the experience system for fable is an incredible high point for me and i feel like it does what it's trying to do very well it's pretty simple we have three specialized types of xp strength skill and will the fourth type of experience is general you gain general xp from doing most things completing quests killing enemies all that you gain specialized xp from attacking with those specialties for example if you attack an enemy with your bow you'll gain skill xp if you attack an enemy with your sword you'll gain strength xp i always love seeing these types of systems in games because you're leveling up your skill by using them this means that for the most part you can't become a badass mage just by using swords you can't funnel all your experience that you gain from combat and never use a spell now there's a caveat to this when you level up you spend this experience to buy or upgrade abilities and stats if you're upgrading a strength skill you'll use your strength experience to buy this upgrade until your strength experience runs out then the overflow will be charged to the general experience if you have no strength experience you can just use general experience to buy an ability so this is kind of the best of both worlds system you're rewarded for using the type of combat you want to upgrade but you can also use your general experience for other systems if you please i really like this system and i think it finds a balance between the mechanics of things like the elder scrolls where your attributes are only leveled by using them and things like mass effect where you can just get skill upgrades and spend them whatever way you please okay maybe that wasn't as simple as i thought but still a well-rounded and thought-out system it also ties into the thesis of the game which is your character reflecting your actions the only thing i don't like about the xp system is the way you gather general xp specialized xp like strength for example is automatically given to you general xp appears as green orbs on the ground after you kill an enemy which you have to pick up this can be done easily by holding down shift which will pull all of the orbs towards you but this seemed unnecessary and kind of an annoyance after every battle if we're already being given the specialized xp automatically why not extend that to general xp when you get back to the guild you meet briar rose another famous hero she's a little cocky but tells us she's going to knothole glade oh hello you must be the kid maze is always talking about can't imagine what he sees in you still i suppose maize knows best the guildmaster informs me that maze is looking for me so i head to bowerstone albion's capital each city has a few different shops blacksmiths tailors general stores and barbers these work mostly the same as other rpgs letting you buy or sell items but fable actively encourages you to use the game's economy to your advantage multiple tips in the game will tell you to buy items from one store and sell them to another for a higher price i never really did this but i thought it was cool to see the game recognizing this as a valid way of making money the system's also kind of broken so it was a little cheese for me maize tells saber that there may have been another survivor of the oakville massacre his sister teresa could be alive suddenly the quest for revenge and sabre's development has become about something else getting his old life back saber took a quest to protect orchard farm from bandits helping the good folk of the farm to protect their goods there's another quest that can be accepted here the opposite one to attack orchard farm why would someone want to attack orchard farm what kind of life is that helping bandits when saber arrives whisper is there to greet him telling him that she might accept the quest to attack the farm this worried me what could whisper be becoming is the hero's journey already corrupting her i wasn't sure all i knew was orchard farm needed a hero even a fledgling one like myself i protected the farm against bandits and whisper arrived at the end to fight me she lost as i expected i accepted another quest to lead some traders through the darkwood this area is a shadowy place full of swamps balverines wolverine-like creatures and a temple boasting power for one's evil enough to worship a dark god as saber makes his way through the dark wood he comes across a traitor bitten by a balverine and asking for help we're met with a choice to leave this traitor and potentially spare ourselves having to deal with another balvarine or take the chance i thought the chance was worth it the alternative was to ensure his death in these woods at least this way there was a possibility of his life being spared unfortunately shortly after this he would turn and saber would be forced to slay the man in this moment i realized that you couldn't save everyone just before exiting the dark wood the traitor village of barrow fields on the other side a golem appeared this is one of many boss battles in fable we have to dodge around the golems showers of throne rocks and attack him at distinct moments most of the bosses are pretty simple one or two prevalent mechanics i wish that they had a little more depth to the fights there's a few standout ones that we'll talk about later but most of them are pretty plain arriving at barrow fields the traders safely in tow were contacted again by maze this time he's asking us to meet him in oakville sabre's hometown when sabre arrives in oakvale he's confronted by a woman that he doesn't remember until the thoughts come flooding back so where have you been all this time you do remember me don't you i was looking for rosie my teddy bear just before the raid after that day my parents moved to bowstone but i never really liked it there uh are you alright i think i lost you there for a second anyway i have to go now but it was great to see you again he's pulled out and maze is waiting for him mays has a new tip on sabre's sister a blind cirrus who is the right hand to twin blade he says she might know something about the survivors of oakville twin blade used to be a hero but had no patience for the guild he brought together 12 different clans of bandits uniting them under one banner sharing his name mays also tells us that he suspects twinblade was behind the attack on oakvale in oakville we find a woman lamenting her husband who's lost at sea journeying to the other side of town will come across an entrepreneur who wants to get rid of a ghost from his property the ghost happens to be the husband of the waiting woman and wants us to return his treasure to her i found it on the shores of oakville and returned it to the woman the ghost tells us where his stash is hidden in the cemetery and moves on digging up this stash nets us a new great axe and a silver key a lot of the secrets in fable are locked behind silver keys these can mostly be found by digging them out of the ground or fishing them out of the water these silver keys unlock chests hidden around the world and usually hold great weapons armor or potions since the entrepreneur has his property back he starts up his business again a game of chicken punting this game sees you kicking chickens and trying to hit specific spots on a dock chicken kicking is a staple of the fable series and would become a recurring element in some form or another saber heads to the twin blade camp and oh boy this quest i forgot about this until i was going back through footage and man this is a little rough so fable as much as i've spoken highly about it is a little janky it's originally an xbox pc game released in the early 2000s so that's a bit expected also i want to give credit because this is a game with many different story lines and tons of different outcomes to your experience i can imagine that whenever coding a project like this things get complicated especially with so many systems involved this quest sees three bandits coming out from the camp to patrol the area we have to sneak by them and get into the bandit camp if they see us though they'll alert the guards and close the door to the camp if this happens a timer is set forcing us to wait for the next set of bandits to come out and thus giving us another try to sneak past them this quest is a little ridiculous and it's not impossible to do it without exploiting the ai a little bit but it's not easy these ai can seemingly notice you from incredibly far distances and just try to find you even when you're out of sight your sneak also doesn't move very fast so getting away from them while moving in the shadows is almost impossible all of you are probably saying son your guile skill isn't high enough guile is an ability that increases how well you sneak steal and trade but this main quest shouldn't be dependent on an ability that you have to have leveled up this early in the game i had to actually look up a video on how other people did this quest to get it to work but i have no idea how i would have done this naturally also this is the only time in the main quest that you're forced to sneak so it just seemed like a weird instance of pushing a barely used mechanic saber sneaks past the bandits and arrives at the gate to the bandit camp saber had to pretend to be a bandit to get into the camp wearing their attire this was something he was vehemently against you see for this playthrough i tried to wear exclusively armor that was attractive and brought my alignment up not down the bandit gear made me appear scary and frankly like a ruffian but a hero has to do what a hero has to do so i donned the bandit attire and entered the camp there we had to get into twinblade's tent and there was multiple ways to go about this some assassins were offering me their services for 2000 gold but i wasn't exactly sure how moral that was i always had the option of killing every bandit in the camp and entering that way but it was a bit loud for my tastes there was also the matter of the captives there's two women caged in the back of the camp and ready for the bandits if i freed them the bandits would surely open the gates to try and retrieve them it's risky as i'm wagering the lives of two women on a chance that they get away but it's well worth it this got me into twin blade's tent and he was ready for me twin blade is a tower of a man a hulking massive brute and he fights like one swinging blades wantonly and often getting them stuck in the ground this is when the time to strike is right the only annoying thing about this fight is the circle of bandits around the arena if you get too close to them they start hitting you with their swords most of the fight is just repeating the same loop avoid twin blade wait for him to stick his swords in the ground hit him a couple times repeat this boss was fine on my good play through but if you're not as powerful as i was yet this fight drags out for quite a while twin blade goes down and just as we're about to give him the mercy of death the cirrus shows herself there you are what's wrong don't you recognize your own sister she turns out to be saber's sister teresa the girl is blind her eyes sliced out by the leader of the raiders of oakville she crawled through the forest found eventually by twin blade and serving in his clan he took her by his side accepting her prophetic whispers as truth she spins one of these truths telling saber that he'll have to make a choice one day between the darkness and the light in fable there's something that's just off with the line delivery a lot of times when npcs are speaking they almost start the next line way too fast i've seen so many things so much killing so much dying i've seen you little brother in a ring of sand and blood an arena full of secrets i'm not sure if this had to do with syncing up to the already quick animations in the game but it really feels disjointed and wooden sometimes this is on full display with teresa in this scene this wasn't the case with every single character in the game and a lot of characters actually have great performances like the guild master now take your guild seals [Music] but when it did happen it served to take me out of the game and lessened the emotional impact of a scene teresa unlocks a power in saber that runs in their bloodline and twin blade asks for death i choose to spare his life he was not the one responsible for oak veil that much is clear and he raised my sister as his own mays requested my presence to talk to me about my sister but i had a quest to attend to a woman lost her grandson saying that he journeyed into a hob cave hobbs are interesting enemies and just one of the various monsters that grace albion each creature has a pretty deep and substantial lore when you take a look at them the balvarines were created out of a larger more ferocious creature called balvorns these massive beasts would feed on thousands at a time only one man survived the slaughter that they would rack upon the world and he became the first balvarine i actually read an entire book about this subject written by peter david called fable the balverine order it was not very good we'll get heavier into the external materials like this in the final part of this retrospective though trolls were one of the first creatures to wander the lands of albion and were mostly hunted extinct by the old kingdom the hobbs have their own tragic backstory supposedly the first hobs were created by nymphs by kidnapping wandering children and transforming them into these beasts there's a lot of lore in fable a surprising amount actually for this game but don't worry we have a history lesson coming soon that will bring you entirely up to speed i descended into the hob cave looking for the boy in my pursuit i found hundreds of hobbs constantly swarming around me i also found a man who was raiding the cave and got caught his party members killed i took pity on him and helped him allowing him to join me on my quest when i finally found the boy at the bottom of the cavern he was being kidnapped by a nymph who needed a human sacrifice for her ritual she told me i could take the boy as long as i gave her another human i wasn't sure what to do in this situation i could have surely killed the nymph and rescued the boy but i wasn't sure how strong nymphs were i hadn't fought one yet the man i had with me was a bandit he was stealing from this place here to thieve and sell everything he found an innocent child had to be worth more than that right plus i agreed i had a quest to complete i traded his life for the boys and left i couldn't look back because the decision had been made there was no use pondering it now this was a tough decision fable presented me because i wasn't really sure what the right choice was here i guess it only matters that i thought it was right but was it i returned the boy to his grandmother and he promptly left her home saying that she wasn't suitable to live with maize tells me that there's a rumor an old friend of his the archaeologist is hiding somewhere in whichwood he's found something big that may be putting his life in danger i head to whichwood and solve a puzzle concerning the name of the demon door guarding the archaeologist demon doors are all over albion they are sentient beings whose origins aren't fully known some believe that they are men who were cursed with guarding great treasures or portals to other worlds regardless of how they were created they require a challenge to be completed before entering this could be something as simple as lighting a lamp in front of them and could be as difficult as having a high evil alignment this demon door required that i hit stones corresponding with different letters to spell out his name once i did this the archaeologist greeted me saying he's been studying the focus sites he also says that jack of blades is interested in the same sites these sites are structures placed around the world that we see throughout the game he leaves us his journal for some context and heads out now fable has a bit of a lore problem it's not terrible but there's a ton of backstory to the world that isn't really fully fleshed out within the game you don't absolutely need to know the lore to find out what happens in the story but it provides some much needed context for that reason we're going to have a bit of a history lesson and go over the story of albion before fable the earliest history of albion is mostly legend the tales tell of three beings that came from the void the knight the jack and the queen all using the surname of blades they were known as the court and wanted to take over the world of men demanding rulership over them the people of albion did not go down easily and the court scorched the earth and the sky was filled with smoke the second time the people of albion refused to kneel the court raised the ocean into the sky and flooded the land the third and final time they refused the court twisted their minds until they killed each other finally the people of albion bowed and the reign of the court began during this reign a blacksmith and his wife had a boy named william he had incredible powers of the mind and could protect his village while performing wonderful feats these acts were the origin of the powers of will william was determined to overthrow the court and bring freedom back to albion he found his way into the void and stole the sword of aeons this sword spoke to william and promised to help him defeat the court but only if he bonded his soul to it with the sword in toe williams scaled the peak of ruon and challenged the court william first destroyed the knight of blades then destroying jack's body but his soul escaping into the void william battled the queen last and this went on for weeks raising mountains and carving valleys in the land with their ferocious blows william finally destroyed the queen and albion was free the people of the land raised william as archon their king after freedom had been set upon the land the archon and his children grew bored they called themselves heroes but they used their powers inherited from the archon to terrorize the people of albion the archon himself had been infected body and mind with an illness he traveled into the void to purge the darkness from his body when it left him it turned into two antagonistic forces the darkness and the corruption the disease did not fully leave the archon though and he wrapped himself in gold mail and a royal blue cloak disappearing from the land when the arkhan left albion descended into madness the arkhan's descendants were vying for power and each passing one brought fresh tyranny to albion no citizens were allowed out after nightfall every citizen must appear when an alarm bell sounded and any who opposed the new arkhan's rule were killed along with their families the newest arkhan had constructed the spire a massive building that was to be used to focus all of the willpower in the world to grant a single wish the spire's completion opened a rift between the void and albion and a beast stepped through the crawler the kingdom's greatest heroes at the time blaze stone and soul faced the creature closing the rift but only managing to capture the beast the next morning the tower was gone the old kingdom lay in ruins and all had disappeared except those who lived beyond the walls with the old kingdom destroyed the small settlements that remained formed their own self-sufficient communities the ruins of the old kingdom turned into wastelands like great wood which would and the edgelands over time the history of this place was forgotten the world became darker day after day and eventually the fallow wars had begun this was an age of anarchy and blood which almost brought alby into extinction out of the east though came a bandit and mercenary by the name of nostro his goal was to bring peace and prosperity to albion he met a wise old man by the name of scythe scythe was a wraith-like man wizened and stern he carried an ornate sword and wore a tattered blue cloak with ruined gold armor like that of the first archon he took an interest in nostro because he seemed to possess the power of the first arkhan's descendants scythe began to tutor nostro and how to be a just man who was worthy of leading men nostro first formed the heroes guild gathering men and women to be trained as true heroes at the same time he was being tutored by scythe in the ways of will nostro forced peace upon albion and created the witchwood arena a venue where people could settle disputes in public he also commissioned his blacksmith to form the tears of avo a sword that was meant to replicate the sword of aeons wielded by the first archon himself nostro eventually fell under the sway of a courtesan named magdalena her power-hungry ways saw the world change the arena become nothing more than entertainment the guild turned into a house of mercenaries and nostro himself descending into corruption scythe left at the sight of this not being able to bear to see the fall of nostro at the end of his life nostro became aware of how corrupted he had become and even his wife and followers had abandoned him he was poisoned by an assassin and called on scythe to sit with him in his final hours he died and was buried in litchfield graveyard there were also some wars that took place between two churches the church of scorm and the church of avvo these two churches were formed by a traitor after finding two opposing fonts of energy there's speculation that the deities themselves are false gods but there's evidence that goes both ways either way 200 years after these wars we are brought up to speed i know it's a bit of an info dump and we really didn't truly cover everything but we will in due time i think it's important though to understand the history of albion before we delve into the story moving forward i went to knothole glade to help them with a balverine problem they have a special balvarine terrorizing the village powerful tall and covered in white fur he can only be killed with silver the wife of the hunter who died fighting him gives me a silver augmentation to be able to take it down she reveals that her husband is the balverine turned into one when hunting balvarines in the forest augmentations in fable are pretty simple but add a little bit of complexity and customization to the combat you can apply them to weapons adding an elemental effect health regeneration or even mana to the weapon with the silver augmentation i took down the white balverine gathered his head and returned it to the knothole glade chieftain there are a lot of systems in fable and one of my personal favorites is the real estate there are houses for sale in different cities across albion these homes can be bought for a price and then either turned into the heroes home or rented out to generate more income i love games that add little features like this they add another level of depth and knowing that i have a steady stream of income was nice it gives you a way to make money aside from questing you can also upgrade the decorations of the house to increase the amount of rent collected or mount trophies on the walls collected from quests to do the same but wait why didn't i buy a house for myself well the answer is simple saber didn't have a wife i hadn't thought of this until this point but at that moment running around not whole glade i started to notice the women i found one more pleasant than the rest and started to flirt with her using the various expressions i'd gained and since i was forcing myself to wear only the most attractive gear she was already into me but at a certain point she got bored and her attractiveness started going down this floating heart above her head shrinking in size as she walked away hurt more than it should i wasn't sure what i did wrong i was an up-and-coming hero pretty famous at this point shouldn't that be enough to attract her it wasn't though and i took this as a sign from the universe that i was meant to be doing bigger things a wife would just get in the way of heroin my next goal was to head to the arena the place was located on the same island as knothole glade remember our history lesson this was created by nostro during the creation of the guild and restoration of albion see it's nice to know these things the arena has eight rounds and the goal is to beat all eight in one go if you decide to stop after a round and return to gather more potions or better weapons you stop accumulating gold and restart it's not the hardest challenge in the world but i got too nervous with saber and stopped around round six the first five rounds or so are just waves of enemies hobs bandits and undead the final three rounds are boss battles culminating in an epic battle with a giant scorpion i actually enjoyed this boss fight the mechanics were clear worked well and it made sense the scorpion will charge repeatedly and eventually ready up a large attack you use this moment to attack the scorpion in its weak spot while trying to dodge the charged attack halfway through the arena whisper joins us in our battle she assists us through the last half of the waves when the arena is won i was told i had to battle whisper i did so and won she wasn't as powerful as me she never could be but that wasn't her fault after beating her jack of blades who we know from the lore is the head of the arena and he wants blood he wants me to kill whisper to take home the gold i've earned i say no whisper didn't deserve this she's trying her hardest and she won't die by my hand leaving the arena i'm greeted with thunder and lady gray lady gray is propositioning me to meet her in bowerstone she's the mayor of the capital city and thunder is upset because he's pining after the mayor heading out one of the guards tells me that i remind him of the old hero scarlet robe i see a statue of the woman the first female hero to become arena champion she holds an eagle scepter in her hands and jack of blades approaches he tells me that she's still alive failing to save her family it's clear that she's my mother and jack asks to bring him theresa i knew her son would end up here one day it's in your blood and in your sister's too you should bring her to me i so long to reunite you both with your mother just think of the happiness it would bring her this was the true face of his mother scarlett robe slayer once one of the fiercest heroes in all of albion yet her most splendid battle was also to be her last the narrator tells us that she almost died fighting balvarenes and she was saved by brahm my father jack was behind the raid at oakvale and he captured my mother winning the champion seal from the arena has granted me access to bowerstone north teresa is waiting for me at the greyhounds outside the barrow fields one of the things i love about fable that i haven't talked about is its map as you complete quests and travel to new areas the map starts to change little icons appear showing the distinct nature of each area in albion after defeating golems or trolls they will appear on the map orchard farms sprouts apples after arriving and the rose cottage becomes a field of the red flowers after venturing into its area it's a wonderful little touch that not only adds character to the world but also prevents the player from having to remember names but rather recalling memories to associate with locations it also gives fable its own distinct style and a fairy tale-like quality to its world teresa already knows who jack of blades is and she tells me that our mother is in bar gate prison the archaeologist is the only one that knows how to get in you have to get mother out she's the only one who knows how to reach the sword you did read the book i sent didn't you the sword is everything and it could turn the world to nothing oh and a mother has a gift for you too more power than you can imagine she tells us of the sword of aeons that it could turn the tide of the world this is what jack is working towards i start to head for the archaeologist who is being held on the docks to the north of albion on my way i encounter an imprisoned beggar who says lady gray murdered her sister to gain power he wants me to investigate at the gray house i head back and find her spirit still wandering the grounds in the basement i find evidence of her murder at the hands of lady gray the mayor herself arrives at that moment asking me to cover up the murder and become the mayor of the city by marrying her i refuse and turn her in in return i am rewarded the mayorship of bowerstone i'm not sure what this grants me outside of a very lavish bed that i can't sleep in but it's nice