Was Fable as good as I remember?

fable is one of those lost franchises a trilogy of games that most of its fans regard as a masterpiece in some capacity the franchise's legacy stalled on a bit of a sour note back in 2012 when Peter Molyneux departed Lionhead Studios and Microsoft decided that the best way to honor fables 3-game legacy was to drive it face-first into the ground with a series of decisions that can only be described as how much money can we make off of people's love for a franchise so now the main series has remained dormant since 2010 leaving in its wake a lot of people who fund lis remember the franchise is something that used to be fantastic so I figured I'd take a look at the first game in the series and see if it truly holds up as something worthwhile to play today in a surprise twist I actually won't be covering the entire franchise in one four-hour long video so we can all breathe a sigh of relief there what I will be doing is playing through the anniversary edition of fable that was released for PC back in 2014 ten years after the original release of the first game alright let's get to it so right out of the gate we have the difficulty settings which make me feel bad about my life if I choose the option for the game to be set to the original difficulty I think I'll stick with the og difficulty here just because it's probably more accurate to the original experience alright so this whole thing kicks off with this storybook esque introduction about a boy who day dreamed about being a powerful warrior or wizard or just an evil dude the foreshadowing is a little on the nose but I think they were just trying to get the players straight into the game this is only further evidence by your dad going hey you got to get your sister a birthday present I know you're like 10 years old but I'm not gonna bail you out he then proceeds to bail you out by offering you one gold piece for every good deed you do around the area I'm unsure how much this is in this universe but it's a lot of gold for a kid by DND standards I imagine if this is as much as I think it is I'll have enough left over to reconstruct my actual horror movie face so you start talking to the townsfolk about their various woes and figuring out how to help them the first thing I actually wound up doing was taking a bribe from this guy who's cheating on his wife out behind a house kind of a weird place for it but alright he offers me a gold piece to keep my mouth shut about seeing him together with some chick who wasn't his wife so I take this guy's bribe and then the game tells me that I have committed a bad deed and basically my Karma's gone down I don't care about that because realistically who's gonna find out right I've heard reports that you've been doing bad deeds accessory to improper man and lady behavior alright I guess someone saw me take the bribe and decided to report me this is a pretty weak way of introducing the player to the concept of hey if you do bad things the guards are gonna chastise you for it well it is a bit cheeky I guess I just would have preferred something more obvious like say a thief type guy had me steal a pendant for three gold pieces and told me that I would take the fall if anyone found out I think something like that would have been a little less ridiculous but either way you go around this tutorial area while performing various actions for whoever needs them and earn enough money to buy a box of chocolates for your sister this includes telling the woman about her cheating husband beating the everliving [ __ ] out of this town bully and then returning a teddy bear to a little girl though it does bother me that this woman had no idea about her husband and the side chick getting it on but the town guards somehow did the tutorial area is short and sweet and find enough for a 2004 game to get its point across so you return to your cross-eyed ginger of a sister and give her the chocolates and you both prepare to leave as bandits come storming into the town and starts slaughtering villagers your sister tells your character to hide and he does so behind the best cover of all a wooden fence with a huge amount of space between each board [Applause] so this whole thing apparently happened because the bandits came looking for you for some reason to find you they massacred the entire town and tortured and killed both your mom and your horrendously disfigured potato of a sister apparently she didn't take her own advice of hiding behind something obvious and looking like Kevin from home alone as brutal as this was I have to say I almost feel like I'm being shoehorned into being the good character at this point I mean this is pretty much the basic setup for the tragic hero archetype of course it's possible that will change but the game rewards you thrice for being a good Samaritan and lectures you for doing something even slightly bad and then it goes on to tell you that your entire family was killed by villainous bandits I guess it feels like it takes that whole concept of hey you can be good or evil and then just pushes you heavily to be heroic the game further compounds on this sentiment with the introduction of maze he saves you from a bandit two charges at you while you continue to macaulay culkin of your big dead dad he then tells you that he's the leader of something called the hero's guild he whisks you away to the guild and basically abducts you into the lifestyle of a hero it's all extraordinarily quick hey kid I know your whole family and everyone you ever knew died before your eyes in a brutal and unforgiving slaughter but hey you got to be up bright and early for your hero classes okay bye so you meet your roommate who's a solid two inches taller and 30 years older judging by her face she goes yeah I have this room to myself but I guess I don't get that anymore oh well let's go to class yeah my family just died but yeah sure let's make me feel bad for taking up space in your room you report over to this fellow for your big training which consists of stepping into this gladiator pit ring thing in the ring then the guard alarm is sounded and this guy goes huh that's the alarm there's trouble in the woods go take care of it new kid then we can actually get to your training well if that's not the most ass backwards thing I've ever heard in a game I'm not sure what tops it to be fair it's not much of a task seeing as they sound the alarms if Beatles get near the guild apparently so moving into the future has your character advanced in age wisdom and strength but apparently not height so after robbing the entire library of its books and performing a traditional Russian dance for the shopkeeper he was very impressed I start to head on over to the objective before my controller tells me that it's thirsty for some dura cells by having my character become really interested in this fence over here then it's back to a bunch of training with these three different types of combat skills melee seems pretty basic and I like the rolling it's easy to see how inspired Dark Souls was by this game the ranged combat is a bit more sketchy of course you have your patented console game auto lock but you also have free aim which makes me feel bad about my life then you have the final form of combat lightning hands I don't know how to feel about lightning hands because I can snap them from one dummy to the others in less than half a second but I guess I'll have to see how it plays out in real combat from here I can advance to adulthood or go play with whisper in the woods I opted for the latter of the two and we run into some bandits who apparently are just grumbling to themselves and looking like bandits whisper suggest that I murdered them with a bow or mice if lightning and so I take a few shots at them while they struggle to shoot at my three foot six inch frame after I'm done brutally taking their lives whisper cheers and goes we did it we you and me we both did it at the same time we did it did you see the way that your arrow went through that one's eye I'm gonna go tell our teacher that you massacred those three humans just now okay bye and so you advanced into adulthood which concludes with you practicing your skills on maize one more time before receiving the title of hero you're walked through the relatively basic skills which allows you to trade your experience points for more strength speed sneaking magic pretty much everything you could want in a basic action RPG game one thing I particularly enjoy is the idea that you need to upgrade your physique to use bigger weapons in the game and finally you're left to your own devices which basically involves you taking story quests or optional quests from the big table in the middle the introductory bit of this game feels extremely cut and dry and more about getting the tutorial for all the mechanics out of the way than actually writing a compelling story I mean obviously your whole family dying because bandits were looking for you for some reason is definitely somewhat intriguing but the execution of tossing your character through Hogwarts for many years in a training montage is kind of lackluster either way I can't actually help but be excited to dive into the meat of this game with all the possibilities I've been shown so far so here's my first major take about this game it's bizarre and that's not a bad thing because honestly I can't think of another game that's just like fable sure you can say that the dated combat mechanics show up in other games or the upgrade system isn't particularly unique but there's this reputation system that affects how people treat you they might cheer they might cower they might just ridicule you the people you interact with are these strange and bright cartoon characters that range from dopey and drunken towns fault to smug heroes who look down on you as a simple farmer your choice of armor or clothing might mean the difference between protecting yourself in combat but looking extremely ugly to other people or it might mean that you're an unarmored - glass cannon but hey you look beautiful the sneek system has your character do this weird lazy hunch and this I in the top right corner tells you how many people see you there's this constant disembodied voice of the guild master telling you where to go and what new things are happening at all times the blacksmith calls out that he has shields and armor and he has neither of those villagers and vendors tell you your next objective location when you walk by them constantly the game is just really goddamn weird but it also uses charm and I'm really enjoying it so far so the first thing that the main quest has you do is slay a wasp queen and a bunch of regular wasps seem to be carnivorous I think the lightning might be a bit over tuned but it sure does get the job done also the wasp in this game sound like pigs I haven't figured out why from here you head on over to the main city of the game Bower stone upon arrival you're told that your horror movie monster of a sister might have actually survived the attack but they're still unsure after this you can do whatever you want again which for me involved picking up a few side quests so fable has this thing called a boast system basically it's a way of adding more challenge