to see justice done once more heading up the hill i make my way to the archaeologist this quest really started to illustrate the problem with fable's main quest system a lot of the main quests end up being the same thing start in one area either escort or fight with others to get to another area every other time or so fight a boss at the end and kill slews of enemies along the way it started to get a little tired at this point and the main quests go on for quite a while most of the time i won't say this is always the case some exceptions are the arena where you're only fighting slews of enemies or bosses in one area or the white balvarine quest which actually felt unique and interesting the side quests were the exception to this rule though most of them not all felt like little journeys and pockets of adventure i think the allure of the main quests were really the choices made along the way rather than the quests themselves after all that's what fable is about choice i rescued the archaeologist from being captured by jack's minions he tells me that the way into bar gate prison is through the litchfield graveyard i really want to talk about jack's minions as an enemy type for a moment they are separate in my mind from all the others for one reason sound design they have this specific noise that plays when they attack when they move when they rush at you they almost sound mechanical in nature and whether they are or not doesn't really matter because this bone curdling noise that makes you unsettled it tells you that these beasts are not of this world they are not natural even the balvarines of the world have some place in nature the hobs are some creation of the nymphs but they are still inevitable these things are out of place and it gives you a feeling of off it's definitely a different feeling than the one you get when fighting bandits for example at this point i made my way to litchfield graveyard there i found a grave keeper and the only way i could move forward was with the spirit of nostro himself the one who created the heroes guild in the first place his spirit requires that you collect his armor helmet shield and sword to open the demon door leading to the bar gate prison path the graveyard happens to be a great place to get experience because there's a couple things i haven't mentioned first is the combat multiplier the combat multiplier acts as basically a combo meter the more you attack and don't get hit the higher your combat multiplier this determines how much your experience is multiplied when gained there also happens to be a scarce amount of potions in the game called ages potions these will give you a thousand experience in whatever specialty they are made for for example an ages of will potion will give you a thousand will experience the thing is these potions are affected by the combat multiplier if you get your multiplier high enough and then use your potion you'll get a ton of xp for that specialty killing the undead is a great way to do this they die quickly and if you kill them fast enough they don't have time to attack using an xp potion with a combat multiplier of 30 will net you a ton of xp but the reason the undead can be the most annoying enemies in the game is when you don't want to fight them when they spawn the lesser ones anyways crawl from the ground while digging their way up from the earth they swing their swords out in an arc there's very little time from when you see the undead crawling from the ground to when they swing their swords so you almost have no time to dodge this if you're farming the undead for xp it's great because they're practically infinite but if you're trying to move through the area it's insufferable finally arriving at bargain prison i made my way through the dungeons and was face to face with my mother she was old and withering the hero in her long gone years of torture had done much to age her but i brought her with me and we made our escape this was quickly thwarted by jack himself he used his minions to lock both of us up in bar gate sitting in prison is a solitary affair but once a year the guards hold a race they let the inmates run the ramparts and whoever wins gets a personal audience with the chief himself he will read them original poetry for the night and they are forced to listen our goal for this is a little different though we're trying to sneak around the office and get the key to the books the chief has on his desk one of them holds the key to our cell we can only open one book per try though and if we pick the wrong one we have to redo the race again costing us another year off of our life and aging and fable is permanent so time passes and we actually get older once we find the key we make our escape gathering our belongings and rescuing our mother for a final time on our way out we find a giant kraken in the sewers of bar gate once we kill it we head outside and our mother unlocks our final bloodline power we got the same thing from teresa before and i really thought i was missing a mechanic here but it turns out it's just extra general experience my mother tells me that i have to find the portal to hook coast that's where the final chapter of this saga lies years have passed since i went into prison and saber has aged the guild has lived on but that also means that jack has been making moves i took a sidequest to get back into the swing of things guarding a 2b executed bandit to his demise i then ventured to hook coast a desolate snowy island off the west coast of northern albion here the key to the focus sites lied but a barrier blocked the way to this key jack is obviously looking for the same one he wants the focus sites to be able to put all of his power into one source and free the sword of aeons my mother tells me to come back to the guild as she may have found the way past the barrier but something isn't right when i arrive she's being kidnapped again by jack's minions but the secrets she found are still missing a book reveals the incantation needed to remove the barrier i head back to hook coast and bring down the barrier but maze is already there and theresa he has teresa tied up and under a spell he realizes he's caught i had to tie her up jack is controlling her somehow that's why i'm here i'm trying to stop him he's lying he's the one working for jack no she's trying to confuse you she's there is really no time for this old wizard finish the ritual maze i'd like my key now the mage the very man that i looked up to that i wanted to be since i was a child the man that saved me was a traitor jack arrives and takes the key telling mays to continue we enter one final duel one will exit this battle alive maze tries to keep his range but he's old and rusty and he's no match for the hero that saber has become maybe you are strong enough to defeat jack you haven't got much time [Music] he's using the key to activate the focus sites all over albion then the sword will be his and it'll be too late they'll be trying to stop him none of them can you want to know why i did it don't you i suppose i'm just an old coward boy we don't all embrace death easily for some of us the quest the only quest is to escape death whatever the cost and it looks like i failed he dies admitting his cowardice telling me that all of life exists to escape death in that moment i understand why he did what he did he was terrified of jack and became corrupted it wasn't his fault even if he was a betrayer maize dies and fades from this world as we arrive back at the heroes guild the guildmaster tells us that jack is trying to activate the focus sites across albion i hurry through the teleporter and chase jack across the land he activates one after another heroes like briar rose and thunder helping me it's no match for his speed and power we're just in time to see him finish the job each time this last quest is great heading back through the world that we've already ventured through and seeing these focus sites important monuments activated turning the world red and full of flame is a wondrous sight there's also something to be said about the fact that we've passed these constructs throughout the game i've seen them in multiple locations while making my way across albion but never knew what they were for i kept saying to myself this is probably a side quest later seeing that come to fruition is genuinely rewarding finally jack arrives at the heroes guild itself the guildmaster lies on the ground wounded unable to stop him we head into the hall of heroes where all the murals that we've seen throughout the game exist jack has teresa scarlet robe and the sword of aeons he stands above us mask shining in the light and red power emanating from him what a touching family reunion the mother the son the daughter and the sword there's only one thing he slashes my mother's throat and i stand in shock i've never had this type of hatred in my life i don't want justice in this moment i want pain we fight jack which is a pretty easy duel the first phase has us killing a multitude of his minions the second sees us fighting jack as he chases and attacks us and the third sees jack hovering above me shooting bolts of energy and using all of his will to try and destroy me teresa survives the battle and now comes the choice i spoke of so long ago strike me down now with the sword of aeons and you will become as powerful as jack dreamt of being cast it into the vortex and its darkness will be gone forever she tells me that the sword of aeons is free for me to take but to use its power i have to kill her with it one of my bloodline the only other thing to do is to cast the sword into the vortex and destroy it forever it's not the choice that's hard i've never wanted power just to protect the ones i love even though my mother is gone as long as i can protect teresa my goal will be complete i destroy the sword saber was famous a name known amongst the people teresa retreated to distant lands needing time to heal i understood an extra set of quests comes included with fable the lost chapters and fable anniversary this area is called the northern wastes it introduces the character scythe officially into the game scythe contacts the guild telling them that there's a danger approaching in the northern wastes an island even farther north than hook coast scythe is a very decrepit looking figure dressed in blue robes and gold armor there's a very common theory that scythe is actually william black the first archon he's seen wearing the exact same clothes that william was described as wearing when he disappeared there's evidence to support this as well saying that the archons were immortal and he can't be killed throughout the story the oracle even says that the first archon still casts his shadow in this world taking scythe's warning that jack may be being resurrected in the wastes the hero needs the fire heart to get there the fire heart is hidden behind a demon door which we can get through because we have jack's mask it's also being protected by five sorcerers trapped in ice we have to solve this puzzle to get the flame one for each sorcerer turning the tiles to suns will free the sorcerers and turning them to moons will kill them this was an odd choice in the game because at this point you'd be killing them just to kill them it'd be completely for the sake of evil because either way you still get the fire heart after we gather the flame and save the sorcerers we head for hook coast secure the ship that will take us to the northern wastes briar rose is there and she tells me to place the flame in the top of the lighthouse some summoners arrive a new powerful enemy type and they're trying to destroy the flame we dispense with them and our ship arrives taking us to the lost bay the trip was long and saber has developed quite the beard on the journey the first thing we're confronted with is a boss a frost troll these things are incredibly annoying they have this ice column attack which shoots out crystals of ice in a line at you if you're caught in it you're going flying because the ice just keeps pushing you back until it's stopped they're not incredibly hard to beat just a hassle to actually get close enough to do damage at the center of the island we find a large construct briar rose is doing some research to figure out how to get it working this is the key to stopping jack's resurrection scythe is in snow spire village this is the small frozen town where he's been doing his research he tells us that we need to find the four glyphs to get the oracle working a large construct that was created during the reign of the third archon these runes are in the necropolis and i went to dig them up with my trusty spade after defeating another frost troll and some packs of enemies we get the runes and activate the oracle the oracle is actually an amazing addition of lore to the game you can stand on this platform and perform gestures to ask it about random parts of albion's past it will tell you things about people different creatures or the history of albion itself some interesting things about demon doors the life of a rock endowed with consciousness is never easy of course fable's weird humor comes in here and the glyphs are a reference to ymca breyer figures out that we need to collect three souls to get the construct working and open the bronze gate where jack is being resurrected the first soul we need to collect is a champion of the arena we go to thunder to ask him for his help being a previous champion himself he tells us to head to the arena and see what we can find there summoners are already attacking the place looking for the soul themselves we defeat waves and waves jack taunting us from the mask the entire time while we do these quests jack is always telling us just to take the easy way and kill thunder or one of the other heroes that meet that criteria why go all the way to the arena but we don't listen after defeating this version of the arena we gain the arena soul and trap it in jack's mask we take it back to breyer and she inserts it into the machine the next soul is one of a heroine breyer suggests scarlett robe's soul as she was always one for making sacrifices we head to the oakville cemetery and scarlett robe's spirit is there we have a conversation with her and defeat some screamers eventually accepting her soul into the mask the final soul we need to retrieve is the oldest soul breyer suggests nostro's soul but jack suggests the guild masters the guildmaster is out of the question so we head to litchfield graveyard we have to fight a resurrected form of nostro destroying undead to make him vulnerable with the final soul in tow we head back to the arkhan shrine and the bronze gate opens this is the final battle of the game jack of blades has taken on the form of a giant dragon and taunts us while fighting him he says that this place full of fire and smoke looks like oakville we kill him and put his soul into the mask but it taunts us telling us to put it on it would be the ultimate power the full ability to protect everyone but i don't accept it i destroy the mask and leave the place for good jack has been destroyed the world is at peace and saber is ready to go home i thought this dlc was fun the biggest thing it did was add content and lore to the game i feel like this one area did more to expand on the history of albion than the entirety of the base game it also gives the player the option to make some really interesting choices like killing thunder briar rose and the guild master if they want fighting jack one more time wasn't something i thought was properly handled i feel like they could have set up another villain for the next game but the next game takes place far in the future even in that same vein they could have set up what happens to the hero of oakvale as that question is never fully answered in game before we get into the final words of the game i'd like to briefly go over my evil playthrough because i think contextualizing this separation is integral to the entire point of the game and will help me illustrate one of its greatest strengths we're also trying to be comprehensive here so how could i not cover this we've heard sabers story now let's look at hood the story starts in the same place with the same boy i needed money to buy my sister a present and my father wanted me to complete some good deeds the big change in this playthrough was when i found the man cheating on his wife he said that he'd give me money if i didn't tell anyone about this i took it it wasn't just the fact that he gave me money though it was the words that he said look after yourself forget everyone else look after yourself and forget everyone else he was right it was just me in this world in the end i had to pay attention to that plus he gave me a gold coin i helped a man protect his crates but i smashed his barrels when he was gone it felt good a kid was being bullied and i helped the bully because it felt good to have someone strong on my side the guard chastised me for hitting the kid he told me to think about whether my actions were worth it because bad deeds weren't worth it but i had a gold coin that said otherwise my dad gave me three gold coins for doing work around the town and i bought my sister chocolates still one gold coin left over then the town was raided in this moment i felt powerless and seeing my father's body before me unmoving eyes wide open i knew i needed to be stronger i needed to have so much power that this would never happen again then i saw a maze he represented that power in my eyes as he took me to the heroes guild i realized i would surpass him i would become the most powerful hero ever people would fear me so much that they would never even think of hurting me or anyone around me but when the guildmaster left me alone i still cried i was still sad this is the crux of fables choice system yes you will make choices that will have different consequences and effects the story will be changed slightly characters will die that didn't and people will survive that perish during the good play through but it's ultimately not these choices that make the biggest difference it's the lens through which you view the same story i began training with whisper and the guildmaster i was better than her much better than her her teasing and taunting were relentless and it was baffling that she could see someone like me with such potential and so much future power and treat me like a child the guild master was kind and he gave me the tutelage i needed to get stronger we graduated and got our guild seals i took my first quest and saved the villagers from the wasp queen these people were cheering for me but did they know i didn't do this for them i didn't save them because i cared i saved them because i knew it would get me further toward my goal slaughtering the men who took my sister and mother i took the job to attack orchard farm i figured i could help the bandits and get more money maybe getting stronger in the process more money meant better weapons which meant i could smite my enemies easier i needed it i didn't feel good taking from these farmers but it was necessary they realized that right i was a hero i was important they made food i fought whisper and she was no match the years had done nothing to advance her training i guided some traitors through darkwood and only one of them made it a third tried to join us but he was clearly infected by a balvarine i killed him before he could turn mercy i reached oakville my home the memories came flooding back things i didn't want to think about and the rage only got louder people were scared of me now running in fear or booing me in shops they were jealous their words meant nothing to me a spirit wanted me to give his treasure to his wife but i wanted the treasure the 500 gold could buy me armor but i needed the spirit to leave so i killed his wife and took the money she wasn't going to marry again necessary maize told me he had information about teresa that she could still be alive i journeyed to twin blades camp to see if i could find the cirrus that knew more about her i hired some assassins to get me in what was money worth if it wasn't spent when i defeated twin blade teresa came out she was the blind cirrus she gave me more power and i used it to kill twin blade and his entire guard they were bandits killing for money i didn't kill for money i killed for power none of these lowly folk could ever rise to the status that i was meant to they were weak some bandits offered me a job to slaughter the town of barrow fields traders and guards all we'd take their money i couldn't pass it up another consequence of the path i'd chosen i went to knothole glade at maze's request i found the archaeologist and killed the white balvareen i went to the arena and completed it and won go whisper fought me at the end and lost i needed to kill her for the money wait but it was a lot of money money that could buy potions swords armor bows things like that would make people fear me more power the power would make it so that oakville didn't happen again i could make sure it never happened again plus whisper had always undermined me i could tell i could see it in her eyes that she thought she was more powerful than i this surely wouldn't be the last hero i'd have to kill on my path i had to get used to it she meant nothing to me when i struck her down thunder chastised me for killing his sister but he knew what she was getting into this was the business i met jack of blades i wasn't strong enough to take him down yet i needed to save my mother first lady gray told me to visit her sometime but i didn't have time for women she would just get in the way of my duty but would she this woman seemed like a smart one vying for power and moving herself up the ladder maybe that was perfect she was cold and cruel but no sweet woman could ever be with me look at me i've become a monst i went to see lady gray i courted her brought her gifts bought a home finally she wanted me to fight thunder her other suitor to prove myself we battled at the headsman's hill he wanted more than just her love he wanted to avenge his sister he wasn't strong enough just like her just like whisper he couldn't protect her and he couldn't protect himself he was weak how was he supposed to protect lady gray we married the next day i didn't love her truly i felt nothing for her but she brought me up she gave me more money to buy better equipment and she brought me more influence i saved the archaeologist at the docks and headed to litchfield graveyard to find the path to the prison i killed the grave keeper when i got inside and took his key i didn't have time to deal with old bumbling buffoons i rescued my mother from the prison but jack caught us i was trapped again how did i let this happen how did i fail i meant to be the most powerful person in the world and this man keeps one step ahead of me always i made my escape took my mother and headed back to the guild hook coast that's where i'd stop him again he captured my mother at this point i knew i'd make it to him before he could do anything i was too strong and he was a fool who had manipulated his way to the top i'd take it by force during this playthrough i tried to focus on magic going for a kind of evil spell caster thing this is when i realized the limitations of the will system the best spells in the game are the ones that augment swords or bows spells like berserker make your sword swings incredibly powerful for a short moment and multi-hit lets you fire multiple arrows at once i wanted to use only will during my playthrough but it just seemed like fighting an uphill battle this is something that future games would work on a bit but hood ended up becoming an evil archer because the power of bows in this game can be bested by none maize betrayed me i didn't care it didn't even hurt i knew i would be stronger than him he was a coward a fool i would have respected him if he was trying to take this power for himself but he wasn't he died admitting his cowardice i chased jack through albion and made it to the guild hall the guildmaster was hurt this felt odd why did i care about this old man was it because he reminded me of my father was it because he was my father the one that truly raised me i had to get to jack before i could he sliced my mother's neck and there was no pain no fear no hurt just anger rage i had to kill him this was my last test i struck him down quickly i always knew i was more powerful and now i proved that the most powerful man in the world part of the court i was stronger than william himself the first archon no one could defy me teresa was speaking she said i would have to kill her to receive the sword i didn't i didn't want to but she was neutral she wasn't scared of death neither of us were we were meant to die as children the fact that she made it this far was a miracle and she knew that it was necessary i'd gone too far to turn back now i killed her and took the sword at this point i was alone i hadn't seen lady gray in months and scythe communicated with us i took the flame heart by force i felt nothing when i killed these old men i didn't do it for money power or even to feel i just did it because that's what i do people know the name hood they fear the name hood this is what i'm meant for i took the fire heart and headed on the ship of the drowned briar needed me to collect three souls the first was an arena soul i was powerful now i could kill thunder to save some time i also let him go last time and he needed to pay for that i should have killed him already he went down easy and i took his soul into the mask killing these two just meant there was less competition it wasn't a challenge but i didn't need them rising up against me later i took her soul as well the last was who not him i went to the heroes guild he tried to fight and even tried to convince me in the end you have been given too much power and it has corrupted you but it isn't too late to turn back stop this now and there is still hope for you for all of us please let me teleport you to the graveyard take nostro's soul instead it was too late i was beyond convincing there were no morals in this these people weren't anything anymore just bodies with voices mouths flapping and i killed the man who raised me i took the mask and fought jack one last time he was weaker than i expected when the mask sat before me in my hand i knew this is what everything was building to this moment nothing else mattered this was the final power this was my ascendancy to godhood i would do what no one else could i would rule now that you've seen both sides both stories you see the difference this is what this game is about i genuinely didn't think the evil playthrough would be that different i figured it would have a bad ending and you'd kill some people along the way which you do killing the guild master was actually particularly hard for me if i'm being honest but the point here isn't the changes made to the story it's how you view the story once you're in the shoes of a character with different motivations it's how you view the same characters now that you want different things and how just one gold one action as a child can create these two different stories this is the genius of the introductory quests as well they set the tone in the atmosphere for everything that comes after they're a micro version of the grand choices that you'll make later it's not only introducing you to characters and mechanics but how you make choices moving forward sure you can be both good and evil and make contradictory decisions each time but it's just not as fun fable as a whole did a lot for video games it introduced the idea that a game can put the player and its choices at the forefront stories can be told dynamically and i think the modern gaming landscape has a lot more of that thanks to fable i also want to reiterate here that i'm not saying fable did this first but i think its effect on the general gaming landscape and rpgs as a whole is one that hasn't really been talked about very much it also introduced its own world of interesting characters and a fun progression system with combat that kept me engaged there were some things that bugged me mostly resulting from technical issues the ui could be very cumbersome and often bugged out when just trying to swap out gear combat was interesting but felt like it hadn't been fully realized yet and a lot of characters lines had been delivered in disjointed and strange ways outside of that fable is an incredibly interesting and ambitious concept i think its lack of large characterization and basic narrative work to move its goals forward to provide you with a blank slate fable isn't supposed to tell you an interesting story it wants you to tell that story yourself it puts you in someone else's shoes and asks you to take the wheel narratively this can create some amazing situations or some terrible ones but that is up to you this level of agency is what pulled me into fable in the first place and it excels on that point above the rest i genuinely enjoyed my time with fable obviously my favorite part was making choices and playing both sides of the same story crafting my own narrative was fun and seeing my effect on the world and the character were interesting the things that bothered me with fable were mostly fixed in future entries of the series but those come with problems of their own if you get the chance i'd highly recommend playing fable at some point if you already haven't it's worth the time you put into it and fable anniversary makes it mostly more accessible than ever fable had its effect on gaming it was maybe not the cause but the start of a huge trend in the coming years but it also continued its own story its own world that it had developed this would be just the first entry in a series that would continue for over a decade and still has another entry in the works the first game was a success upon release selling over a million copies in less than a year critics praised the game for its depth and open-ended nature molyneux was criticized for promising features that never appeared in the game the studio wanted to capitalize on the success and interest from the fan base though and greenlit a sequel so [Music] fable 2 the sequel to a highly successful and critically acclaimed rpg the first game was a success and fans wanted more so this entry had its work cut out for it the game was based around a similar premise as its predecessor choice but this entry would lean a little bit heavier on the world and the story that it wanted to tell the combat systems and rpg mechanics would also be upgraded and polished to appeal to a wider audience all of these decisions would lead to a game that wasn't necessarily what the original fable had set out to do but it also didn't forgo the idea of choice entirely it landed somewhere in between fable 2 was walking in large footsteps but could it fill those shoes fable 2 was announced in 2007. lionhead studios would return as the developer along with most of the original team a majority of fable 2's development story was detailed through a video diary released on lionhead studios website these interviews with various team members reveal exactly what the team wanted the game to be one of the largest new features that the team wanted to implement was an expansion upon the emotion system they wanted players to feel that the npcs in the game were genuine and that the interaction with them was genuine this was something the team felt that they couldn't accomplish with the previous game and wanted to really hammer it home here peter molyneux was also involved with the sequel and specifically wanted players to be able to read the emotions of characters and understand plainly what they were feeling the team's biggest approach to combat was the philosophy of one button combat people have said you can't put combat on one button what i hope this video diary says to you is that you can this was the idea that you would be able to do multiple different things with one button and thus make the control scheme more approachable clearly their idea here was to make the game easy to pick up and more palatable for the general public they also wanted this to extend into the magic system of the game making spells easier to choose and use the team also wanted the world to seem a bit more colorful this time around they wanted to age the world forward and get away from the full medieval age introducing the game to some slight technology one of molyneux's bigger focuses was co-op introducing the ability to be able to pick up a controller and play with friends was a focal point for the team overall it seemed that the team wanted to expand on the things that fable had done but also take some new risks and introduce quite a lot of new mechanics fable ii released on october 21st 2008 for the xbox 360. fable 2 begins by introducing us to the game's all-new cinematics these rendered scenes actually look pretty good for the xbox 360. i was playing this on the series s but for a 13 year old game you can't be too mad you can see its age at certain points but for the most part they hold up it was also a nice change from the previous game actually having cut scenes that weren't just models from the game half obscured by the camera lionhead does decide to undercut this entire thing though as they are want to do with the bird we're following defecating on our character's head it's very lionhead of them we're introduced to our main character who we can now choose our gender for our main character lives in bowerstone and the sequel is set 500 years after the first game in the same vein albion has changed drastically in those 500 years and we'll see how soon enough our sparrow the nickname given to the main character and his sister rose long to see castle fairfax this building towers over the lower areas of bowerstone lord lucian is the head of the castle and these days he's pretty reclusive his wife and daughter having died in a tragic accident during this introductory segment our main character travels through the city with his sister we come across a traveling caravan of mystical goods led by a man named mergo there's a music box that takes our interest for five gold but we don't have that kind of money we are slum people a woman shows up lined in white and red robes and tells us that the music box is important he has no idea what he stumbled upon but you have an inkling don't you some part of you wants to believe it's magic well you you really think it could be for five gold coins you could have your answer for five gold coins we could eat for a week listen to me rose at the end of that week you and your little sparrow would be no closer to your dream no closer to the inside of that beautiful castle since fable 2 takes place so far into the future one great change with the world is its move towards technology the team plays with this idea of rejection of will and the embrace of science but i don't think it's ever a real plot line it just makes up some things that certain npcs say when they see you using magic we decide to gather up the money for the box by doing some quests around bowerstone we help a guard collect lost warrants pose for a photo destroy some beetles in a man's warehouse get a man's stolen bottle back and deliver a love letter during our scrounging for gold i came across a dog left in the streets cold and alone he took to us quickly and began following us this prologue has a similar premise to the first game it's trying to introduce us to the world but something's off here the choices aren't as blatant or obvious they're a little more subtle guarding the warehouse from beatles a man offers us some money to destroy the man's warehouse but it's also the same amount of money that we get from protecting the warehouse so there isn't really an incentive to be evil here this is just a small example of a large problem with fable 2 that we'll touch upon much more in a bit once we bought the music box we took it to a quiet place supposedly the box would grant us one wish i turned it on but when it activated it just disappeared we went back to our house a small hovel in the alleys of bowerstone this tiny little reveal that the main character and his sister live in this hut is kind of an oddly emotional one it's so small and i'm not even sure it was intended but the entire time i was running around bowerstone i just assumed that they lived in a small house with their parents turning the corner and seeing this little broken down shack two lonely children's dreams freshly crushed was a little heartbreaking we were awoken in the middle of the night two guards telling us to come to castle fairfax our wish had come true and jeeves the butler guided us through the castle to see lucian hello young masters hello sir if you'll follow me please where is the grand dining hall oh in the north wing lord lucian hasn't been in there since since the tragic deaths of lady fairfax and little emilia face to face with the man of such power such regal integrity he wanted us to stand on a platform well speak up what did you wish for to live in a castle like this one perhaps that could be arranged i'm working to rebuild well i'm working on something wonderful for which i need individuals with particular talents the platform glowed blue and then suddenly read he said that one of us was the one he was looking for and the other three hadn't been found yet what's that quiet you're heroes but you're not any of the three one of you is the fourth what's happening this isn't what i wanted but nothing must stand in my way no wait don't [Music] i can't allow you to live either i'm sorry [Music] he needed to kill us both to be sure he shot my sister in front of me and then me next our hero goes flying out the window but the woman from before arrives and tells us dying is not our destiny our hero is asleep and recovering for a decade our loyal dog companion beside him the entire time when he awakes in a gypsy camp the rescuer woman tells us that it's time for our journey to begin we find out quickly that this woman is named teresa she's also blind telling us that she's the same character from fable the sister of the hero of oakville this sort of confirms that the canon ending from the first game would be the good one something closer to our saber playthrough fable 2 never confirms this though and there's even legends in the game that say the hero of oakville took the sword of aeons which would canonize the evil ending i think this is the genius of fable that the story we played before is now just a legend and is passed on through unreliable narrators who don't know what happened theresa is also possibly 500 and some years old here i'm assuming her old kingdom lineage is keeping her alive this is where we're given our first quest we must journey into a tomb outside of the camp and find our destiny inside before we get to that let's go over combat the upgrade systems and the general segregation of combat specialties is mostly the same we have strength will and skill and gain experience from each as well as general experience the main difference here is the way combat is actually implemented this is where that one button philosophy comes into play you can attack normally with your swords but there's a soft lock mechanic that works much better here no longer do you feel like you're swinging wildly through the air hitting whatever is in front of you it now feels like you've actually targeted an enemy and are focusing them without having to purposefully lock on your character can also do special moves based on the environment or the position of the enemy slamming their head off walls or stabbing them on the ground through the upgrade system you can gain counters flourishes and the block ability flourishes also work much better because they can be charged up and used at any time rather than only when you've gotten your combat multiplier high enough skill is greatly changed as well with the introduction of guns into albion during these last 500 years albion developed gunpowder and flintlock mechanisms from technology acquired in the eastern country of samarkand this means that we don't have to charge shots anymore ranged combat is pretty simple and upgrades can provide aimed shots will is still our magical skill and we have a great variety here just as before pressing the b button will activate the spell you currently have selected in an area of effect attack pushing the left stick in a direction when pressing this button will target one enemy holding the b button in either case will charge the ability and if you have it unlocked cast a more powerful version of the spell you can equip different spells in each slot effectively being able to time your charges and cast multiple different spells each time without having to switch this works so much better than the previous system and actually made me want to use will more they've also done away with the mana bar which i can't say i loved this would make you think that will is incredibly overpowered but they've also weakened the spells considerably so it's not that much more viable than anything else spam casting spells is a viable option of gameplay but each hit with first level spells does so little damage that just takes forever to kill anything i will say the combat balancing was done a lot better in this game previously skill was incredibly overpowered and it really didn't make sense to use anything else you could level it up so fast and just one shot most enemies especially with the multi-shot spell but now each specialty feels like a viable option to use in any situation the negative side of this is that even though most of the systems are on an even plane they all just feel weak overall at least at the beginning and i didn't really feel like i got to a point where i was incredibly powerful it seemed like the enemies were always scaled to a certain amount with me and were always just on my level and don't get me started on my bad playthrough the other change with xp related systems is the way you gain experience somehow they made it even more cumbersome than it was before now all xp including specialized xp that's the strength skill and will experience is dropped on the ground not only do you have to collect all of your experience by holding down a button but you can no longer move while doing it i truly have no idea why this change was made i just know it seems incredibly pointless the team has also made swapping in and out of weapons mid combat much more smooth you can attack a few times with a sword fire off a couple shots and cast a couple spells without really having to be slowed down the combat just in general feels much more smooth and less chunky it honestly made fighting that much better in this game and i found myself not minding when i was being barraged with groups of enemies we head out to the tomb with our dog in tow i've named him perry the dog is a great feature that fable introduces that we'll talk a lot more about later he always follows you around and can find hidden treasure or dig spots for you to search he also assists in combat and can be upgraded you can interact with him play fetch praise him punish him or teach him tricks it's incredibly easy to fall in love with this digital animal i mean you put a companion dog in a game and people are gonna love him that's just how this works he has his own opinions of you though depending on how often you praise or punish him who would want to punish this dog though i journeyed into the tomb finding it to be the ruined remains of the heroes guild after the defeat of jack of blades and the dissolution of the grand evil of albion the heroes guild became lazy they became selfish and with the discovery of guns citizens rose up to change the hierarchy they revolted against the heroes and destroyed the guild itself even though the heroes were gone this ushered in an age of great philosophy and technology changing albion forever cities grew much larger and more vast and new dynasties rose some heroes survived this but the days of heroes and magic are long gone at the beginning of fable 2 at least inside the guild we find the chamber of fate the murals of the hero of oakvale's story gracing its walls we gain the ability to use experience and to use color skates these work mostly like before as a fast travel system but now we can use our guild seal given to us by teresa to travel anywhere anytime it's incredibly convenient and makes traveling a lot less arduous as we leave the guild teresa wants us to head for bowerstone she tells us that lucian the man who tried to kill me is at the tattered spire he plans to rebuild the tower to channel its immense power to grant his wish this is the same tower from our previous history lesson the one that was built by the old kingdom if you haven't seen my video on fable then you're missing out on some pretty important lore that you should probably go check out our main goal and the framing for the entirety of the story is to recruit three powerful heroes these heroes don't know what they are yet but under the reformed guild with teresa as a tutor their power may be unlocked these are the hero of strength the hero of will and the hero of skill our first target is the hero of strength but before that we have to make it to bowerstone and to do that we have to take out a bandit camp nearby opening the roads we take out thag and his band of ruffians and we're about to free some prisoners when a man approaches he wants to keep these people as slaves but i don't let him they deserve to be free as you can probably tell by now alignment has returned in fable too the system has been expanded upon in many ways but the core mechanics are the same if you do good things your alignment will shift towards good do evil things and it will shift towards evil this will affect your appearance moving forward and how people react to you along with the original alignment renown and attractiveness scales fable 2 added four more purity and corruption funny and scary love and hate and wealthy and poor strong and weak and tall and short were also added for physical scales i thought that these were interesting and serve to add to the subtlety of your character but overall i didn't notice too much of a difference without actually diving into the systems and trying to change my character's stats the purity scale is actually the one that most affects the gameplay because along with base alignment scales it affects your appearance your purity is not really changed much by your choices more by the things you do outside of your main quests having sex charging too much for property rent or drinking a lot will make you more corrupt eating vegetables doing jobs and having a happy family will make you more pure your dog's appearance is also reflected by your choices in the game as well the interesting thing that i found was that different combinations of purity and morality can have different physical changes and can award you with titles to use in game if you have high good on your morality but high corrupt you'll have pox marks on your face bags under your yellow green colored eyes and gain the decadent title if you have high evil but high purity you'll have red eyes gray skin and black hair but gain the fanatic title it's interesting that playing this game less extreme has become a viable option here i think overall the upgrades are good and serve to provide some complex feedback for how your actions alter the perception of yourself to the public ultimately i think that to the average player though most of these won't really matter it does further the original goal of fable though to have the world react to the player and their actions in an even more intricate way when i got to the city i needed to make the fated decision my title and the hero's name for this playthrough blade a successor and callback to saber from fable in bowerstone i took a job to make some money fable 2 expands a lot upon the extra activities that you can take part in one of these is getting a job to make ends meet you don't make money from doing hero work because heroes aren't a thing anymore the only gold you'll find is in chests or dug up from the ground fortunately there are a ton of ways to make money in albion there are three mini-game jobs that you can take part in blacksmithing wood cutting and bartending they are each press a at the right time mini-games they get pretty droll over time but they can be a great way to make money the longer you chain button presses together the more your multiplier goes up and you can make a ton in these jobs the best one for me was bartending because it was incredibly consistent you also get promotions after earning certain amounts of gold which increases the gold that you earn outside of this is non-mini game jobs like bounty hunter or civilian displacement bounty hunter sees you capturing criminals and civilian displacement sees you capturing random civilians to take to labor camps these are both the good and evil versions of each other obviously in these you usually have a description of someone and have to find them and force them to follow you back to the drop-off point i found that these took a while and i would often end up getting my capturies killed on the way back if you want to make the real dough though you can get into property management most of the buildings in fable are purchasable even the shops you can own an entire city if you want to and if you have the gold for it from this you'll gain revenue every day or every five minutes as the game says it tells you that you'll gain gold even when not playing but it didn't seem nearly as fast as when playing for me from the property screens you can redecorate houses entirely to increase their value buying furniture from various shops around the world you can also increase or decrease rent which brings your purity up or down blade always decreased the rent finding teresa in bowerstone she gives you a deck of different tarot cards these foretell your heroes fate in the game to come different cards show the coming story and forebode a choice that we will have to make just as teresa gave us the first time around she wanted me to travel to oakfield and find the first hero i had to make my way across the country and through some hob caves it was nice to see these creatures make a return in the sequel a lot of the enemies from the first game would make a return in some form the bridge to oakfield is broken and some bandits have taken it over making our way past them we arrive in the small village oakfield is a strange place it's a bastion of color and simplicity in a sea of evil and gray right outside of it bandit camps are abound and just up on the hill is the temple of shadows but this town sits outside of it all its grass still green and lush mostly because of the temple of light that sits above it the temple was founded by albert the luminous they complete rituals that concern holy water and the fate of oakfield itself a golden oak grows and every 10 years it drops a golden acorn this is then replanted and seeded in the ground the golden oak that then grows from it bears its fruits in the lushness of the town around it here i took a sidequest job to get rid of the bandits in the area afterwards i took one from a ghost atop a cliff face overlooking the sea apparently years ago the ghost killed himself after his love alex didn't want to marry him he wanted me to get his beloved to fall in love with me and then propose to her and give her a letter that he wrote basically pranking her super hard the luckiest woman in the world i never thought i'd find happiness again i never thought i'd deserve it i there's something i've never told you i almost got married once before he was a sweet boy but we were both so young too young i got scared and ran away the day of the wedding i hurt him so badly he he took his own life i went to alex and made her fall in love with me but when confronted with the decision of whether to prank her or not i chose not to i decided to actually marry this woman in fable the choices were pretty cut and dry protect the farm or steal from the farm kill whisper or don't kill whisper but fable ii does away with this a lot of the choices are morally gray and you really aren't sure what effect the choice will have or which one is the right one was i to deject this woman because she was kind of the reason the ghost killed himself or should i take her for my own thereby not hurting her but not giving the ghost what he wants and making him suffer in the afterlife as well it seemed selfish to take alex for my wife but i guess it seemed the best of two options this in the end was the good choice upon returning to the ghost he told me that he realized this was what needed to happen and it helped him to pass on into the afterlife you fell in love with her did you the strange thing is i'm not mad anymore i feel at peace i asked you to do such a terrible thing i'm just glad you knew better this moral grayness definitely helps to make choices more realistic but makes it harder for someone like me who's pursuing an extremist playthrough but now i had a wife and a home it was a little harder to go out on quests now but i still managed having a wife can have a lot of implications you can set the household's budget for the week which will determine how happy your family is when you're away you can also have relations with your wife and choose to um use protection or not yeah fable 2 got condoms you can have children which i mentioned before and it seemed like alex definitely wanted children because she wouldn't leave me alone about it what do you say we go to bed early today know what i mean the expression system overall and interaction with npcs has been greatly upgraded in fable 2. first of all the introduction of the expression wheel just makes the whole thing simpler instead of having to bind things to keys and bars there are also just a lot more useful expressions and you can even use expressions during certain cut scenes and events to change the flow of conversation this new system incentivizes actually interacting with npcs and trying to gain their favor certain npcs will even give you gifts if they like you enough the expression system is also used greatly in the civilian displacement job convincing people to follow you back to the labor camps or you can just use it to show off trophies and flirt with ladies like i said before this system was a part of fable but i don't feel that it was utilized to its full extent there it also wasn't the most intuitive to use secrets were pretty prevalent in the first game and they're also pretty prevalent here demon doors make a return with the same system as before complete the door's request and it will let you inside i think the doors are done quite a bit better in the sequel because the environments on the inside are a lot more appealing and interesting than the first game these little pocket dimensions boast character intrigue and questions what is this little world and what's going on here those questions are never answered but the mystery is part of the fun i can't really say that the rewards live up to this though because most of the demon doors didn't really feel like they were worth going through the trouble to open them another secret that's been added to the game is gargoyles these little stone rascals will hurl insults at you all over albion you have to find where they're located and shoot them there are 50 in total and you'll be rewarded for destroying them by heading to their lair under bowerstone and collecting the loot in increments of gargoyles nullified these rewards again though are not worth the trouble you're going to go through most of fable 2 is like this and going out of your way to find treasure and secrets rarely feels like it's worth your time in the end eventually i met up with the abbott in oakfield he's the senior member of the temple of light it's time for their ritual once a decade the order must send two monks into a cave to water the golden acorn one of the monks is the abbott's daughter and he wanted me to go with her now nourishing the golden acorn is done with holy water from the wellspring of light but the spring is located in a nearby cave which is said to be quite dangerous his daughter's name is hammer she's a large red-haired monk who is completely passive and doesn't want to fight so we're gonna do the fighting for her we protect her in the caves while she transports the water once the ritual is complete one of the temple monks comes rushing in and says the abbott is being attacked hammer runs back to the temple but she doesn't act quickly enough and her father is killed you let him go before i break you in half no don't make me kill you too we don't see most of this scene just hear it as we're trying to catch up to hammer the whole thing is timed perfectly though as we walk through the door just in time to see hammer swing her weapon at the man who killed her father this scene is pretty cinematic for a game this old but every part of it hits perfectly hammer has to forego her passivity