to your quests while risking some money in exchange for more of it when you boast your character is basically getting up on a platform and telling his followers all right I'm gonna protect these next guys in this next contract while I'm naked there's something of that variety in addition to this many of your quests have you fighting on the side of justice or villainy in one quest you can earn good boy points but less money if you fight off the bandits who are looting a farm or you can rake in more shekels by helping the bandits loot the farm I guess the definition of a hero in this game is just someone who does things for people because Whisperer opposes you once you choose your side whether it's good or bad it just seems kind of weird for you to have been rescued by this guy who runs the Justice League only for you to go yeah you know what my family had it coming being a murdering bandit is the way to go either way this kind of choice is pretty damn cool even if it doesn't affect the games overall story a lot of the times I felt pretty overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that I could do but I don't necessarily always consider that a bad thing when it's done right a large amount of choices and things to do can make time fly by fast when you play a game and that's exactly what happened to me with fable there's a variety of different settings enemy types and little bonus additions like these minigames that change from area to area but one of my favorite things about fable are these giant talking stone doors I absolutely love these Diamond doors they're probably one of the biggest things I remembered from the fable series just because of how cool and different they are there are another big part of fables unique flavor that would probably make the game feel less complete if they weren't there the riddles they present range from things as simple as turning on a lamp in your inventory or wearing a certain set of armor to performing great evil deeds asking a door to marry you or giving birth to inflation porn in this world finally someone who understands me the doors open up into these cozy little areas with some nice aesthetic or interesting vibe to them and rewards range from elixirs which extend your life or magic bars to powerful weapons and outfits not all of the reward areas are particularly compelling to look at but a lot of them do have their own interesting spin and their own little stories to tell without stating anything implicitly they're a fantastic addition to the game with just how odd they are and how satisfying they are to open partway through this [ __ ] of a marsh as the dark wood bordello an establishment aimed at providing pleasure to men in exchange for monetary it's it's a whorehouse the owners name is mr. grope which yeah alright he apparently is an awful person who treats the women here like trash and only cares about profit the leader of the women here is trying her best to get the deed to the establishment from him so that she can be rid of him which is where I come in but first I got to go for a test drive here the most interesting thing that we learn here is that I look like a fat dead body to Geralt of Rivia after this obtaining the deed is as simple as getting the owner shit-faced who then proceeds to babble up the stairs and into bed where he sleep talks has a heart-to-heart with you while you tenderly watch over him I not entirely sure but yeah he reveals the location of the deed which is buried out front near the statue after coming back with a spade you can dig it up and become the new owner of the bordello this means that you can make a profit every few days from the establishment and you can sleep with the ladies as often as you want for free but if you want to be the best boy you can turn the bordello into a women's shelter I like that option so I do that and get rewarded with a little halo over my head for being such a good sport on the flip side of this newfound holiness is the Chapel of SCORM also branching off the dark wood area of the map the chapel is a place where you can bring followers with you to sacrifice them to the evil god SCORM the whole area is very reminiscent of the Red Mountain area of Morrowind which is pretty awesome there's an entire system here where it's better to sacrifice at a certain hour if you're good evil are neutral the rewards you reap get really good including the best bow in the game the system is ridiculously convoluted and definitely reeks of the older game mentality of making a very complicated system and just letting the players figure it out when you make it to the next major town area you run into the little girl who you helped out in the prologue of the game apparently she made it through the attack and is now hell-bent on giving you Vietnam flashbacks hey you know how everyone you loved died I thought you did too but guess not okay bye it actually took me a moment to realize that oak veils the villager characters from I guess I just thought it would look like [ __ ] but apparently it's repopulated nicely maze meets you outside of the tavern and lets you know that years ago a hero named twin blade moved on from the guild to unite dozens of bandit clans and start wreaking unified havoc on a lot of towns Mays believes that he might have been the one behind the siege on your village all those years ago and he also believes that an exceptionally talented seer has been helping them become rich so my mission here is twofold one to find out if it was twin blade who was behind the attack and two to make use of the seers services to figure out the whereabouts of my sister