in anger to avenge her father this changes her character and gives us the hero of strength we skip ahead to the abbott's funeral and hammer is conflicted sad and angry is that it then my father's gone the golden oak is flourishing again so now life just goes on as before does it teresa shows up to bring her back to the guild and give her purpose she's almost reminiscent of the hero of oakville at the beginning of fable and theresa is taking on mazes role here one thing fable 2 upgrades in great force is its story the characters especially the heroes all feel realistic they have goals and motivations they have development and depth the story feels like it has a good structure it flows well and the emotional and narrative punches hit when they're supposed to a lot of fable's story felt meandering at points and kind of random but fable 2 corrects this i'll get more into this later and why i think it's actually a detriment to fable's original concept after getting hammered to the guild i went home to visit my wife and make some more money i took on some extra jobs i helped two brothers out to get rid of a curse they accidentally released and headed to find the second hero the hero of will lives in a tower where he researches his magic powers i went to find him but lucian's men beat me there i seeked out jeeves lucian's former butler he had stolen lucian's notes and gave them to me for a thousand gold i had to fight a troll to get them but it worked out in the end i want to vent about the bosses in fable too i don't think that they're a large upgrade from the previous game's boss encounters as they're just as simplistic and pretty droll they do have some more complex mechanics like only being able to hit the trolls at certain spots on their body but this doesn't really make anything more challenging the other thing that fable 2 has against it is that it reuses bosses quite a bit we'll fight this same type of troll a couple times and after fighting it once the little novelty that was there has worn off these extra fights usually aren't story related but just environment encounters you just happen upon them when you're going to another quest but it seems pointless i would rather another pack of the same enemies i've been fighting than the same boss i fought hours ago sure they're both repetitive options but if you're going to be repetitive at least make it take less of my time also small nitpick alert what is the font for this boss name and why isn't the first letter capitalized it genuinely looks like a placeholder or a beta version of the nameplate and is just horrible i found a man in a cabin named giles who wanted me to take care of the bandits down the road they killed his wife and he can't sleep knowing they're still alive i took out the bandits and defeated the leader ripper okay okay you've got me but you're not gonna kill me right that'd be wrong very wrong justice is what i need but giles asked me to leave him alive this was another one of those morally gray choices that i found i wasn't sure what to pick here was killing ripper myself the good action because he'd been a murderer and i was the one doling out justice or was letting giles avenge his wife the right choice i didn't know what he was going to do with the bandit leader i wasn't sure if he was going to take him to the guards and have him jailed or torture him behind his house i think this type of choice really gets you away from deciding what is the good thing to do trying to get your meter up in the direction that you want and pushes you towards what you think is right instead of trying to choose what we think the game thinks is good we should be choosing what we think is good or evil this allows for a much more genuine choice in these situations rather than one motivated by changing your character's appearance or the game moving forward this type of choice also allows for a much more neutral playthrough making good and bad choices technically contradictory in the eyes of the game's systems feels more natural i met hammer on the road we needed to head to westcliff and try to access the crucible the crucible is basically the arena from the first game but slightly changed the winner of the crucible will be able to join lucian's army and would thus bring me closer to the hero of will on the way i found a couple game masters promising me different activities to take part in in fable there were quite a few game masters around the world who would offer you different card or table games to play coin golf memory and blackjack were some of the simple games you could play fable 2 expands this by creating quite a few original games that are actually interesting and complex spinner box is just a variation of slots match symbols to win more money keystone and fortune's tower are the really interesting ones though keystone has numbers listed 3 to 18. each time a game starts you make outside bets on the arch stones these get removed each time their corresponding number is rolled you bet on whether these stones will be taken away by the end of the game each round you make inside bets where you bet on which number is going to appear the game ends when all the stones are removed when both middle arch stones have been removed or when one of the bottom arch stones are removed fortune's tower is a game where an ascending number of cards are dealt starting with two then three and four and so on each time a card matches with one of the ones on the previous line and they're touching the game can end the gate card dealt at the beginning of the game and at the top of the tower can prevent this from happening though once per game a hero card being dealt also prevents any pairs from having an effect on that line the goal is to get the highest number you can on one line and then take the deal the deal will pay out to the value of all the cards on the current line added together and multiplied by the factor of how much your bet was each game has variations on it like bloodstone for keystone and different amounts of lines for fortune's tower or extra spots for spinnerbox these games are pretty interesting and i didn't make any money at all playing them but i did gamble a fair amount in fable 2. you also have a gambling level which will increase based on how much money you spend and win when playing these games i'm also explaining this in depth now so i don't have to talk about fable 2 pub games later hammer and i headed towards westcliff taking out as many bandits as we could on the way eventually we encountered balvarenes who are a lot more vicious looking in this game compared to the first a woman arrives asking us to save her son robert from the balverine lair we venture inside and it turns out to be a trap what is this place children i breathe i have to hold off the horde and even defeat a white balverine while hammer uses her strength to make us an escape route on the other side we arrive at the crucible like i said before this is basically the arena with some changes instead of staying in the same fighting ground and having eight rounds of enemies come at us we fight eight rounds across different rooms every three rounds that are completed we receive a trader room with the ability to buy potions or even weapons completing five of the eight rounds as perfect will pay out the top prize of fifteen thousand gold a perfect round is killing all of the enemies in the specified amount of time the crucible was okay but really didn't feel consequential it was very easy and there weren't any unique bosses just repeated enemies and a troll to fight at the end there is an issue with fable 2's combat that we haven't really talked about yet potions and fable 2 are much more scarce than in the first game there they were in abundance and i felt like if i bought 50 i would be good for quite some time and it definitely didn't break the bank in fable 2 they're pretty uncommon in the wild and pretty expensive at traders they're also hard to find in bulk at shops usually only selling a few at a time this is totally fine and i think adds to the experience by forcing you to use combat to stay alive instead of just spamming potions the only problem with fable 2 is death when a character dies without a resurrection vial they don't restart from a checkpoint or head back to town they're resurrected there on the spot at the cost of some experience when this first happened to me i assumed it was a one-time thing and that if i died again right after i would be reset but this didn't happen you can't die in fable 2 not really you'll always revive right there in return for some of your experience being taken away the team talked about this choice in the development diaries and i understand their philosophy what we want to do this time is make sure that you feel the the terror of impending death but this time kind of take the sting out of the risk by saying okay we're not going to rewind the game for you you will lose something you will lose some experience but we're not going to force you to play that bit of the game again because you're obviously having some difficulty with it so what we're going to do instead is take the experience from the environment around you and use that for your kindle with one last heroic struggle you'll rise up kind of burst up with energy and everybody will go flying music will swell and you'll feel very heroic for that moment they wanted to make the game more accessible and really have your hero rise back up in a feat of defiance one last final outburst of strength they thought taking some of your experience would be enough of a consequence but i don't think it is there were certain points in the game when i died that it snatched a large amount of my gained experience something like twenty thousand points but that was rare normally the numbers were much smaller and later in the game two thousand or even five thousand experience is nothing you can lose that all day having almost no consequence for dying is not something that i think adds to the game's appeal i honestly think it takes away from it and starts to make combat feel like a chore towards the end of the game when the fights have been ramped up the only thing that death does add as an interesting consequence is scars if you die sometimes you'll receive a permanent scar on your character there's a couple ways of removing scars in the game but it's also a genuine way to show what the character has been through in their journey this furthers that ever important thesis that we've talked about so much character reflecting actions winning the crucible allows you to enter lucian's army the game makes a considerable effort to tell you that you won't be able to return or do any side quests for some time after you leave so i better finish some stuff up now i visited my wife before i left i figured if i was going to be gone a while i wouldn't want to come back with her angry at me i also helped the temple of light by destroying the shadow worshippers who were intruding on their sacred ritual space fully snuffing out the temple of shadows fable 2 gets kind of annoying to look at after a while because of the god awful hud even though they went ahead and fixed the ui overall making the menu screens easier to navigate they turned around and made the screen a mess at any given point in time there's just always so much stuff going on that doesn't need to be normally if you're hearing anyone speak there's an opaque box at the bottom filled with text but at the same time a similar box up top giving you the quest information and option to skip dialogue this would be fine just during npc talk but this top box persists all the time constantly giving you tool tips that repeat over the course of the entire game i just found that it looked terrible most of the time and the stuff on the screen didn't need to be there when i boarded the ship to the spire they told me i had to leave my possessions and perry perry didn't like this and neither did i but i knew it was necessary i left him and hammer on the beach hoping to see them again soon arriving at the spire there's an obvious noise one that will penetrate the ears a droning it's the humming of the device itself [Music] [Music] we meet another recruit that's excited to join the army a steady income and help his family his name is bob and he will become our best friend at the spire lucian gives a speech to all of us before we're allowed in and this was one of the cutscenes that actually shined for me the world outside these marvelous walls is a corrupt rotting husk reason is absent instead of order there is only chaos chaos does not punish evil nor reward righteousness chaos cuts innocent lives short and we're to accept this as fate i beg to differ stand in the center of a great instrument of change with it i shall remake the world and my creation shall be unrecognizable in its perfection but my will alone is not sufficient for such a monumental task i like the scene a lot it adds development to lucian's character and it shows just how far he's gone even though he was killing children before seeing him now looking twisted and mad his motivations clear and on the table he seems evil but we can also see why his motivations are there he wants order and will have it at any cost he fundamentally and ideologically disagrees with what i and the heroes stand for his reasons are solid and they don't feel hokey or comically villainesque just genuine a man that's gone too far arriving at the spire you were taken into their ranks my head was shaved and i was forced to wear a collar that prevented me from using my willpowers fully incorporated into albion's spire industrial complex the commandant wanted to see me and on my way i saw bob who was taking to the order nicely can you believe they put me on guard duty on my first day too i must have impressed someone he was excited to write home to his wife i didn't think that was going to happen as i met the commandant he told me that he would break me as he had every recruit before we were working on the construction of the spire and lucian would make sure that was completed the commandant started forcing me to obey his orders each time i didn't my collar would be activated and some of my experience would be drained this was an incredibly clever use of this mechanic because it gave me a comparable consequence for my choices i defied him a few times but in the end i knew my mission and saving the world was probably worth much more than this moment of defiance i listened kneeled and begged when he wanted me to and he let me go now dad i know what you're thinking why is losing experience here a worthy consequence and not when dying two things first the experience you lose here is experience you already have banked but yet to spend the experience you lose when dying is experience you haven't collected that's still on the ground collecting the experience constantly can mitigate this loss you can't always spend your experience right away because you might not have enough the other reason is that this is a choice you know what the consequence is and you're deciding that your morality is worth trading some benefits of power dying also shouldn't be infinite choices can time skips forward a few months and i'm to watch some prisoners while one of the guards goes on lunch time skips ahead this time a few years bob is still excited and optimistic we both look gravely different at this point finally the commandant calls me to his office and bob is there on the ground in pain the commandant wants me to obey he wants me to kill bob but i won't i refuse i'm knocked out for this treason and i lose more experience time skips more this time not even understanding how much has passed during this whole section walking to the commandant's office a prisoner in one of the cells has been speaking to me through telepathy he's been telling me to obey and just stick through it this time i don't see him he must have died everyone dies here i had to find a guard who has a job for me and when i get there he's knocked out i take some weapons off of him and i'm hit with a jolt of electricity it's the prisoner he's the will hero i've been looking for and he summoned just enough strength to get my collar off there i've removed it it took me years to focus enough build to destroy our collars and that guard i've got nothing left so when trouble comes it's up to you finally i can fight we make our way to the top of the spire and we have to get out through the commandant's office and we finally get to fight the man that killed bob he dies by my sword and garth and i head out we make our way onto a ship and get back to albion when i arrive teresa and perry are waiting for me he's been waiting by the docks the past few weeks he knew i was coming home it feels good to have him by my side again and my bond with this virtual dog could not be stronger garth goes with teresa and we've gained our second hero even though it took a decade this whole sequence is done incredibly well going to the spire this passage of time and the effect that it has on the world and the player are great when you come back things are different the temple of light will be bigger with a new addition based on which side quest you took previously your dog looks older you look older it's just a really big upgrade on the jail sequence from the first game and adds permanence to everything i visited my wife again and she didn't really seem to care that i was gone that much i found hammer in a tavern and joined all of the heroes at the guild the last hero we needed to find was that of skill sorry it took me so long lucian's men are all over the place you must be hammered and you must be garth lucian's lackey i was made to understand you might be mistrustful i didn't anticipate your staggering wit and intellect oh yeah and did you anticipate that i like to take a hammer and whack smug little spell flingers he was located in bloodstone and to get there we needed garth's color skate this just happens to be located in his tower which was occupied by tons of lucian's men i ventured inside wiping out all of the forces and when we arrived at the top uh nothing happened wait what oh garth must have gotten stuck yeah yeah he's stuck he won't uh okay okay i can't use the dig spot in front of him or that makes him get stuck okay cool i'll have to redo all that fable 2 is pretty janky fable1 was janky even the anniversary edition and we talked about that but that was never janky in game breaking ways but fable 2 always had me on the edge of my seat because i felt like if i did too much or went too fast something like this would happen there's a lot of bugs and sometimes things just don't work out like they're supposed to it's a little frustrating but again i think bugs come with the territory on games like this i do think back to a specific moment in the lionhead video diaries though when they're complaining about having the worst month for unresolved bugs in the development cycle and it seems to me that a lot of those never got resolved i think bugs at the moment some rather nasty grouping bugs in the editor taking some serious investigation what we have here we can see that this is the last month the blue bars show us what's uh what's been fixed and the red ones all the bugs have gone in so the last two days we've had a peak there which is good which means people fixing things this was also just a time when things like this in rpgs were extremely common and it wasn't rare to see the details not be ironed out once all three of us arrive at the top of the tower we have to protect garth while he gets the color skate working i just want to say here i love the general aesthetic of lucian's men the spire and everything that comes out of it it has this brutalist dark architecture design and it serves really well as an antithesis to the heroes of albion they are represented mostly by magic nature leather outfits all pretty rooted in medieval lucian is represented by large towering mechanical structures brooding blackened stone and glowing red collars it's an incredible dynamic once garth has the color skate unlocked we step through but hammer and garth don't come with me i end up in wraith marsh but get kidnapped by a random slaver perry saves me luckily and gets the keys this seemed super unnecessary as this whole sequence lasts for maybe 2 minutes and the player doesn't do anything but whatever i guess it served to involve perry more in the story i'm not sure what the motivation was here other than to make a reference to the mighty boosh by naming this man old greg traveling through wraith marsh we encounter another boss that we're gonna have to fight a lot through the rest of the game banshee the banshee is pretty simple she spits out some minions and we have to kill them before we can damage her we have to move away while killing these minions though because she'll slowly move towards us and try to drain our health recovering hers the interesting thing about the banshee is that she'll taunt us while fighting her what would rose say if she can see you now most of the things she taunts us about are specific to the character she was mostly taunting blade about his wife and family the banshee goes down and we head through wraith marsh the place starts to look familiar and teresa tells us that this place is oakville we'll find out why oakville looks like this in a bit for now we arrive in bloodstone looking for our fated third hero fable 2 introduces this little golden trail that i'm sure you've seen by now it guides you to the next main quest but can be changed to focus on side quests or jobs i don't think this addition was necessary at all the game definitely doesn't need to tell you exactly where to go the world isn't that large that i can't figure out how to get around and it honestly ruins the fun of some side quests like the archaeologist she'll give you papers that describe a general area and have you look for an artifact in that area this is totally destroyed by just using the golden trail to lead you exactly to the point of the quest not only that but it doesn't work a lot of the time i found myself switching the game's focus to a side quest and then heading off toward it only to realize i was going in the wrong direction because the trail never switched it also just wouldn't appear sometimes and i'd have to mess around with my focused quest to get it to come back we find our third hero sat upon the most regal building in the city bloodstone is a seaport it's located by the ocean and most of the people are fishermen or have fishing related occupations before i met the final hero i took on a few quests the first was to help a man find some various artifacts around the city he's supposedly part of a church called the temple of benevolent yokels or toby for short this is one of fable two's standout side quests and it has many we have to collect things like the mutton of eternal hope and the wine of forgiveness eventually you bring him back a woman of the night and you realize you're being scammed here you can scare the man out of town or kill him i couldn't scare him because i just wasn't scary enough i guess so i kind of had to kill him but that was okay right another standout side quest is treasure island of doom you have to journey to a cave to find an old dead pirate's treasure map once you do you fight him and take his ship to lionhead isle where you search for his 10 treasure chests these little side adventures were a lot of the times more interesting and fun than the main stories that the game itself was pushing this is all too common in rpgs and i think that this is because it's easier to tell these self-contained tales with little stakes and interesting premises than it is to commit to them over the course of a 10-hour narrative that doesn't mean that fable's story isn't interesting and doesn't have a ton of concepts that draw you in i just think these side quests can be incredibly good and light-hearted the side quests were also where fable 2 lets its english humor come through through the first game i was definitely thrown off by how the game didn't seem to be taking itself seriously sometimes but in fable 2 it seemed refreshing lionhead knew the places they needed to lighten the mood and the times they needed to darken it after gaining enough renown i headed back to the manor to talk to reaver he wants me to do him a favor before he'll come with me return a dark seal to a temple in wraith marsh the shadow court now rules over the place that used to be oakville they're the reason that oakville was destroyed in the first place when reaver was young he accepted the gift of eternal youth from them once a year he has to keep his end of the bargain bring one of them a sacrifice we of course don't know this upon journeying into the tombs but regardless we find a young girl who's wandered in there and were faced with a choice we have to sacrifice our appearance and a permanent degradation of our life or let this girl die i just couldn't do that this had interesting consequences from here on out i had red eyes and withered skin i was pure and good but i looked evil now remember this is a main quest so the character has to make this choice in the course of their game it's not optional this creates an interesting dynamic and evil character could come out of this looking holy and a good character could come out of this looking awful this shows us that even though our actions are represented in our character we can't judge them by their looks it's a bold choice for the team to make and even goes against their core theme of the series but it's one that delivers a powerful message both narratively and reflected in the gameplay i actually bounce back and forth quite a bit on how i feel about this choice on one hand it's representative of the entire game for me that choice is put on the back burner a bit and story is put at the forefront your actions do affect the world just not in the way that you think on the other hand it's an incredibly daring choice to go against that core belief one that would have been expected from the fans at the time once we come back to reaver he thanks us for holding up his end of the bargain and is appalled by my appearance during our conversation the building is ransacked by lucian's men but luckily river has a back entrance we escape through a hole in the wall behind a bookshelf and head out to the beach the rest of the team joins us and we are cornered by a great shard this is a creation of lucian's a child of the spire we destroy it and reaver reluctantly agrees to join our cause i'm teleported back to heroes hill above the guildhall with the team teresa begins the ritual that we've been working towards all three heroes are lifted up their powers funneling into me when it's completed something is wrong lucian's army shows up he takes hammer garth and reaver and traps me i should have gone out into the dark and found your body that night but i was hasty i let the bloodline flourish and you have flourished but this time is different the last of the heroic blood will flow out onto this hilltop just as it now spatters the walls of your family home your wife is dead i would have left it to one of my soldiers to do the unpleasant deed the past experience tells me one must be absolutely certain of these things perry jumps in front of the bullet our dog is gone and i'm not sad he delivers a powerful speech before shooting me one final time then we're in a dream back as a child rose is alive and we're living on a farm she sets up bottles around the place and we have to round up chickens when the day is done we go to bed but something keeps me up the sound of music i can hear the puzzle box coming from outside the farm and rose tells me not to go looking for it but i do there's nothing fun to do here now where are you going are you mad it's dangerous out there outside the farm are bodies on pikes piles of people burning but at the end that magical item we get to see the hero as he's looked at different important stages throughout the game narrated by different characters from those stages for centuries this academy trained the most supremely gifted sons and daughters of albion bound together by the blood that flowed in their veins [Music] all the while he's holding the box now we're at the spire saved from death once again we intrude on lucian completing the same ritual with our team of heroes we don't let him complete it and i kill him before he's done teresa shows up then telling me that i have a choice the spire is able to grant one final wish and this time we have three