infiltrating the Bandit camp has you doing a tutorial for sneaking which is painfully slow and probably works about as well as Elder Scrolls sneaking does if you get it to a high enough level case in point this guy explains to his comrade here that twin blade is only letting people with full banded outfits into the camp then he turns around and goes who is that and then he just kind of forgets about you when you crouch a little bit the game goes from teaching you how to sneak to pretty much giving you zero option to do so in the next area as there's like 40 bandits here hanging out so I dash on by them because I boasted earlier about not killing anyone along the way I scooped up five pieces of banded gear which allows me to transform into my alter ego the chromosome kidnapper the guy in front of the gate goes yo SiC bandit gear bro is that an angry mob behind you that well come on in when you make it in you can change back into your old clothing if you want to and you can freely roam the camp there's a few vendors a games keeper guy and a big fella simply named slam all right I hire him to follow me around after I play a game of peekaboo with the game's keeper so that I can win a free ticket into the elite part of the camp slammin eyes saunter into the camp ready to blast some bandit ass except I still boasted about not killing anyone so I got to come up with something else so I pay these assassins to create a diversion and they do so by picking on the most beta of the bandits and this causes the alarms to be raced for some reason and all three guards storm out of the castle to chase the assassins away it's here where we meet the most mismatched body and voice combination in the game this mountain of meets hoarse whisper sounds better suited to a blind old man and it's have urn but whatever he's ready to fight and I'm ready to loot apparently he doesn't count as a bandit so I do eventually give up on my loot quest to defeat him after his defeat the seer reveals herself from the tent which had no extra hiding spaces and I definitely just scoured the entire thing for loot she also gives you about a half a second to process her existence before going hey by the way I'm your sister I guess the Raiders found her face to be just as unfortunate as I did and decided to cut out her eyes and dye her hair I guess weird then again mine just up and turned blond so yeehaw I guess the narrator tells you that the Raiders tossed her aside and then she crawled around for three days before bandits found her twin blade basically kept her at his side after seeing how surprisingly adept she was in combat and the whole seeing into the future thing she basically became a complete badass and she imparts to you some kind of gift of power before leaving you again you get the choice of killing or sparing this walking anime depart the camp when you return back to maize he goes oh yeah nice Congrats on having a sister still yo you want to do some arena fighting though also my archaeologist friend might have gotten himself killed want to check that out I don't know I was just sitting here thinking he might have a lead on the Raiders who killed my childhood but let's go rescue that guy but before that I realized that I have to pay slam all the time I even got to pay the fella during cutscenes I guess I could probably just let him go back to the camp or all right now it's off to the which would an area on a little island to the top left of the map it's basically a Rainier and lighter shade of dark wood you find mazes archeologist friend behind this diamond or who gets mad at you for finding him and then shortly after you find the counterpart to the Chapel of SCORM called the temple of Evo instead of sacrificing dudes for profit you instead have to pitch in your hard earned money for good boy points so it's basically a Catholic Church it does reward you with one of the better melee weapons in the game eventually but yeah it takes a lot of funds but it does actually take a lot less if you start chipping in when you're 100% evil [Music] all right now we can pick this bad boy up still expensive as hell but hey it's worth it I replaced it an hour later also there's this King Arthur ass sword up on this hill and you got to be super strong to rip it out ironically by the time you get this strong the amount of DPS it outputs is less than a few of the two-handed weapons you can grab from other sources still it's pretty cool to come back as this monster of a human to rip this thing out of the ground in front of everyone and the description says that the twins who made it cut off their own hands to make sure that no one else could make another one brutal after this area comes the next town not whole glade it's been having a bit of a bail Vereen trouble lately and I guess I'm the one that needs to fix it by fighting off these [ __ ] their raids have become more and more brazen since their leader a white valve erine has been leading them into town supposedly a hunter who lived in the town killed the last one and then disappeared the wife reveals to you shortly after that her hunter husband had gotten bitten by that same Bal Vereen and now has become one himself so you have to take him and his lackeys out with a silver augmented weapon or just a really powerful one when you return with the fellas head the leader of the town lets you know that he's basically going to sponsor you for the arena allowing you to start competing in it against other heroes the arena is actually pretty goddamn cool the rules are about what you'd expect except that you keep fighting until you're ready to throw in the towel every round that