options the first is love my friends and family will be brought back to life but at the cost of all those who have died by the hands of lucian and the spire the second is sacrifice all those who died building the spire will be brought back but i won't see my family ever again perry rose and alex will all be gone forever the final choice is wealth all those who are dead will remain dead but i would receive unimaginable wealth i contemplated the choice for a while wanting to bring back alex and perry and even see rose again ultimately i chose sacrifice their lives though worth much to me were not worth more than the thousands dead at the hand of lucian garth wishes to return to samarkand with reaver joining him hammer decides to be transported north to study with the warrior monks as she's had enough of killing teresa tells me that the spire is hers to care for now and that i must leave so she transports me back to albion arriving in albion after the game is over is an incredibly sad affair especially with this ending perry is no longer by my side and i know he's not coming back completing the final side quests and doing the dlc there's no one to tell me where the dig spots are and looking for treasure feels futile i head back to oakfield just to see if lucian was bluffing but alex is nowhere to be found but whenever i think of them i look at the letter i received from the people of albion thanking me for my sacrifice and i realize it was worth it it doesn't kill the pain but lessens it this sad sort of ending reflects the choice made at the shadow court and fable doing the good thing gave you the happy ending your hero was better for it he was less powerful sure but his sister survived so did his friends and the other heroes in fable 2 doing the good thing doesn't get you that it gets your recognition sure but it's melancholic it doesn't get your family back this outward appearance of a villain for saving a woman the death of your friends and family for saving the world albion and fable 2 is a cruel world even to those who decide to rise up and try to defend it two dlc were released for fable ii not whole island and see the future not whole island lets you travel back to the same island we visited in fable but it's been greatly changed supposedly the people that settled the island had complete control of the weather but they hid the artifacts deep in caves we have to help the people who are currently going through great periods of snow transform this land into something else these quests are unique and i like the dynamic weather system that's introduced it even closes off shops in certain conditions but i definitely didn't feel like it added enough narratively for the dlc to be worth it see the future sees murgo the trader from the beginning of the game returning to bowerstone to sell his trinkets each quest we take from mergo comes in the form of a five gold trinket that he sells us activating the trinket will transport us somewhere and begins a new quest the first one is a town that's been cursed inside of a snow globe the town in question is oakville as it was before the shadow court the town is devoid of color and is being terrorized by beings of different colors blue yellow and red each enemy is only damaged by their corresponding combat specialty blue damaged by strength yellow damaged by skill and red damaged by will i loved this quest and it let us see oakville supposedly after it had grown larger but before its destruction the next quest was simply a skull that's trapped a necromancer in the celestial keep you have to wear different costumes and free him upon which he fights you the vision is started by activating a model of the spire and has teresa showing you a vision of the future we see ourselves as the ruler of albion and the future of the continent in our child the last one the crucible is an endless addition to the game it's basically the arena but with just one area to fight in and waves of enemies that you have to defeat in a time limit your goal is to get the highest score you can and win the ultimate prize you do this by killing enemies not dying and increasing your multiplier by hitting targets or kicking chickens during the fight this addition was good because of its extension of gameplay i didn't play it that much though after beating the game i also cleaned up some of my side quests and completed one of the best ones in the entire game i journeyed to a manor a man is in love with a woman from the past he's become obsessed with resurrecting her and making her his wife this woman is lady gray he has us travel all over to collect pieces of her body and bring them to him eventually he successfully brings her back to life and gives her a love potion of sorts unfortunately she falls in love with the first person she sees and that happens to be me you have the option here of staying around and having the love potion take full effect but i left and let the man have his peace as strange as it was in the end fable 2 delivers an incredibly compelling story fixes most of its gameplay issues and offers tons of things to do outside of adventuring and killing bandits before we get into final thoughts though i'd like to go over my evil playthrough or at least my attempt at one this review of the evil playthrough definitely won't be as in-depth and narrative focused as the previous one because i'm using it to further my points on the negatives of the game also spoiler alert the evil playthrough wasn't nearly as good this time around i began my second playthrough the same way in bauerstone old i posed inappropriately for the man's photo i gave the drunkard back his booze and i destroyed the man's crates when the bandit asked me here's the important part the bandit offered me a gold to do this but i was already getting paid a gold by the man that wanted me to protect the crates so what was the incentive here well there really wasn't one this whole section results in the player getting five gold regardless of the choices they made you're even paid the same for giving the warrants to the bandit group over giving them to the guard now this specifically has different implications moving forward in the game but here it doesn't really matter in fable 1 the prologue was important because it set a precedent for the rest of the game that being evil would be rewarded monetarily and with power this is an incentive to become evil and a rationalization for the player that chooses to make those decisions or go down that path fable 2 doesn't really have this making evil decisions generally nets you the same rewards as if you decided to do the right thing people generally want to do the right thing and making the evil choice has really no benefit other than for the sake of it itself fable 2 has lost the classic temptation of the dark side that made the first game so enjoyable giving the warrants to the bandit guard as we'll see later does cause bowerstone old to actually be decrepit moving forward this choice has its effect but this is actually just negative making the evil choice turns your old town into a slum and making the good one turns it into a thriving village prosperous i made my way to lucian's castle got my dog friend sister died got shot i woke up in the gypsy camp named my dog greg and headed out to the tomb i found the heroes guild made my way to bowerstone and defeated the bandit leader nearby i handed the prisoners over to another bandit and made my way into the city i started lifting things from every house i could find but this wasn't very profitable i wanted to make money quick so i went to my old part of town the bandit thanked me for giving him the warrants when i was younger and we see the state of the town i met an assassin and took some jobs from him to kill some people with distinct features the rewards for completing these evil side jobs are not nearly enough you have to seek someone out kill them and either do it silent enough to not be noticed or take on the entire wrath of the people around you you also incur the penalties of the law if they exist in the town where your killing takes place this is just another proof of the evil route not being really worth the trouble i think making the sacrifice of alignment and appearance should definitely be worth the gold or power that you're offered in exchange i made my way to oakfield after talking to teresa and figuring out our plan i defeated the bandits blocking the bridge and had a sculpture made of me as you can see so far most of the main story is exactly the same as previous there are small differences here and there but a lot of these choices don't come in the form of the main story at least in the first half of the game the choices you make come in the form of side quests and the objectives that you choose to take on this makes for a more consistent story and reflects a narrative that the adventurer is either good or bad outside of his hero work there's a reason for this and it's the story that fable 2 has chosen to tell in its entirety the story that fable 2 tells is incredibly good as i've talked about at length its characters especially the heroes are interesting well developed and change over the course of the story this ends up being a merry band of unassuming journeymen and women lucian is an interesting villain with motivations that seem realistic and genuine the twists and turns the story takes are well done and it has some emotional moments but this greatly goes against everything that fable stood for in the first place what we have here is a sacrifice we've given up the grand choices that could be made in the first game the two drastic turns that the story could take for a better narrative this is neither a good or bad design decision just different i think that what this game is trying to do is wildly different than what the first fable tried to do while that game put choice at the forefront this game puts the narrative at the forefront it would rather tell its own interesting story than let you develop one over the course of the game one of the biggest advantages of my bad playthrough in fable was that i allowed myself to wear whatever i wanted because i wasn't restricted into wearing attractive gear i could get the best benefits from the best armor even if it made me appear scary to the rest of the public in fable 2 combat stats have been removed from clothes they only exist to change your appearance and have an effect on the way people react to you this has more of an effect on the role-playing element of the game the motivation to wear clothes become to change the scales of your meters rather than to get stronger a lot of what you do in fable 2 is about getting your meters where you want them rather than making genuine decisions from the perspective of your character on the bright side because i was doing my evil play-through the temple of shadows was open to me i joined their ranks by eating a bunch of live baby chicks in front of them inside you have access to a sacrifice machine here you can bring villagers and sacrifice them to the temple this will tank your alignment of course but also earns you points towards their rewards program completing this questline requires you to earn a certain amount of points and then sacrifice your wife at a certain time you earn a sword called the maelstrom when doing this but comparing it to other legendary weapons in the game it doesn't really come close there's also a counterpart to this weapon that's the exact opposite called the rising sun this is obtained by doing the opposite quest for the temple of light i helped the ghost who wanted to prank alex super hard this time i pranked her super hard [Music] what i don't i don't understand this was it was all a trick no it can't be true it can't be true no turns out this definitely was the evil option because she ends up killing herself and confronting the ghost in the afterlife i went with hammer to complete the ritual and her father died afterwards i went to garth's tower so during this playthrough i pursued another magic focused character like i did in the last game this system took me an incredibly long time to get used to even with multiple skills leveled up incredibly high eventually i found out all by myself and not with the help of someone in my chat that there's a pretty specific spell that helps the will combat system be viable that's slow time slow time allows you to do just that and slowing the world around you allows you the ability to charge up your magic without taking a ton of damage if you have certain spells leveled up enough they can one shot most enemies once this dynamic is created it's incredibly rewarding albeit a little cheap but the first half of the game was a slog trying to get enough xp to make the system viable until you get strong enough spells it's not really that useful and definitely feels like it won't ever be but once it's all the way leveled up you can one-shot banshees with the fireball spell i helped the bandits out in brightwood to take out farmer giles i killed many guards and even giles himself the bandits ended up arriving and i killed them too why did i do this well i don't know because i wanted to get my alignment to shift to the other side i didn't do it for gold because you don't get gold for quests in fable 2. i got some loot but it wasn't anything amazing and i was mostly a magic user at this point anyways i found lucian's notes and went to witchwood with hammer before i took on the crucible the temple of shadows called me back because they wanted me to massacre the population of oakfield sure why not i killed everyone in town i completed the crucible and headed for the docks ready to leave for the spire before we get to lucian's headquarters i want to talk about the dog greg when i was looking at these games and trying to go through their distinct playthroughs i was looking at everything through two different lenses one good and one evil or more simply one selfless and one selfish during this playthrough i stole i killed i robbed then i put the lens on the dog how do i look at this dog through an evil lens the dog changes color and appearance based on your alignment and corruption in the game you have multiple options for interacting with it healing it when it's hurt giving it treats playing fetch the two base interactions though are praise and punish during my good play through i praised the dog a lot whenever he whined whenever he found treasure or a dig spot or whenever he got scared during the bad play through what should i have done punish the dog at every turn i did this for quite a bit at the beginning and the first time i did it it just felt wrong it's not something that's helpful to your character or your gameplay whatsoever the punish button really shouldn't even be in the game this is an evil act but there's literally no point to it whatsoever and ultimately because there's no way to view this dog through an evil lens there's no point for the dog either while i loved the dog in the good playthrough he has no purpose in the bad playthrough do i think that they should have incentivized punishing the dog for the purpose of having a better evil playthrough no what i think they should have done is allow you to use the dog in evil ways he should be able to attack innocents if you want him to or steal items for you therefore changing your and his corruption the dog should be a static companion throughout both lenses just used in different ways not treated in different ways because the game doesn't punish the dog ever it always treats him as your companion but if i'm evil i should be using this button right i never really arrived at a conclusion and eventually i just ignored greg for the rest of the bad playthrough because i couldn't look at him after i'd made him so sad i went to the spire the commandant broke me i starved the prisoners and i killed bob when i was asked i helped garth escape and he joined the guild i went to wraith marsh and made it to bloodstone there i married a woman of the night and bought us a home i helped the man resurrect lady grey but i made her fall in love with me just because i could reaver and i escaped through the shores of bloodstone and defeated lucian's men we completed the ritual and lucian killed greg it was still sad dammit he shot me and i got the puzzle box back defeating him teresa gave me a choice and i chose wealth why not the heroes went their separate ways and i was left alone you get a million gold once you leave and a letter from teresa i used the gold to buy just about every property in bowerstone and bloodstone i didn't bother going back through the dlc this time because they didn't really implement anything that would have been affected by choice choosing the third option love resurrects your family and your dog you get rose's letter upon arriving back in albion this states that she is in a great big forest with lots and lots of trees and she describes a man there that knows their family this man is clearly scythe and is taking care of rose the biggest problem with this whole playthrough was that fable removed most of the allure of replayability the choices weren't that much different and when different choices did start coming into play it was later in the game fable 2's choice system did ramp up the effect that it had on the character's appearance but this feature in the first game was secondary to the narrative that you were creating as a player on the stage playing through as an evil character cements this because there's really no reason or motivation to be doing the things you're doing after you've beaten the game there's no reason to really see the other side outside of seeing what you think you'd look like while doing it it's kind of disappointing because fable 2 excels in so many other ways it improved the combat system developing a much more fluid style of fighting that was mostly genuinely enjoyable and satisfying it also fixed most of the story problems with the first game crafting a genuinely interesting narrative around characters that felt well thought out and developed it even introduced a changed albion that felt like a place that was meant to be lived in with so much to do and so much to see jobs to work buildings to buy and items to sell it's easy to get distracted but when you look outside of these upgrades you realize what has been sacrificed for these upgrades just isn't worth it for every area that fable 2 improves upon the previous game it moves backwards in another i don't think i can realistically compare this to the first game though even though i know that's what i've been doing the entire time i think these games are two totally different beasts with incredibly different motivations fable was writing your own story and fable 2 was living in a better written story i did try to pursue a neutral play through making judgments and choices along the way and not caring about what happened to my status meters this was a very similar experience to what i had before and it really isn't worth talking about too much ultimately fable 2 was a good experience the first time through but once the twists and introduction of new mechanics are over the lustre wears off you realize that there isn't that much under the hood that makes this entry special sure blacksmithing will gain you more money if you have more physique and you can flip people off but it's not worth what was given up i just think overall i didn't have as much fun with fable 2. i did like the game but it just wasn't what i wanted it to be it was technically better in some areas and ambitiously a little bit of a reduction fable 2 was critically praised on release eurogamer loved the little glowing line that guided them to their quests and peta praised the game where you can emotionally abuse your best friend for being animal friendly the game sold hundreds of thousands of copies in just the first week and it would go on to sell 3.5 million copies in its first year and a half it was a hit with fans and critics loved it so a sequel of course was not far off but it would be the last mainline entry in the series before a slew of interesting projects fable 3 was originally announced at gamescom in 2009 this showed a cinematic trailer slowly zooming out on a crown and teresa declaring that the race for that crown had begun fable 3 was developed again by lionhead studios peter molyneux would return as designer and most of the team stayed the same looking into promotion for the game and the development diaries gives us an insight into what the thesis for a game is this is an integral part of critique because we can speculate all day but having words straight from the mouths of the people that worked on the game is the best we can get a lot of what molyneux said about fable 3 was based on wanting change and not wanting to be stagnant if all the rules have been established and all you offer is a new story and a handful of locations people will start to lose interest he also spoke on the inspiration for each game if in fable the inspiration was folklore and in fable 2 the inspiration was king arthur and robin hood then fable 3 is definitely the rebels and monarchs both modern day and historic it's clear from these talks that molyneux wanted to do something interesting with the game move toward more of a ruling mindset for the main hero rather than one fighting in the woods the development diary also focused quite a bit on extreme morphing the new morphing system that would change your appearance with your morality we've totally looked at the morph system thrown it all away and started again and the first thing that we've got is something called extreme morphs now these extreme morphs are on an expression this also extended into the weapons morphing with your personality and the way that you use them throughout the development diary it seems like fable 3 took a turn molyneux himself says this it's such an exciting time and you know why it's so exciting is because we're actually changing fable 3. we're moving more towards the action adventure and we're diminishing a little bit the rpg i can't ever be entirely sure if this was an afterthought throughout the development of the game but it sure seemed like one you'll see this change reflected quite a bit in the game itself and was one of my largest critiques on my first playthrough the other thing that's a huge change from the first two games is the exodus of menus from fable 3. we'll talk about all of this in depth in a bit trust me but i think molyneux crossed some sort of barrier between fable 2 and 3. he just seems a little full of himself here and i can't help but roll my eyes a little when he talks the cast of fable 3 has been majorly upgraded adding ben kingsley michael fassbender john cleese nicholas holt bernard hill simon pegg and stephen fry returning i mean the cast is absolutely stacked and it shows throughout the game lion had also released a mobile game in conjunction with fable 3. it was called king maker and was only available for a short period of time it let the player go to locations and mark them on a shared map for their respective factions rebel or royals doing this would earn you in-game gold and points for the faction i couldn't find any footage of this game and it definitely wasn't available to play anymore i'm going to talk more about development in a bit but let's get some more context and jump into the game fable 3 begins with me choosing my gender again i looked into this and really the only difference is some key npc genders being switched so i went with a prince for both of my playthroughs we see an introductory cinematic which looks just as good as the previous games i'm still impressed by these visuals for being over a decade old though i kind of hate this cinematic that starts the game off it shows a chicken being chased throughout the city with teresa narrating the scene where those who dare to speak out are punished and those who dare to hope find nothing to hope for he's eventually killed and this is alluded to his uprising the consequences of someone standing out from the pack it's kind of odd but also very lionhead our hero is awoken from bed a prince of the kingdom his butler jasper is getting him ready for his day we have a choice between two outfits one princely and formal the other adventurous and casual i chose the fab looking one because i'm all about fashion and i need something to attract the ladies lady elise my love interest is waiting for me in the courtyard i go to see her and i choose to kiss her she tells me there's an uprising and everyone is upset with the king my brother logan and i are sons of the hero of bowerstone after the end of fable ii the hero of bauer stone was able to unite albion under one rule with bowerstone as its capital this created an industrial revolution in albion with great progress in society but even more progress in the poverty of production this discontent combined with the tyrannical nature of the current king's rule is creating discord in the city lady elise thinks that the king might have had a worker executed if you think it will help i do they may fear the king but they still care for their prince i take her hand and head into the castle giving the crew an encouraging speech on my way all of fable iii's choices are presented in this way much less subtle than fable ii a fiery bad boy option and a shining light good boy option i want to say first and foremost that fable 3 has had its aesthetics upgraded from the previous games the team seems to have found their style with this entry and has lost a lot of the annoying bloom from previous games we're introduced to walter our trainer and one of our best friends in the castle he arms me and teaches me how to use fable 3's combat system sword combat is incredibly similar to the previous game hit to attack hold to block hold in a direction to do a powerful flourish attack through the castle we encounter a petitioner who wants our signature to eradicate poverty i'm not exactly sure how he plans to do that or what we're signing but i sign it anyways as we're training with walter he begins to tell me something you only went and broke it look at that am i a great teacher or what but listen there's something walter you have to come quickly both of you but lady elise interrupts she says there's a demonstration outside protesters have invaded the castle grounds they clearly do not like the king and are starting to get rowdy walter goes to talk to logan and says we have to have a conversation after as elise and i watch in on the meeting we see logan beating walter for his transgressions logan wants to kill all of the protesters turning them into an example we burst in the room and logan decides that since we want to make the decisions for the kingdom we can enough how dare you turn against me perhaps you believe you should be the one making these decisions you really wish to defend those traitors then so be it let us see how you do he forces us into the throne room and we're forced to decide we can save the protesters which number in the hundreds or save elise this is a pretty tough decision this early in the game since you're already kind of involved in this little love story but you know that the right decision is to not let these people die the game also only gives you so long to make the decision before logan will make it for you fable 3 also introduces a voiced protagonist for the first time in the series this pushes the game further towards a narrative focused experience rather than a supplanting of oneself in the shoes of a role playable character i didn't hate this choice and i think in the context of what this game becomes it was probably a good one overall the hero is in his room jasper trying to console him frustrated at the outcome of the throne room choice i can't just stay here you're not we leave the castle tonight this kingdom needs nothing less than a revolution it needs a new leader it needs a hero he is dejected by his brother betrayed by his only living family his lover gone young wistful romance swept away in an instant to do something that felt justified it's time to get out of here though but before we can leave walter wants to pay respects to albion's last hero my father the hero of bowerstone we find his tomb his body overlooked by a kneeling angel walter tells us that this is our legacy and at that moment we take a guild seal from the hands of the statue this transports me to another area a misty long road blocked by gates teresa is there she tells us this long road is the path we are destined to take and we must unlock the gates