you fight Nets you more and more money and till you make it to the grand prize the first round has you fighting these stinging boys the second round as you fighting a herd of fat short Thanos and then the third round hits and you're joined by whisper from here on out and I absolutely hate this decision because it's very obvious why she's put here and what's likely going to happen on top of this she's absolutely useless beyond drawing extra enemies towards her like I'm one shotting some of these mobs and the most she can do is knock them down sometimes and then it's like wow these two heroes are truly on the same level as one another cool so yeah you fight a series of the same type of enemies that you've seen in the game so far werewolves banded zombies trolls they're trolls and then finally the big boss a gigantic gnarly looking scorpion this guy probably would have been a lot more difficult if I had fought it with my melee weapon exclusively but he does absolutely nothing when you hang back and shoot him so that's why I did so here's the big semi predictable twist apparently there's a guy dubbed the hero of Heroes known as the Jack of blades he's returned after a long time to reside over this tournament and give out the final bonus prize so MF DOOM comes walking out and basically sounds and looks like what you'd expect an average villain to sound and look like instead of dropping some sick beats and lyrics on us he says all right now I fight to the death while I understand this quote unquote plot twist the game spoils it before you even make it to this point due to the boast system you have an option to kill your enemies or spare them as a boast and since every wave has a monster or bandit type you never get that option introducing whisper as an ally is an awful decision no matter how you slice it and I wish they would have instead left me alone and introduced her afterwards as my final opponent suddenly so the final fight between us shows how useless she truly is and has her saying not to kill her and that she wouldn't have killed you if she had won if I do kill her I get 10,000 gold an ass load of evil points and Thunder continues to be an [ __ ] to me I'd imagine by the way this is thunder thunder his whispers sister and he's just the worst I only hope you'll both end up in the arena one day then we'll see who the greater hero is don't do it farm boy anyways when I initially accepted this quest I needed money I needed money badly for this big-ass club strapped to my back I was full evil sacrificing people not caring who I killed if I was still in this position I would kill whisper with no hesitation she's been nothing but annoying this entire game constantly acting like she's better than me despite literally never once proving so and then her older brother whose thigh is bigger than my entire being talks [ __ ] to me at every given opportunity even in her possible final moments she calls you a farm boy again I get that this is more of a thing because your guy doesn't have a name but he does have a title and she could have called him that or just anything not as derogatory either way I do decide to spare her because I'm ready to go back to the good side I'm just tired of people cowering from me I guess you sacrifice a dozen or so villagers and suddenly everyone's afraid Jesus when he returned to the readying area thunders there and he's talking [ __ ] about you again he tells you that this isn't over and blah blah blah Lady Grey is the more interesting person here she's the mayor of Bower stone and she cordially invites you to her manner before taking her two best assets with her and leaving after this year escorted out of the arena by a guard who points out to you that you reminded him of the first female hero of the arena scarlet robe a statue of her lies on the right side of the hall and your character falls to his knees at the sight of it apparently he can see a distinguishable human being in this lump of play-doh and more importantly it's that of his mother the Jack of blades swings by and monologues about how great she was and how she left behind two great heroes in her wake then he casually goes yeah I can't wait to reunite all three of you my character does not react to this at all the guy definitely admits that he was behind the attacks more or less while my character is just sitting there Dream Weaver ring in front of the statue so I guess instead of taking my vengeance it's off to have a tea party with Lady Grey oh and to find my sister again but first Lady Grey she's all over you almost immediately and asks you to pick her up a black rose the item description for this says that you have to have a heart as black as the petals to appreciate it so I'm guessing that she's not a great person also the guy about to be executed in this cage says that too but I kind of want to marry her so next she wants you to own a house before marrying her which I mean come on who do you think I am and finally she wants you to retrieve her necklace from someone who stole it off of her you talked to all of these [ __ ] around town and they're all like man I can't believe Lady Grey murdered the [ __ ] out of her sister did you know that Lady Grey actually literally slaughtered her own sister and took her necklace from her did you know that lady gray is wearing her dead ass sister's necklace it's an oak veil by the way despite all of these clues and seemingly limitless witnesses my character completely ignores these people to go retrieve her necklace for her I'm very disappointed in him but it's okay so I head off to oak Vale and into a tavern that's packed with hearts I've