by gaining followers our first two friends jasper and walter are my closest allies walking through the gate sees us unlocking our first combat ability the fireball spell will has been changed to not just be an inherent power but channeled through gauntlets the magic system works much better in this game overall but very similar to fable ii you can hold spells to power them up and attack multiple enemies at once or target one you can also wield two separate spells at once combining them into one powerful fusion this is an interesting spin on the will system from previous games and creates a nice variety of combinations though this comes with a large downside as all improvements in the fable series do with the large amount of spells included in the original fable the team pared them down in the sequel they decided that this was obviously a move in the right direction and pared them down again to only six fireball shock blades vortex force push and ice storm this is pretty ridiculous and removes a lot of choice from the game especially with spells like control time and raised dead lionhead did decide to include these spells in the game in the form of potions but this isn't nearly as useful considering these potions are finite journeying through the caverns with walter and jasper we eventually arrive at a teleporter this takes us to a sanctuary my father's old sanctuary this is the place he used to do his work from and he left it to jasper jasper decides to take full control over the rooms and help us in setting them up i'll go in depth about the road to rule and the sanctuary in a bit but for now let's continue with the story from the sanctuary walter and i fast traveled to a dweller camp in mist peak the dwellers are a nomadic people extremely wary of outsiders they normally call mist peak their home but since logan has been exploiting the area for resources they've been forced to move into the coldest most inhospitable regions of the mountain with this in mind speaking to their king sabine he is incredibly wary of us this is just the beginning of our quest across albion trying to gain followers not only to unlock the road to rule but also to marshal a force large enough to overthrow logan the themes of this game are clearly that of rebellion and it's interesting to see this play out in the fable world because we haven't really seen this type of story before now amassing these forces though will require us to convince various leaders across the lands that we are nothing like logan sabine is our first roadblock he has to be wary of outsiders his people have been disgraced for years they've had to change their ways of living of surviving in the mountains and he can't let that happen to his people again he has a responsibility because of this he has some tasks we must complete to prove ourselves this is easily done there's a secret chamber beneath the town of brightwall built by your own father only heroes can survive its trials and reach the relics within bring me one of these ancient objects and i will believe you second prove you are a warrior worthy of leading us into battle you can do this by slaying the mercenaries who plague missed peak valley who have long soured our existence third prove you are a true leader persuade our neighbors in brightwall to share what food they have with us we head for brightwall to begin taking care of these tasks on our way we get introduced to exploration in this game which mostly consists of side paths that have a few dig spots and treasure chests the dog finds them again for you just like fable 2. i think the dog has been improved in this game because they've backed off the importance just a little bit the interactions are mostly the same though play fetch praise or punish because it doesn't have this effect on the overall story i'm not as worried about its implementation in this game though he's allowed to just be my good boy this time around on the way to brightwall we encounter a ton of random wolves that block our path we still haven't been introduced to a sword of our own yet the last one we got was broken in the fight with walter so we'll be re-introduced to sword combat later we also haven't been introduced to ranged combat yet so we're just left with our one measly fireball spell i wouldn't really take umbrage with this if we didn't have to go so long without these other two forms of combat it just results in us having to spam magic for the first hour and a half of the game which makes the combat feel like a chore right off the bat once we get past these swarms of wolves we arrive in brightwall the town was once a garrison just a fort to hold soldiers now it's become a modestly sized village gathering its prominence and economy from the surrounding farms and agriculture it's grown and now is the only town in albion with its own university brightwall academy which happens to be our first destination this academy is holding the secret chamber that my father kept samuel the librarian remarks that the academy has been closed by logan and the surrounding town is being outrageously taxed sweet papyrus a real visitor [Music] the guild seal we show him our guild seal to prove to him that he can show us to the chamber we head deep into the relicary and begin searching for the relic we find some flit switches callbacks to the last game and we're introduced to melee and ranged combat before we talk about that i'd like to talk about the sanctuary because that gets introduced around the same time it's also quite a lot so get ready for my big mechanic rant because this is all intertwined so fable 3 has no menus well virtually no menus outside of a settings menu that can be accessed by pausing during a cut scene or in the sanctuary itself there is no pause menu hitting the pause button simply transports us to the sanctuary there jasper is waiting for us and we have access to a mission table and four rooms the emission table will let us look at our quest list fast travel to different areas or invest in property in the same room we can interact with our dog accept gifts from our friends look at our morality and settings the weapons room displays all of our current melee ranged and will-powered weapons on the walls we can switch through these examine them and equip new ones the clothing room will show us all of our obtained outfits tattoos beards dies and anything else cosmetic related the gold room shows a visual representation of how much gold you have in your inventory we can also see trophies on one wall and achievements on the other the gold itself has a puzzle of sorts involved with it there's a chest at the bottom that can't be unlocked without the key from the top of the room you need to accumulate enough gold to climb the pile to the top grab the key and then unlock the chest this chest isn't really worth a ton because it just gives you a random legendary weapon the last room is basically the dlc and co-op room you can connect with other players here and also buy any dlc that you'd like to purchase which jasper loves to remind you about over and over again through the course of the game if you're not too busy you might have a look in the site now what was lionhead going for here well i can confidently tell you that this decision was probably entirely molineu's doing he talks about it quite passionately in the development diaries and it also just reeks of that molyneux ambition listen dad a lot of things in fable 3 i don't like but as is true with the entire series i still respect the ambitious decisions that were made and the risks that were taken getting rid of ninety percent of the gui and trying to turn it into a in-world thing an entirely immersive experience is a huge task and a ridiculously ambitious idea but overall i think it sacrifices practicality for aesthetics which i can be in favor of in certain circumstances but not in this one it's a little annoying to have to pause walk to another room or teleport only to have to walk up to the weapon i want to equip shuffling through different racks and then being able to equip it it's just more time consuming and annoying than anything else we're now allowed to use all three combat specialties ranged works similarly to the previous games except they've added a flourish to ranged which is genuinely just a through and through good change it adds some complexity to the ranged specialty which has always needed some sort of spice to change it up combat in this game does feel similarly fluid to fable too it takes a similar stance to that game and sees you jump back and forth between enemies blasting away slashing at bodies and casting spells one of the really interesting things that's been changed is the fighting style frequently if you're shooting or slashing in another direction than the one your character is facing they'll slash behind them or throw their gun over their shoulder and shoot behind their own back which is just undeniably badass the combat feels good but overall towards the end it ends up degrading into a will fest repeatedly charging will spells and using the same attacks over and over again this relic chamber is designed very well though i have to say albeit a little long i did enjoy going off the beaten path and trying to find extra items even if they didn't feel very worth it most of the time a common problem with these games reaching the final chamber i find an item that we are familiar with the music box when we find it teresa summons us back to the road to rule the long road filled with gates that we must open attaining the music box has proven to teresa that i am truly a hero we see a vision through the box of what logan is planning cities will bow to my lawn or they will burn its mountains will bend to my will or they will fall this is my albion its people will do as i say well they will die logan vows to see albion destroyed before he surrenders it to another this shows us what our movement is about why we truly need a revolution we need to gain our first ally but before that we're allowed to open our first gate on the road to rule the road to rule is an interesting system an extension of the ridding of the user interface is common in rpgs and the previous games in the series this basically acts as our skill upgrade screen we're allowed to use our experience to open chests and upgrade our melee ranged or will abilities we can also unlock new spells with experience this isn't anything entirely new from what we've been seeing just an extension of the crusade against menus in fable 3. but there's more just about everything is also locked behind the road to rule not only are combat upgrades locked behind this but interaction upgrades property ownership buying businesses having children having a wife leveling up your job skills everything that makes fable interesting interaction has been completely revamped and whittled down as well if you want to approach a villager and interact with them you have to enter into an interaction submenu this will give you one good and one bad option to choose from the game selects these options for you not giving you the freedom to fart on random strangers if you'd like all jokes aside this really narrows down what you're allowed to do with interaction and doesn't give you the freedom that it once did funneling these choices into one good and one bad just forgets everything that made fable special that being said if you want to make one of these bright wall villagers your friend when you first enter the town you aren't allowed fable blocks this option off through the road to rule you must obtain more followers through the main quest unlock more gates and make your way through the road to rule this whole design philosophy really narrows down variety in playthroughs and creates situations where you'll probably be having an incredibly similar experience to your friends that have also played the game this changes a little bit towards the end of the game where the chests become incredibly costly and you have to choose which ones you'd like to open but this really doesn't happen until the last two roads are open experience has also been simplified removing the interesting specialty experience system that i loved from the previous games this is just funneled into one type of general experience this goes towards filling up a bar that will give you a guild seal upon being filled these guild seals are your experience and they are used to open the chests on the road to rule all of these choices sacrifice the choice of the previous games and the playthrough variety that made the first game so special this creates a game that is much more accessible to consumers but is not necessarily one that will be enjoyed by fans if i can say one positive thing about the road to rule it's that each time you open a gate you see a statue of your likeness at the time of opening the gate this lets you see what you looked like throughout the course of the game which is an interesting concept although there's really not an incentive or a time to ever go back through and look at your previous appearances i chose to unlock most of the functional things on the road to rule first like being able to buy property and interact with people i also leveled up my melee ability because i assumed that's what i'd be using for most of the game interacting with people can be useful making friends will see them providing you with many gifts whenever they see you next it's a bit of a tedious task though because bringing them up from neutral to friends requires you to complete a fetch quest for them usually in another town this will set them on to the friend level and then you can make them even better friends or lovers i took a job to make some extra money baking pies fable 3 returns the job system from the previous game with three options pie maker loot hero and blacksmith these are all essentially the same mini game timing button presses matching the colors on the screen these mini games work much better than fable ii because they don't have that strange lag that happens at a certain multiplier they're a pretty good way of getting money early game but become redundant about halfway through the game we'll get to that in a bit for now we have to deal with our second task to gain sabine's followership walter has a steal the mercenary clothes off of a drunken bandit and wants us to infiltrate their camp once i got there i had one of the funniest exchanges i've ever had in a fable game the mercenaries inside think that you're jimmy one of them calls you over and says jimmy show this guy that thing you do when you interact with him you're allowed to pick the kiss option the implication here is that the thing jimmy does is kiss random people which is hilarious not to mention the fact that this guy starts vomiting automatically once you do this we venture through the camp and we're eventually spotted i have to kill every mercenary in the camp and make my way to saker the leader we have our first boss fight of the game which is really just attacking the guy with a big hp pool and avoiding his slow attacks and ranged molotovs when he's defeated i choose to let him live i spare the mercenary's life and we journey back into the road to rule here we see the effect that followers have every time we complete a new side quest or main quest we gain a follower these show up in the road to rule as these shade spirits by the end of the game this evolves into a menagerie of people that have supported us on our journey with the option in the road to rule open we've now gained the ability to own properties this is an extremely integral part of the game and gaining gold at all buying properties works similarly to the previous games except that we don't have to physically be there to complete the purchase we can buy and manage them from the sanctuary table we can change rent prices business prices and evict tenants adjusting the rent higher makes us more corrupt just like the last game and reducing them makes us more pure though this time around we are not privy to those stats there are a ton of properties in fable 3 and later in the game it will become a critical part of managing our income beginning our third task brightwall doesn't have an abundance of resources to give away to the dwellers we need to improve things around the town first before we can finish our job for the dwellers we gain the ability to complete side quests around brightwall side quests are done fantastically in fable 3 for similar reasons as the previous game they are self-contained narratives that play fast and loose with the stories they tell they're mostly interesting and some of the best side quests in the series show up in this game the first one we'll complete is collecting a man's chickens by dressing up as one of their own and leading them back to the coop at the end of the side quest you have the option to have the man kill the chickens or save them i decided to save them and coming back to this area later sees the couple creating chicken races that you can bet on lambert and pinch are standing outside of brightwall academy and they want me to find a lost play by philip morley he was one of the greatest playwrights in albion and his lost play decided to try and mix comedy and tragedy i found this place sitting inside of the academy it's haunted pages flipping and turning on their own we get sucked inside of the play and meet ransom lock one of morley's most famous characters we have to relive famous moments from morley's old plays and reenact them morley's ghost sees this and allows us to use his lost play on the outside we give the play to lambert and pinch who decide to perform it for the public bear witness to the tragic futility that is man oh how it dofseer my senses to see paradise and yet to be barred that reminds me of a great joke a guard a monk and a chicken walking to a bar unfortunately the bartender had had a mild heart attack that morning so none of them get served it's not exactly great and the crowd isn't impressed but we got our guild seals doing these quests improves brightwall's standing and allows them to provide the dwellers with food samuel the librarian of the bright wall academy asks us to do a favor in return for the town helping us when i become king he wants me to reinstate brightwall academy to its former glory this is the first promise that we make in the game and these come into play much later in the play through each of these promises that we make are contracts they go on display in the sanctuary placed there by jasper i'll talk about them more in a bit but for now we can return to the dwellers with their tasks completed sabine agrees to help us in our revolt against logan but requires that we restore the lands of mist peak and return them to the dwellers when we become king this is our second promise of the game at this point we've unlocked more of the road to rule and can begin to see all of the people we've helped so far showing up on our path i met a man in brightwall hidden in a marsh off of the beaten path he's surrounded by garden gnomes and he wants us to find a package for him we find it and it turns out to be a gargoyle head when we bring it back to him he completes an incantation that brings all of the gnomes to life using the power funneled from the gargoyle head i came back here later in the game and all the gnomes had escaped and the man wants me to find them they're hidden throughout the world and shooting them will return them to him this is the successor to the gargoyle heads from fable ii the gnomes even insult me similarly to the gargoyles i have similar feelings about this little quest as the gargoyles it's an interesting collectible that was added but the rewards generally aren't worth the time and effort of going after them i do like the extra effort put into the quest line though one of the guards in brightwall wanted me to apprehend a criminal that was roaming around town fable 3 has a really odd hand holding system you can hold hands with most characters in this game and this is used in the prologue when you're heading to the castle with lady elise this can also be used obviously when going out on dates with women but it's also used when apprehending criminals or bringing traders through dangerous areas it's really odd to just hold a grown man's hand to guide him to his destination molyneux really harped on this idea and made it out to be one of immersion and bringing the player closer to the reality of the game but i just found it kind of strange and we're giving you the ability to touch things now this may sound strange but imagine this being able to reach out and touch your girlfriend in the game being able to hold persuade pull push all that can be done dynamically i met walter at the monorail station we were going to head to other towns and meet leaders who would help us in our taking back of the throne this plan is thwarted though as the monorail crashed when it enters the station walter and i rush below to help and find that the culprits of the crash are hobbs making their return for the third game i found this area unnecessarily long as i did most areas in fable 3 it just seems to keep throwing the same enemies at you for a while as you travel across samey looking caverns until you eventually reach an end point where you either fight a boss or a lot of enemies at once there's really no ambition with the level design trying to make things flow differently or have a unique atmosphere walter and i head out through the marshes and end up in mourning wood here we are to find an ally in major swift the man that's leading the forces in the garrison there major swift is facing a problem though the garrison is being swarmed with the undead which happens during our conversation the soldiers at this outpost are tired of logan's rule because he doesn't provide resources and he's switching them out for the elite soldiers from his own royal guard we man one of the mortars to defend against the oncoming hollow men this was pretty satisfying to do at first but this section just goes on too long eventually we leave the battlements as the hollow men have infiltrated the fort we fight a large hollow man and destroy him before earning the soldier's loyalty and promising major swift to return the armies to their former glory walter and i head through the marshes and make our way to bowerstone industrial the entire city is now split up into three places industrial a grimy and bleak area filled with smoke stacks production and poverty market a more proper area burgeoning with economy resources and the more high society and castle this is the king's high seat the place of the top of bowerstone's royalty and the spot where court is held there's another area of bowerstone called old town which we'll talk about more in a bit entering into the industrial area through the sewers were introduced to a character from the previous game reaver he has now used his eternal youth to create an industry in bowerstone he uses his power to rule over the citizens with an iron fist forcing them to return to work with the threat and use of a pistol the rules that will govern what i like to call the reaver team spirit award are these firstly any worker that so much as murmurs another complaint will be cut reaver has obviously completely gone off the rails here and has been totally taken over by greed and power we saw tinges of this in the last game but it definitely wasn't this full in force now he's virtually a tyrant gone mad drunk with greed lust walter and i head into the sewers where the head of the bowerstone resistance lies we meet the leader of the resistance paige who wants me to prove myself by completing tasks helping the folks of bower stone out this is another sidequest block where we're forced to do some activities to gain the trust of a leader this is a common thing that happens throughout the game and makes the side quests feel less unique and special most of the bigger side quests have a disproportionate amount of guild seal rewards for completing them these are the obvious quests you would go for when looking to gain the amount necessary to complete the next main quest this means that most playthroughs of the game are going to be very similar in what you end up experiencing this is another design choice that leads to a lower variety in playthroughs though i can't complain too much because i'm about to gush about a couple side quests that are just very good i made my way to some gentleman playing a tabletop rpg who needed a hero to participate they use an artifact that shrinks me down to model size and i become a player in their role playing game this whole ordeal sees the men narrating my experience in their game it all acts as a meta-narrative for the actual developers of the game lionhead to criticize reaction to their games a bit i can make you a magic sword it's a thousand gold per plus so a plus three sword is 3 000 gold oh and oh and i can't make anything more than a blustery because i'm only a journeyman blacksmith it works very well though because there's a lot of trpg cliches that come through here and as an avid dungeons and dragons dm i can entirely relate to this we venture through the town talking to some cardboard stand-ins voice acted by our hooded friends overlooking the table we have to rescue the princess who has been captured by the evil baron we defeat some evil chickens in the barons elite guard before attacking the baron himself and saving the princess this whole final area we can see the players overlooking the table from above and it's just a fantastic sight we're brought back to normal size and the players thank us for our help i helped a man named laszlo whose wife had been kidnapped by a local crime lord the man has to pay some fees to the gang before he can get his wife back but we're going to ensure that doesn't have to happen i fight my way through the forces eventually meeting the man himself nigel ferret but laszlo's wife is hidden beneath the hideout i have to venture down to save her and the side effect of this is her falling in love with me look before we go back i just want to say you were amazing i mean you are amazing i used to use the word when i was telling my friends about laszlo but next to you he looks a bit boring now doesn't he do i really want to spend my life with a man like that what do you think she asks me if i want to be with her and i tell her to stay with laszlo it just wouldn't feel right to take another man's wife upon returning we find that nigel has escaped and knocked out laszlo in the process my last sidequest was helping a man get divorced his wife is a shrew she's become a woman he thought she never could be he wants me to seduce her so that she'll divorce him and he won't have to lose half of his money i do this and when confronting the wife she asks me to kill the man so that i can marry a wealthy widow i decide to leave these two to their business and go on my way all of these side quests are interesting they've always been lionhead's strong point they flow incredibly well and they insert lionhead's own brand of humor which is generally lighthearted and fun lionhead also decided to add another collectible to fable 3 books you can pick various tomes up throughout the world of albion and return them to their proper place in brightwall academy this will eventually garner you rewards after so many have been collected and it's incredibly interesting on its own to see this physical representation of the ones you've collected throughout the game this is the place where i think lionhead's in-world representation design philosophy comes through while i don't think it works for things like inventory and gold i do think it works very well for collectibles collectibles are things that you want to display and see physical representations of and you're willing to sacrifice practicality to see these things i'm not willing to sacrifice it for simple things like inventory with all of these tasks completed we've proven ourselves to paige i head to the bowerstone resistance on the way i see major swift who tells us he's been infiltrating the royal army he's trying to foment insurrection from within the ranks and create inside men another soldier we met at morningwood is named ben finn he's also working with the resistance and will become one of our greatest allies paige has a new plan and has decided to infiltrate reaver's mansion he's been bleeding the city drive for a while now and a group of soldiers went to his home but never returned he's having a party and paige and i are going to dress the part infiltrating his shindig