never had more people love me in my entire life until I played this game but more importantly whispers here and she's like hey sorry I belittled you and gave you [ __ ] for the entire time that I've known you it's because I was super jealous anyways I thought I'd tell you now and I'm going back to my old country see you nerd I mean it's cool that she apologized but I guess I don't care at all because she's been a total non-factor for her entire existence speaking of non factors not only have these two goofballs been watching the entrance of the cemetery to make sure that they could talk in private and then reveal the necklace location anyways when I walk in but Thunder is apparently the other suitor to Lady Grey he basically says that he's gonna kill me up on this spooky esse land and it's told a bunch of peasants or something I was thinking we were just gonna meet in the arena but I guess this works this guy is a horrible fight it isn't difficult it's just annoying thunders moves consist of spinning at you blocking and his main move calling lightning down around him in a circle this makes melee combat a stupid idea and the entire fight is basically just shooting him over and over again halfway through his health bar he tackles you off a cliff and your character sounds like this then he goes you think you can take her just by killing me she loves me then he runs away to this cave where the final chunk of fight takes place with no modification to strategy or new moves when you defeat him you don't get the chance to lop his head off or anything he just kind of limps away and says that you can have Lady Grey when you make it back to Lady Grey and tell her that you beat shit-for-brains she marries you on the spot and that's that I was hoping there'd be something a bit more special for marrying her but I guess 15,000 gold and access to this diamond door is a pretty good reward go to bed shall we all right time to go meet my blind sister she's hanging out at the place that lady gray was raised in I believe known as the gray house this place is goddamn ominous and it's really cool it actually put me on edge a little bit even though realistically nothing's going to hurt me stepping inside the house has this clock ringing before zombies rise from the floorboards they're pretty easy to kill but then the camera pans outside to show you some kind of thumping coming from one of the graves further investigation brings you into contact with this journal written by Lady Grey basically stating that she's going to run Bower stone no matter what and that the masked man was the one who spurred this so I imagine that would be the Jack of blades and finally to put a bow on this area the graves up back don't have any zombies that spawn but they do say things like I finished first in the human race and not dead just sleeping buried me anyway my wife's a murderer so sis here tells you that your mom is actually still alive and being held by the Jack of blades in some sort of prison his goal seems to be to get some kind of special sword which has the capability of destroying the world or something along those lines he was also the person who cut out your sister's eyes in the first place the archaeologists from before knows how to get into Jack's prison but he's been captured by Jack's minions and is now in the process of being man napped from Bower stone Jack's minions are these weird hunched over creatures that sound a lot like scrap metal scraping together as they move they wield these long twin blade type things and are generally super strange I like their design a lot when you make it to the archaeologists and send all of the baddies packing he tells you that he knows where secret entrances to the prison but you'll have to figure out the rest yourself so you're sent off to the graveyard in the northeast of the map the graveyard keeper here has apparently plundered some kind of armor and stashed it away all over the graveyard you basically just alpha him into muttering about how all of this stuff must have gotten into their hiding places by accident before he disappears entirely while leaving the last piece at his house you need to return all four of the pieces before the demon door will let you through and then it's off to the final stretch before you make it to the Prison which is apparently through some kind of mystical fireplace which opens up when you defeat these skeletons in a prayer circle the entire way up to this place is just a tsunami of undead also which is kind of neat but also makes fighting them completely pointless beyond trying to clear a path but eventually you infiltrate the prison to try to find your mom we're getting to a part of the game where I think the devs were just kind of out of ideas or they didn't know how to design an end game because this prison is just crawling with these whack-a-mole jack-in-the-box undead [ __ ] and it sucks not because it's difficult but because it's annoying as all hell I barely take damage from these guys it's just the sheer quantity of them they keep popping up from underneath me and just knocking me down and then the explosive mushrooms from the dark would make another appearance which is just fantastic to try to deal with when you have a never-ending horde of boney boys trying to give you the business from behind this is followed up by a bunch of average-looking town guards but they're wearing red so apparently that allows them to take several hits from some of the strongest weapons in the game at least they don't keep knocking me down over and over again finally you make it to your mom who looks like she's 70 years old now she's absolutely thrilled to see her son again so you run out of there fighting the respawning guards and all that stuff and it seems like mom can't really fight anymore probably on the account of her looking like she was there when hieroglyphics were invented but then Jack cuts you off and gets big as hell and floaty he goes hahaha I planted a modern-day FBI bug onto your clothing when we were at the arena I know all about everything you've been doing and then you get captured yeah just you get captured by these four enemies that you've been thrashing for a while now I mean yeah sure I guess the jack of Blades was involved but you don't really even get an attempt to fight him it's just an instant capture it's absolutely horrible design because all you really needed to do was have Jack grabbed the heroes mom and go look dude I'm gonna kill her if you don't give up and then on top of this his entire reasoning for all of this happening is to get to this overpowered sword it requires a key or something like that and he demands to know where it is what I don't get is that he has clearly heard your conversation with your sister and what she said so why not just let you escape with your mom and hope that she tells you where the key is so here I am sitting in a cell looking like agent 47 and mr. clean decided to bone storm a baby into existence and over parent him until he ran away and got tatted up oh and just because we're operating off of playground rules I can't use magic because Jack of blades enchanted the whole prison I don't know I mean let's really talk this through I'm a powerful hero I could easily best these dumbass guards with my fists alone even without magic the guy next to you even says they take us out every year once a day to race us around the courtyard like you couldn't just escape then and then to pile on - all of this is the fact that I'm the husband of one of the most powerful people and Albie on it just makes no sense I mean for [ __ ] sake the warden recites a poem about Lady Grey in your presence I think this entire ordeal would have fits so much better in the early game I know that would mean restructuring the story but goddamn I really can't stand that I'm this super powerful super renowned hero and I'm just tossed into prison for a year a year when you race around the prison and win you get the prize of listening to the warden recite his poetry to you during this time you can sneak by him and read the code off the wall the code unlocks one of these three Diaries on the desk and no matter which one you pick it's wrong I know this because I tried so you wait a year and then you do it again and this time you get the key and this initiates an escape sequence in which you do the same thing that you should have done the first night when they let you out for the race freeing the other prisoners gives you good karma because criminals are great people and [ __ ] the police I guess then you run around with a stick before your mom says dude what the hell go get your [ __ ] so my prisoner buddies die valiantly as I retrieve my belongings apparently the jack of Blades decides to drop the prison wide magic powers band as soon as I get my stuff back because I can suddenly use my powers again now hopefully I remembered to turn off the spying device that he planted on my gear or this is gonna get really awkward in a few moments Dario yo what is up my man not much bro just finishing up a shift at the old prison unit tonight Jessie's gonna be there yeah coming in I mean you'll have to give me a few hours though man you know we got a field of zombies outside my work right I know I know only one way in or out but hey they're paying me $14 an hour so combine that with the Tim Hortons gig I got going and I'm making just above the poverty line oh yeah I'm gonna have to get back to you Dale they brought the Kraken back I know yeah I'll meet you tonight dude usual spot 2g yard Fridays this boss is kind of neat I mean it's easy of course but neat grandma keeps telling me that she thinks it might be blocking the exit she's pretty astute in her old age after this you're given a little cutscene in which you're told that your hero now knows that the jack of Blades must be stopped dude straight-up reveals that he's imprisoned your mother your sister goes yeah he cut out my eyes but what really pushes our guy over the edge is being in prison for a year so now we have to stop him because he knows where the key to the sword is but what he doesn't know is that only a member of the hero's bloodline is able to reveal the key so in order to stop him from in order to make it so that he can't get the key all three members of the family split up and one of them is to go directly and reveal the key yeah it seems like a great plan to me I go activate a much-needed Cullis gate in dark wood and then a head-on off to the hook coast this place is an icy northern region which I love the look of so far although I do have to admit I'm a sucker for cold and snowy places when I try to exit the town I arrive in there's a red force field keeping me out my mom tells me to come back to her so that she can figure this out and when I do she get snapped again right in front of me the last thing she screams out is for me to not forget the book so I grab the book and bring it to the guild master who says that he can use it to bring the force field down this is the beginning of the last stretch of the game and it has you abandon all the other side quests to start it when you get back to town there's these Banshee ass wraiths chasing people around it's actually a pretty nice sound when combined melodically with