i met paige in front of the manor and we had it inside disguises in full force inside river is holding one of the soldiers in a cage and he's using the same wheel that the temple of shadows used in fable 2. he uses this wheel to put us through the ringer deciding randomly which enemies we are to fight we fight hobs hollow men bandits and finally a new enemy type the sand furies these enemies are fighters from the far away land of aurora they are quick agile blocking or dodging most attacks and can be pretty difficult to kill but we're using the fully charged will aoe method so i didn't have much trouble in the end we end up fighting balvarines as well as reavers guests who are watching from above have grown tiresome if we really boil it down this area is extremely similar to the arena or the crucible or the coliseum and is just a reskin of that whole repeated deal i don't love this idea being reused so much but i didn't have a huge problem with it when i was playing mostly because it was framed in a new and interesting way getting out of reaver's mansion paige decides to give me her forces but i have to promise to end the exploitation of the people of bowerstone in return on our way back into bowerstone logan is holding a presentation he has found a traitor in his midst and it turns out to be major swift the man is executed for his treason ben was his second in command and the two of us returned to the resistance to marshal our forces and get vengeance for the major's death our allies are still not strong enough yet though and there's only one place left to look for people the distant land of aurora we need a ship to get there though ben and i make our way through the docks and with the help of walter we commandeer a vessel on our way out of the city we're attacked by a bower stone vessel and we crash i wake up on sandy shores walter shouting trying to find ben he's nowhere to be found though so we head deeper into the continent we've reached the shores of aurora a continent to the south of albion aurora is largely empty and with its arid lands no exports to be known there is only one known city in the uninhabitable place a city named quite uncreatively aurora walter and i head through some ruins that we find beneath the sandy dunes then there's an entrance that leads further below but it's blocked by some magical force we find a scroll on the ground and the words open our path forward closing after we enter the temple is incredibly dark our way only lit by a torch as we get further into the ruined structure we encounter a foul presence children are here to play scores of shadow beasts attack us narrated by a looming voice we try to make our way out but end up face to face with the head of these forces the crawler [Music] this entire area is extremely atmospheric the dank dark halls of the temple chased by the crawler his haunting voice only saying we are coming over and over this whole sequence does incredibly well to introduce these characters to us and their impending doom we continue to slay scores of these shadows but the crawler binds walter in the process journeying to the sanctuary at any point during this sequence we'll see the darkness infiltrating it jasper nowhere to be found with walter blinded we have to lead him out of the temple into the desert sands we reach a certain point where we have to make a grave decision we have to choose whether we want to keep moving forward with walter or leave him behind it's a hard choice because the path forward would be shorter not having to carry him behind us the whole time this choice ends up ultimately not mattering though because he gets left behind anyways i decided to take him as far as i could but i ventured to get help the crawler was showing me mirages visions of walter scorning me for leaving him behind i had to fight a shadow of him and face his ridicule i eventually collapse in the desert and am saved by the people of aurora and ben who is still alive we meet kailyn in the city of aurora who is the leader of her people she leads us through the dead city telling us about the crawler if you remember our history lesson from before you'll know that the crawler was brought in with the original building of the spire in the old kingdom the crawler has now destroyed all of the other cities on the continent of aurora and has been attacking this city daily for a while callan also says that logan knows of this threat that he came to aurora years ago and the crawler told him that he would attack albion after finishing with aurora this forced logan to become a tyrant collecting enough money to be able to marshal forces and protection for the lands of albion once the crawler did come from them abandoning aurora in the process i promised to rebuild aurora and protect its people in return for the loyalty of callan and her people her people got rid of walter's blindness and brought him back from the brink after this we head back to albion and all of the leaders gather sabine page ben callan walter and me we marshal our forces and begin our assault on the castle we make our way through bowerstone destroying the royal guard and the forces of the king we make it to the king's chambers and logan tries to explain himself but is swept away by walter this defeat makes me officially king of albion the castle is ours the crown is ours and the responsibility is ours now you might think that's the end maybe i'll talk about some dlc and we'll move on to the bad playthrough but that's just the first half of the game the first half of what fable 3 has to offer you see this is the big turn and change that fable 3 really takes and it's the whole point of what lion had wanted to do with this game from here on out we're the king and we have some important decisions to make but we have to make these decisions within a time constraint the crawler is coming that's the real threat now and we have one year to prepare we need 6.5 million gold in albion's treasury before the year is up to be able to afford the defenses to ensure no civilians are killed during the attack for every gold that we are under this amount one civilian casualty is expected we're still free to roam complete side quests and do everything we did before but we'll always have a royal task list these are things we must complete before we time skip ahead a month or so these tasks are usually hearing proposals from the people of albion and giving our ruling these choices are similar to all the other ones in this game a very clear good and a very clear bad choice though this time there's real consequences for each choice take for example the first choice we're forced to make by hobson our new financial advisor logan had incredibly high taxes throughout his rule we can lower these taking 400 000 gold out of the kingdom's treasury or raise the taxes giving the kingdom 200 000 gold we can also just keep the current tax rate which won't do anything to the treasury but won't sit well with my popularity as king i choose to lower the rate and as this was my good playthrough i generally took the good option every time costing me a lot of money just about every choice you make in the throne room that's morally right costs the treasury money and this forces the player to have to compensate for this by providing their own funds to the treasury this whole switch in game play is honestly an incredible one and it was a change that was unexpected and loved by me i didn't expect this either because starting the game out all i could see was more narrowing down and appealing to wider audiences by lionhead but once i got to this point i realized that they were actually taking a great risk with this new style it was all in service of delivering the concept of the weight of the crown but it's one that is so well done and so interesting making good moral choices hurts the kingdom's finances which in turn hurts the people in the long run but making poor moral decisions might make people hate you as a king but also might hurt the people now only to try and save them in the long run it's an incredibly interesting dynamic and every choice made as king generally feels like there is something great at stake the other thing that comes into play with these decisions is the promises you made when trying to take back the kingdom the people you made these promises to will be coming back to make sure you fulfill them these promises cost quite a bit of gold to fulfill but as a good king i knew i had to keep to them the only thing i didn't really care for in this whole thing was reaver every single decision you make generally has reaver playing the devil's advocate against whatever proposal is being made and it just seemed really weird to have the same character in there every single time speaking against the good decision i felt like they could have switched him out a few times to divvy up the decisions but he just kept showing up also i hate reaver's little e-girl face tattoo upon becoming king you also gain the extreme morphing that we talked about in the development section i was really excited for this feature when i did research but it just felt so underwhelming first of all you only gain it this late in the game so you're using it for a large portion of the game where you aren't even really fighting that much so it doesn't get that much use and it's also just not really that amazing you get wings that sprout from your back when you do a flourish and that's about it it looks cool the first few times but isn't this large overhaul of the morphing system that molyneux was claiming it would be starting my rulership i decided to spare logan i couldn't kill my own brother and he clearly had his own reasons for ruling the kingdom as he did i lowered the tax rates and decided to open a school in bowerstone instead of reinstating child labor like reaver wanted to do when paige asked i decided to provide the money to rebuild the old quarter a district of bowerstone that had been long since abandoned a neglected part of the city's history that had been lost to time i decided to raise the guard budget chose good decor for the castle and kept my promise to the people of aurora to rebuild the city and protect the people hobson sent me out on a mission to one of the auroran caves to find a gem by the name of the desert star this relic fetched quite the price and i donated it to the treasury bringing us out of debt for a short period of time i restored the child benefit to the parents of the city removed the drink limit and destroyed nigel ferret's crime operations i kept my promise to the people of brightwall and rejected the proposal to mine bower lake i found a wealthy noble in milfields who wanted me to find her stolen statue this turned into me tracking down a man who could turn into a white balverine at will and killing him to get the statue back the wealthy noble donated this statue to the treasury at this point i was over a million gold in debt and needed to find a way to make some money because the crawler and his forces were soon approaching i headed out to quest across albion and find some more ways of making money i happened upon a demon door in sunset house these work very similar to previous games and still have that same charm as fable 2. they exist as these little dimensional pockets strange areas with intriguing stories this particular one gave me a million gold a lot of what i needed for now i wasn't done in this area though because one of the most interesting places in the game was right there sunset house is a ghostly building with two versions of itself the house as it once was and the decrepit ruined building that it is we have to solve an expression puzzle to get inside once we're in we see a hanged skeleton in the lobby and he tells us to not sleep in the bed upstairs surrounded by fire so of course we do this puts us in a short game of chess with chesty our new mimic chest friend we have to defeat his legions of chess pieces and then he allows us free roam of the house venturing in the mirror of the home and solving its puzzles gives us a legendary weapon this little area was just such a nice touch short puzzles and interesting backstory it was a fun little experience and i wish the games would do more things like this all this adventure was fun but i had to find a way to come up with all of this money before the crawler attacked because i knew i had more choices to make and this was going to cost me even more money in the end this is where the real team management system came into play i had amassed quite a few properties but i started buying every single property in albion i increased the rent just to see what would happen and just about everybody i interacted with hated me all of a sudden even the people that i had become friends with previously i bought just about every business and home in albion and in the end it afforded me enough money to funnel into the treasury saving the people of bowerstone in my adventures i met a woman got married at the castle and had a child i kept my promise to sabine and the dwellers and built a desert fort in aurora before i knew it it was time the darkness was coming and we defended our home against the shadow beasts this is kind of the inverse of the siege of bowerstone we're feeling the same thing logan was feeling when we attacked pushing the forces back works for some time until the crawler shows himself and possesses walter show yourself the lost sheep returns to the flock no one ever leaves the darkness behind [Applause] do you see do you see [Music] our final battle of the story is against the possessed walter defeating him is simple but it wasn't something i wanted to do i'm sorry you took away the darkness it's been inside me all this time but it's light now i can see the sky and it's light i don't think i can fight anymore it's all over water we won we beat it together do you remember the stories i tell you when you were a child there was a great king once the mightiest hero of them all remember what you would say teach me to be a hero you've done me proud boy you've always done me proud [Music] he doesn't survive the battle we erected a statue of him in the gardens of the castle and everyone was there to see its completion there were two quest packs for fable iii the first was traitor's keep bored with the duties of being king our hero is falling asleep when hobson is reading the kingdom's finances to him it's at this point that an assassin from a foreign land attacks a ship approaches the keep commander milton on board he says he comes from an island off the coast of albion and he believes the assassin was one of his prisoners we head to traders keep a secret prison for the worst criminals in albion when milton was gone a riot has broken out and the prisoners have taken over the keep we take it back from them and milton tells us of the three prisoners that were behind this we have to take them down one by one the first is professor faraday faraday has his own island that was a mechanical amusement park that he built himself the man was responsible for many of the technological advancements in albion like the monorail we learned through exploring the island that faraday was brought to see logan after he was impressed with the man's inventions he wanted faraday to build him an army of machines and faraday refused so he was imprisoned upon fighting faraday in an ironman-like steampunk suit were allowed to spare or kill him and i can't help but feel sorry for the man each of these characters in the dlc are well developed and interesting they have their own backstory and unique characteristics they're all themed around something and it feels like a good showcase for the characters of this world the dlc in its entirety kind of reminds me of arkham asylum prisoners broken out and causing mayhem throughout the world the next prisoner is witchcraft mary who calls the menagerie her home she's a witch and she has a zoo of sorts on her island you see different exhibits with interesting species like exploding rabbits i was hoping that we'd fight some more interesting animals on the island but we really just fight more balverines and variations of hollow men and hobs that multiply when killed witchcraft mary hopes to become more than human and before fighting her she drinks a potion that transforms her into hobbs balverines and hollow men when she's defeated we have the same choice and i send her to an institution where she can get the help she needs when we return to the keep to get information on the final prisoner general milton is knocked out he says that the whole ordeal was led by general turner a prisoner in raven scar keep and he's been hiding in the prison the whole time he's taken out hobson and we go to find him alone as milton is injured when we find hobson he's tied to one of the electrical chairs and he tries to warn us before we're attacked but i'm knocked out and placed in the other chair when i wake up milton is there and he tells me that turner was dead all along he was the one orchestrating the riot and release of the prisoners he wants to carry on turner's legacy and i thought this twist was pretty good they definitely caught me off guard although i think if i look any more closely at it it would probably crumble and not make much sense milton funnels my energy into a potion and drinks it turning himself into a mirror of my power my dog tries to attack milton but he hits him with a fireball and i decide to stand up for the dog for once leave my dog alone the final battle of the dlc is myself i'm not really going to go into the understone quest pack very much it was basically one quest where you find a city that exists under bowerstone you're allowed to decide the fate of the people in this city and there's also two additional quests the wheel of misfortune and the shooting range these are just open-ended things that you can keep yourself busy with i didn't really care for this dlc i genuinely liked fable 3 a lot more than i thought it has serious issues that's for sure as an rpg this game is terrible as most of the elements that represent that genre have been removed it's definitely a far cry from the first game but this game isn't an rpg accepting that fact makes this pill of a game a lot easier to swallow this is an action adventure game through and through and when looking at it through that lens it's actually a pretty damn good and ambitious one i still don't love a lot of what this game does stripping back the leveling elements making everything immersive and in world with the sanctuary and road to rule reducing interactions to two options that have been chosen for you by the game but the twist that fable 3 presents in the middle of the game turning everything you expected on your head is a really ambitious risk that at the very least you have to respect before we get to final thoughts i'd like to talk about my evil playthrough as i had a much better time with this one than fable 2. also if you haven't noticed yet fable 3 removed titles entirely which was another decision i didn't really care for forcing me to refer to my heroes by vague names i began my second playthrough i woke up in the castle and chose the practical outfit finding a lease and giving the kitchen staff a harsh speech i learned that some of the bad options in this game can be pretty comical and go way over the top i decided to insult the petitioner i didn't want to get on my brother's bad side by putting my name next to something like that but my character decided to rip the petition out of his hands and throw it on the ground i went to the war room and logan made me make a decision i decided to execute the protesters they shouldn't have been there in the first place and i couldn't sacrifice elise she was too precious to me logan still couldn't get away for doing that to me i left with walter and jasper claimed the guild seal and made my way through the caves i talked to sabine and decided to gain his favor i made my way to brightwall and took the puzzle box i killed all of the mercenaries and i fought saker i killed him he and his people had been killing innocent dwellers for years he didn't deserve to go on i helped brightwall and made a promise to restore the academy i also made a promise to help the dwellers in exchange for sabine's support walter and i went to the monorail and slashed through armies of hobbs we defended morningwood and i promised major swift to restore the old guard i made it to bowerstone and had to prove myself to the resistance doing quests around the city i found an interesting difference when i helped laszlo get his wife back his wife turned out to be none other than elise it's not that this quest doesn't work on the good playthrough but it just works much better here i was worried after saving her that the choice would really have no effect on the game overall but it did i told elise to leave laszlo and be with me i proved myself to the resistance during this whole playthrough i was buying as much property as i could and raising the prices to the highest this got me a lot of money pretty early on in the game though the people of albion weren't happy with me i went to reaver's manor with paige fought the legions of enemies and made a promise to restore bowerstone and help the people major swift was executed in public we left and went to aurora encountering the crawler in the tombs i was forced to leave walter in the desert he would just slow me down that much was clear he still made it in the end and i made a promise to colin to help her people we made our final assault on the throne and i took it back for myself when my brother told me about why he chose to be the kind of king he was i realized what was at stake i still had to execute him the king could not have a past tyrant living to undermine him it just wasn't possible and he needed to pay for what he did it was my time now i needed a lot of gold though and some of that would come from my personal realty operation which was already doing quite well i wouldn't be able to provide all of the funds though and the treasury was virtually in ruin i raised the taxes and reinstated child labor the people wouldn't like it but it would help the city out greatly i decided not to rebuild the old quarter it was ruined and we had an eldritch threat on the way this was not the time to be digging through the past i lowered the guard budget to gain some more money i chose evil decor this was such an odd choice to throw in here as you can see most of these choices have justifications for both sides and the incentive here isn't just to gain gold or power for yourself but a genuine realistic justification for someone doing evil things to save the kingdom this evil king does the things he does because he wants to prevent casualty he believes that what he is doing is right in the long run and it actually could be in certain circumstances now this is the way to do a split morality game there are genuine and enticing reasons to pick the evil option it's not this comical caricature of a villain or an evil person it's a realistic portrayal but why would anyone pick evil decor this is just so odd and they don't even try to mask it by calling it bright decor and dark decor just evil and good calen wanted me to keep the promise i made to her to rebuild aurora but i couldn't it was 700 000 gold and i could just reopen the mine and gain 500 000 gold for the kingdom she of all people should understand what is at stake here i broke my promise to her i collected the desert star and instituted a child tax paige wanted to renovate the bowerstone orphanage but i had to turn it into a brothel it would bring too much money to the kingdom to not do it river was right i flooded morningwood over building a sewage plant the treasury wasn't ready for the attack yet and we couldn't afford to spend any extra money i cornered nigel ferret and took the bribe the money could go towards the preparation i outlawed alcohol and charged tuition to go to brightwall academy our treasury was starting to look up but it still wasn't enough i drained bower lake and helped the balvarines attack silver pines i let the economy collapse because we couldn't afford bailouts and i rejected the proposal to provide military protection to aurora and finally i deforested missed peek we gained some more money for the final siege but it left the people of miss peak destitute the day arrived and the darkness came flooding into the city i fought the crawler in walter and he died we had casualties walter among them but the city was safe i did what i had to do i protected these people they were my people and this was my city my albion if they had to hate me for me to save them then so be it fable 3's variety in play throughs isn't insane but both playthroughs were virtually similar for the first half of the game the choices that you do make on the throne though are difficult ones and you want to be a good king but being a good king means protecting your people the choices that the game presents you with don't go down easy they require thought playing through both sides provides something similar to the first game in the series the same story viewed through two different lenses you're making good choices because they feel right and you're making evil choices because you have to because the ends justify the means this is what this is all about looking back on your playthrough and seeing what you feel good about doing was it all worth it honestly i went into fable 3 with low expectations and the first half of the playthrough definitely didn't do a lot to raise those expectations up but by the end i genuinely felt like i had experienced something different a game that although had strayed very far from its rpg origins had branched out and tried to do something different and interesting fable 3 takes risks and tries to work outside of the box that it's put itself in it's not a good rpg by any means but it's an interesting action-adventure game with genuine morality and questions to be asked i overall enjoyed my time with fable3 it was incredibly interesting and overall a great time it has some weak points and i felt that the general stripping down of mechanics into their simplest form made those mechanics less interesting but the risks that the game does take are very well done and even when they fail you feel the need to respect the ambition in the process fable 3 was received to generally positive critical reception reviewers praised the game for its ambition but criticized its slow start the game would sell okay malin you stating that it needed to sell 5 million copies and some predictions putting it around there but that would not be the end for the fable series after three games that had some amazing and also rocky moments the series as a whole would stumble and falter for the next decade after the release of fable 3 things didn't go so well for the series the first in a line of interesting decisions was the next game fable the journey it was announced in 2011 at e3 the announcement shows a cinematic trailer again with teresa narrating she tells us that heroes are no longer born but made i'm sure the connect logo at the end of this trailer really dashed everyone's hopes at the time it's clear that this game was another exercise in immersion and putting yourselves in the shoes of the main character we didn't get as much of an insight into the development with this entry as there's only a short dev diary peter molyneux was really only working on this entry in a consultancy aspect and it seems a lot of the team was changed lionhead also decided to create some cross-game interaction with this game and fable heroes fable heroes was an xbox arcade game which i'm not even going to get into just know it was nothing like fable and was mostly a co-op beat-em-up that would earn you gold in fable the journey now i don't have a ton of experience with the connect and to be honest i never really played a full game with it before this but this is through and through a connect game if for some reason you don't know what the connect is it was a camera sensor that was released for the xbox 360 that turned the player into the controller you use your movements to control the game the game was developed using unreal engine 3 and was released on october 9th 2012 for xbox 360. our story begins by introducing us to the new protagonist gabriel gabriel is special for the fable games because he is not of the same bloodline as our previous heroes he's just a normal dweller we have to catch up with the dweller caravan and we're introduced to the controls for this game so to start off controlling the horse always feels like something's about to go wrong i want to preface all this by saying that some of this could be due to my setup the kinect had a lot of problems detecting my inputs and you could chalk some of this up to the fact that i was too close or too far away from the camera or that it just couldn't see me well in my environment you have to snap the reins to increase the horse's speed and pull them to your chest to slow it down i wouldn't really have a problem with this if most of the game didn't take place on horseback you're just doing this all the time and most of the game honestly just feels like a chore you can steer the horse by pulling one hand back and pushing the other forward and on your way you can collect experience orbs this is the main way that we get experience in the game yeah that's right they brought back different colored experience but you only gain it by steering your horse properly on a fixed path and increasing or decreasing your speed red orbs can only be collected if you're sprinting and blue orbs can only be collected if you're going slow to give the game credit you do get experience in combat but it just seems like if this much of your game takes place on horseback you should probably be rethinking something your horse sarin will take damage if you run into things or go over rocks too fast saren has a lot of health so this wasn't something i really had to worry about too much but boy just getting anywhere feels like a pain in this game on top of that just playing the game feels so ridiculous the entire time this is what i looked like when i was using the horse reigns how do you think this feels sitting in front of your tv or computer and just flailing your arms about to try and get your horse to go eventually we catch up to the caravan but gabriel falls asleep and he is separated from the rest of the group he has to go through mire more to get around and meet back up with them throughout the whole beginning of the game we can see the spire off in the distance going through meyer moore we find a blind woman who is asking for our help and yes you know who that is teresa the one thing i do like about this game is gabriel he's reluctant to answer the hero's call when teresa is in trouble he runs away his first instinct is to get out of there but eventually when she knows his name he rescues her we escape the forest avoiding the black sludge that's infesting the woods saren is hurt in the attack and we have to pull a splinter out of her we have to get to the spirit chambers to save her life and were introduced to the three heroes from our history lesson blaze the hero of fire stone the hero of the fallen and soul the hero of light the statues speak to us and we put our hands into the pool of sight but we see a vision of albion being destroyed by the corruption after seeing this vision we are teleported to an ethereal place where we learn to use our magic we gain two spells to start off push and bolt both spells can be cast by raising your hand to your shoulder and pushing forward bolt is mapped to the right hand and push is mapped to the left hand bolt is a basic damage spell it does moderate damage and can be controlled in midair if you fire a bolt at an enemy who is behind cover you can redirect it in the air to target them more accurately push will release a small tether that can latch on to an enemy or an object and move them now i definitely had a frustrating time with the kinect it took quite a while for me to get it fine-tuned to my area and once i did there were still points where i felt like it wasn't working properly bolts would shoot off in random directions and push just wouldn't work in certain cases it felt like the kinect as a whole was just fickle sometimes it would work great and be incredibly responsive other times not at all now i totally understand that the connect was meant to be played in a living room well lit on a big entertainment system that doesn't exactly fit the model of my small cluttered office space but it was still detecting me properly everything in the connect fine tuner was working well i will chalk some of the kinect's failings up to my area and setup but not all of them i'm sure the connect just has some of these issues baked in and even if that is the case the stipulations to play a video game shouldn't be so long that i have to sit upright not move forward or backward too much and keep my legs uncrossed just to play this game this is not an enjoyable experience even the loading screens tell you not to relax they frame it as be a hero not a hob but my god i can't even lean back in my chair while playing this thing or in moments when i was too into the game i was too far forward i had this sweet spot of posture that i had to stay within to make sure my movements were detected properly and i just don't think there should be this many rigid rules for playing a game we're also introduced to a feature in the pool of sight that lets us move the character from side to side if we need to dodge this sees us tilting our body in one direction we can also block attacks from enemies by raising our left arm up after leaving the pool of sight when the heroes and teresa deem us worthy we can heal saren but there's a catch we have gauntlets now that have been painfully fused to our arms and a whole lot more responsibility we can leave the way we came because the darkness will catch us but teresa says there's a path deeper in the caves gabriel is not okay with this situation and wants to get out of here but he doesn't want to get in any more danger i told you would make you better now we can go home again gabriel the gauntlets are not only a means to heal but also a weapon perhaps the only weapon that can defeat the evil to come what you mean the gauntlets are now a part of you would you rather have let seren die did i not warn you the power to save her would come at a price you tricked me fate led me to you for a reason gabriel the three heroes deemed you worthy for a reason this is a mistake take them off take them off me now i'm not a hero the devourer the powers within these chambers will not allow the creature to enter so how are we gonna get out there is another route but we must head deeper into the caves no you must trust me gabriel i kind of love this characterization gabriel is entirely afraid of all of this magic fairy tale creatures and doomsday the first thing this does is create a sense of growth for the character over the story we can see his journey as a hero over time and it makes that development as a character more realistic the second thing it does is change the way we look at past heroes and makes the people of the old kingdom look insanely heroic when viewed beside just a normal person like gabriel he reluctantly agrees to go deeper into the caves because it's his only option we head in and start defeating some rock mites we have to close the holes that these things come out of by dropping stalagmites onto them we get to the other side of the caves and activate a bridge for saren and teresa to get out on we make an escape on saren only to be confronted by a troll at the end we narrowly escape with our lives and we decide to stop for camp before finding the temple teresa seeks in camp we can clean the horse and heal it give it water find chests and pick apples once we're ready to leave we pick up the cart and head out teresa tells gabriel that they have to head to the forge of fire and enlightened temple that housed the many that were devoted to the three heroes she says that there will be a way out of this for gabriel we head through the forests and eventually are ambushed by hobbes when looking for directions we find a gold mine that the hobs have taken over and a man named fergus who's been captured by them before i got to the gold mine this game broke me like actually broke me so you can use magic while riding the horse at certain points in the game teresa and gabriel came to a stop in front of a blockade and she wanted me to use push on these boards to get them out of the way the top one and the bottom one came easy but for some reason it just decided to not work for the middle one it took me eight minutes to get this spell to work and push this board out of the way was it my area was it the connect was i not using the spell right don't know don't care i didn't have my webcam recording myself during this portion of the game but you can see some of my reactions when i was leaned forward and the kinect was telling me to move back now dad i know you're gonna say son obviously you needed to move back i tried that i tried everything when i finally got it you see the look of a broken man overjoyed with passing a simple test and then moving forward to do some more horse-related hijinks fergus theresa and i stopped for some ale ferguson gabriel share a drink and fergus tells gabriel to do the right thing and not run away otherwise it'll haunt him we're attacked by balvarenes and unfortunately this is when disaster struck not in the game but in real life i had paused my game at this point and the next morning when i got back to playing my kinect wouldn't work not just like it was being fuzzy and wasn't detecting inputs very well it just wouldn't work at all i'm not sure if it was older and already on its last legs when i bought it on facebook marketplace or something got jostled in the three separate times that i dropped it but regardless its life was over i was already on my second connect and i honestly did not want to buy another one just to finish this game that i already pretty much hated because we're already into the story i'll summarize the rest of it for you because its lore implications are pretty sweeping needle mouse productions kindly let me use his cut scene footage for the rest of this video we get rid of a white balvarine with the help of sarin and theresa and fergus are safe theresa is confused as to how she didn't see the attack coming teresa and gabriel are about to head out for the temple when the devourer the beast that's been chasing us the entire time shows up we take fergus with us and he becomes a member of the party teresa recounts her blinding and becoming the seer the group arrives at the forge of fire and fergus finds his wife dead gabriel passes the trials of the temple and claims the will stone of blaze we gain the fireball spell and the devourer shows himself attacking us personally the corrupter's lieutenant is destroyed as fergus sacrifices himself to distract the abomination gabriel decides to keep the gauntlets on and not let albion fall gabriel and teresa continue through myer more picking up a woman named betty on the way betty wants to find her father who she believes is across the river iron wash she guides gabriel through the fallen fen and he rids the place of hollow men betty and gabriel begin to fall in love and betty is quickly captured by one of the corrupter's lieutenants the temptress teresa and gabriel journey to the shattered prism and gabriel gains the will stone of soul gaining the light spell betty then reveals herself as the temptress all along blasting teresa and putting gabriel into a dream-like state even in his dreams gabriel is still driving this damned cart he defeats the temptress and teresa and gabriel continue on their journey gabriel finds his dying friend catelyn one of the dwellers we saw at the beginning of the game a balverine attacked him and gabriel couldn't do anything to save him teresa and gabriel find the way into the spire and she reveals that she only had the ability to transport two people into the spire delay the only fate that awaits us is death but i can protect us even if you could defeat those hordes by then it would be too late to stop the corrupter you have no choice you brought this here knowing i couldn't take seven with us and if i had told you what then i should leave you here not her the heroes in your fables each of them faced impossible choices made sacrifices it's why their stories endure why the world endures no please gabriel before it's too late saren dies to the corruption as the two make their way into the spire gabriel has to face one last trial in the heart of the spire teresa is to be sacrificed with the corrupter and the spire itself gabriel makes it out and the place of power is destroyed the game ends with gabriel on a beach he is revealed to be blinded taking teresa's blindfold the new seer of albion the story overall seems pretty unoffensive but what it does with teresa is the most interesting point the game overall is pretty teresa centric there are many campfire conversations where she reveals the plots of previous games from her perspective one of particular note is fable 2. she says that she influenced the death of lucian's family either directly or indirectly and nudged him to build the spire this was so that she could take control of it eventually and hopefully rid albion of the corruption now there's been some comments from people that have worked on the game saying this was not the intention with any of the previous games at all most in the fable community don't even consider this entire game canon as for the game itself the few hours of experience that i did have with it were not enjoyable at all really when the game did work like it was supposed to it was relatively fun but i definitely wouldn't take it over just playing with a controller when it didn't work it was awful and frustrating i'm not totally against motion controlled games i just think the connect had some serious issues at least from my experience and it really wasn't meant for a dedicated 8 to 10 hour fantasy game this still wasn't the end for fable though as lionhead would reluctantly begin work on another project shortly after before we get to that though i'd like to briefly i promise talk about the fable books quite a few of them have been released but some of them have some interesting content i'm not going to explain every bit of every one of these books because it'd get boring fast and most of it isn't canon i already briefly mentioned one of the books fable the balverine order in the first section this one centers around two young gentlemen thomas and james who are looking for a balvarine a legendary beast in their minds thomas has seen a balverine before when it killed his brother but no one believed him the whole book is framed as a traveler telling a king this story the whole thing is pretty why a and its writing shows that i can't say i loved a lot of these novels most of them were pretty inoffensive and just generally boring there wasn't anything hilariously awful about them just nothing really special either this is to be expected though from licensed video game novels blood ties does have an interesting main character in that of ben finn from fable 3. it takes place shortly after that game ben finn wanders around albion's countryside meets a gnome ends up fighting half breeds and it ends with the dissolution of his and paige's friendship it was odd edge of the world by christy golden actually centers around gabriel and acts as a prequel to fable the journey it shows a lot of the distant land of samarkand and most of the country has been overrun by the corrupter it's an interesting little story and gives us a little more context on gabriel and who he was as a dweller three short stories were written by peter david each surrounding an individual from the games the first teresa seems to take place sometime before fable the journey teresa finds a young girl who seems to be a seer and is dying she looks for a cure with a failed hero and the story in the end becomes about the consequences of indecisiveness or something jack of blades is told through the perspective of a pilgrim named zero xero i'm gonna call him zero he passes through oddwood and the children there tell him they are collecting money for jack of blades who has enslaved the town zero is trapped in the town and eventually comes face to face with jack after completing some heroic feats seemingly by accident when jack looks into zero's eyes he is afraid of what he sees it's revealed that zero is not just a pilgrim but something stronger and this man is not jack of blades but just a bandit who has taken on his persona this story was probably the most interesting to me just because of the mystery it introduces i wish lionhead would have introduced more stories like this remember when there were things like scythe in the games little stories where you weren't sure of the answer to the question you were asking but you had some idea it let your imagination run and allowed you to develop your own conclusions man that was cool anyways the last short story is called reaver and has two chapters the first is in the perspective of captain dredd a pirate who's celebrating on the coast of albion the second chapter is told from the perspective of reaver himself captain dredd makes the fatal mistake of working on reverse turf and goes to a sort of war with him river ends up killing him with the use of some clever deception and then decides not to take his title as he's quote too pretty to be called captain dredd the last book was blood of heroes and i'll be honest i didn't finish this one i just didn't really care for it it acted as a companion piece to fable legends and it seemed so out of the world we knew having taken place way before the games we knew a lot of the heroes featured in the game were central to the plot and acted as protagonists for the story i generally respect tie-in novels as long as they match up with what the developers wanted for the games i think lore books can be an interesting idea but a lot of the time they don't really have much style or substance some of the books i read were decent mostly the short stories to be clear but i definitely wouldn't recommend reading these unless you're a huge fable lorehead around the same time that fabled the journey was released development began on another spin-off game fable legends it was announced on august 20th 2013 with a cinematic trailer it showed off different heroes seeking adventure and fighting a troll of some sort the trailer introduces the idea of a villain at the end and focuses on this 1v4 model the game was developed on unreal engine 4 and was supposed to be a co-op focused action role-playing game the game was played with four heroes and a villain a real person could fill these roles or the game could be played entirely single player by filling them with bots each hero was supposed to be unique with their own abilities powers and gameplay sterling winter rook and inga were just a few a set amount of heroes would be free for a period of time and rotated out heroes could also be bought for permanent use with purchased currency or in-game currency the villain's goal in the game was to stop the heroes controlling enemies when they spawn how aggressive they play and where traps are located the game was supposed to take place hundreds of years before the fable trilogy a time when albion had not yet discovered technology the story would take place in the hub city of bright lodge where players could buy weapons armor and change the look of their characters there were 12 total quests involved that were apparently distinct from each other and did not tie into a narrative just one-shot adventures the heroes and villain could partake on a lot of this information comes from releases to the public but some of it also comes in the form of the closed beta there was an actual playable version of the game in the form of a closed beta unfortunately microsoft officially canceled the game in march 2016 and closed lionhead studios the closed beta ended a month later and players were refunded their in-game purchases it's a bit of a shame because a lot of this game does look interesting it doesn't seem much like fable as most of the core features alignment and property buying for example were removed but the idea of going back to an albion with actual heroes and more rooted in the folklore rather than the science and technology was something i always wanted the series to do in the end the game was too costly the people working on it didn't really know what they were doing and reportedly would have rather been working on fable4 we can speculate all day on what actually happened with development but it seems like this was a game that was trying to grab at the free-to-play market by using the fable name nothing at its core had to do with the living world morality-based life simulator that we've come to know fable to be before lionhead was closed microsoft offered the fable license to another studio flaming foul they began working on a card game called fable fortune the game received 250 000 in kickstarted funds and even some private funding to make development costs the game seemed like a pretty straightforward tcg definitely taking inspiration from hearthstone cards cost gold to play and you gain gold every round each card has an attack and defense rating unless it's a spell the interesting approach that this game took was the hero powers you could put guard on a friendly unit causing it to not take damage or restore its health the ultimate goal however was to bring the other players health down while keeping yours above zero the game featured cards with famous characters from the series like jack of blades the crawler and theresa the game was in early access for a while and eventually launched fully in february of 2018. it didn't do so well however and flaming fowl studios announced that they would cease work on the game as of late 2019. the game's servers were finally shut down on march 4th 2022. i can't really give my opinion on the gameplay because i didn't get a chance to play this game and the servers are shut down this honestly just seems like another way to use the franchise to grab money i mean at least fable legends looked like it could have been a promising game making a card game out of the fable universe isn't even something people were asking for this one i can definitely write off as a cash grab attempt gone wrong starting at the beginning what was your your first experience with the games i bought it accidentally thinking it was a different game me and my sister were looking for this game called cameo and we bought a game without a box and we thought it was cameo we'd just forgotten the name of it and then we took it home it was fable and then absolutely loved it became obsessed with it the first time i've seen fable my dad was playing it on his xbox i think he just i asked him hey dad can i play the xbox and uh he just gave me the controller then i i think i just i think i just took it away from him pretty much uh my first experience with fable was going over to my best friend at the time's house and uh he was just playing this weird game where you could do all these different emotes and kind of which was just strange at the time and i i didn't really i didn't have uh an xbox at the time so i didn't really mess with that um until a little later um and then i wound up playing it for myself and i was like wow obviously a lot of games have done like the moral the morality the choice the branching narrative kind of thing um but what what makes fable different like what makes the way that they implemented it different in my mind i think that a lot of uh games have no business even putting in a morality system like not that they have it feels almost like the devs go oh well that's a good idea but they don't really think beyond like what would that affect would that change how would people treat you differently would that change your character look all this stuff and fable is one of the only games that i can think of that really takes like all of it actually gives you um like effects for your action the landscapes i really do really do enjoy like the world of albion it's just like it's a nice cozy place i mean most most of the time i think because it's one of the first ones that you your actions directly had a reaction on the world around you and you felt like you're actually going into a living breathing world with fable one that was the first game that you felt like you made a difference what uh what's your hope for for the future i'm hoping it's heroes and the hero guild but with it being a reboot they could tell their own story i'm hoping maybe they come back to the whole jack of blades thing reintroduce that maybe i don't think they could make it better but tie it into the old fable game somehow it just have ties like you'd have references to you know the old hero of oakville it'd be nice to have those easter eggs and even if they're not a major part of the story if they're just on tombstones that you find scattered around the land like we had in people one i don't know they just follow in the line of the heroes and just i'm a little worried about what it could be yeah if they make it anything like project ego what like what they envisioned like this massive world like just like looking through the galleries of screenshots i've seen like holy moly it was gonna be like some absolutely massive like i'm sure they could pull like something off today kind of you know skyrim or something i would hope i mean again you know eternal optimist but um sometimes i guess i see a lot of the way the industry has gone with creativity publishers or you know shareholders or whoever tend to drive a lot of these bigger franchises now where it's like oh well you know just make sure you have these elements in your game and don't get too crazy it felt like lionhead was more willing to make a little more edgier jokes and a little more interesting kind of rough cut uh humor and stuff like that and it led to a lot of charm and sure maybe it wasn't always the most politically correct in today's atmosphere but you know it was fun and i don't know if that's going to affect the new fable i have no idea um i just don't know if it'll have that same spirit and i mean as much as it's like uh hopefully they don't change everything at the same time they could still make a really good game if they did change a lot of stuff as long as they kind of kept that same spirit i mean looking at god of war 2018 that was completely different from the older ones and it was one of my favorite games in recent years fable has had a long hard road over the course of eight years the series went from choice-based rpg to flailing your arms around in front of your tv many strange decisions along the way caused this and i think lionhead's general fascination with ambition led them in this direction it's exactly what made fable interesting in the first place the team's ability to think outside of the box is what made the games work but it also became their downfall in the end so what's next for fable well the future has some promise even though lionhead studios isn't around anymore to be involved at the xbox game showcase in july 2022 a new fable game was announced we got one cinematic trailer and honestly haven't received much info since it's going to be developed by playground games the studio behind the forza horizon series former fable assistant producer amy loke also joined playground recently as senior producer it's good that the team seems to be getting old lionhead team members but it seems amy only worked on fable legends so we'll see but the rest is mystery some people are calling this a fable reboot some people are calling this fable4 there's even leaks and rumors suggesting that it could be an mmo so we really only know enough to speculate at this point looking back though i overall enjoyed my time with the fable games even though there were some disappointing moments the fable series has done something that not a lot of games have present new and consistently interesting ideas even if those ideas were more cumbersome than useful the games always went out of their way to push the boundaries if you have the chance i would take the time to try out these interesting experiences because for better or worse you won't forget them anytime soon bye dad

Channel: YourFavoriteSon

Views: 442,617

Keywords: Fable, Fable 2, Fable 3, fable anniversary, fable the lost chapters, fable 4, Fable The Journey, Fable reboot, fable sequel, fable retrospective, fable series, fable video game, fable gameplay, fable gameplay pc, fable video essay, fable series retrospective, fable review, fable series review, fable III review, fable 3 review, fable 3 retrospective, fable III retrospective, fable iii

Id: zm-RT9m31Tw

Length: 271min 8sec (16268 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/StocktorDrange]

Love the thumbnail