the guild master chanting nonsense in my ears [Music] so here's a twist that I should have predicted all along but it still doesn't make sense in a lot of ways the maze is a bad dude who caters to the Jack of Blades so there's been almost zero indicator that maze was going to betray you because he's always been pretty steadfast in how he speaks to you I don't know maybe he was trying to raise you in a way to defeat Jack but he sure gave up on that dream pretty fast if that's the case the only answer that you get out of him when you defeat him is that he's a coward the funniest bit about this entire ordeal is the part where Jack goes I can't believe it took you a whole year to get out of prison yeah you and me both buddy the actual fight is kind of silly and annoying but not as bad as thunders fight the weirdest part about it was this bit where he teleported into a locked lighthouse which makes me wonder if it would have been open during the daytime fortunately my guile was high enough to pick locks but still really odd after you deliver the death blow he goes oh [ __ ] Pham maybe you can be Jack after all thank you for the everlasting faith maze the final showdown has you chasing the Jack of blades all over the map this rush not only has you revisiting different corners of the map it also has pretty much every single different enemy type that Jack is employed throughout the game popping up to try to stop you they don't do a very good job although Jack is always a step ahead of you anyways as he activates these different ritual sites around Albion Thunder shows up for one whole room before going go on ahead I'm exhausted I need a break have you ever cooked someone so hard that they forever have small dick energy when you're done chasing Jack he winds up at the heroes guild which he has started the process of decimating he then heads to the secret chamber in the back of the guild where he awaits you for the last battle before the battle starts though he eats your mom into the sword and then he starts the fight this battle is annoying and that you have to fight Jack's minions first and then he'll fight you the first two times I approached him after he led his barrier down he just put it back up in summon more minions which is a colossal waste of time when I got him to half health he floated up into the air and started shooting down at me from above so I just used my bow and that was it not a very enthralling battle at all yours sister approaches you after this battle and says hey if you want the sword you got to kill me I guess this was meant to make the final decision a good versus evil one but I feel like evil characters are pretty shafted in this game I decided to chuck the sword into the void because it's weak as hell compared to mine in terms of DPS and as far as the base vanilla game goes that's it your hero rests at last and Albion is saved from Jax evil which let's be honest super weak ending the DLC has a lot more elaboration on a lot of the key elements which makes me wonder if the game was rushed initially or if this was always the plan the whole thing starts out with one of the oldest heroes in Albion transmitting a message stating that there's some big-time trouble up north we need to restore power to the lighthouse that's off the hook Coast in order to be able to ferry over there this involves entering this new diamond ore which has appeared and freeing these goofiest prophets who are locked up in confinement if you want to kill them you turn the puzzle into moons if you want to free them you turn them into Suns either way you retrieve this big flamey boy which has the capability of making the lighthouse do its job after this it's mentioned that maze was frantically working on trying to retrieve a sword which could rival the sort of Aeons according to his journals he's been trying to free himself from the jack of blades for most of his life and this new sword would likely lend him the power to do so paavo spear is basically the good counterpart to the sword of Aeons and basically only appears for someone when the heroes of Albion's pass deemed them worthy that would be me I've decided to use it for the DLC I suppose because it does have some great augmentations I think the sword of Aeons was heavily nerfed from the base game if I recall correctly so it's damaged output and therefore avos tears damage output doing less than the soulless great sword would make sense to a degree oh well we'll give it a spin bringing the fire heart to the lighthouse results in a few of the summoners who were laying siege in the north to appear to start attacking it this has you do a little protection quest before the heart does its job and it summons up a ghost ship for you to ride your way up north when you reach snow spire village The Mummy Returns greets you and tells you that you're to visit the Necropolis and retrieve four glyphs to restore this big monument thing known as the snow spire Oracle the goal here is to hopefully have this thing in part the knowledge necessary to ward off these summoners permanently so it's time to go grave robbing again it took me a bit to figure out the pattern but when you read these tombstones they'll tell you either something shitty about the person or the way that they died or they'll say something nice and positive I'm looking for the positive ones to proceed the negative ones caused a wave of squeakers to spawn in which it's just kind of annoying when white valve rains keep spawning in repeatedly in addition to these non-stop zombies at least the zombies are big and clumsy and not too plentiful when you return these stone faces wake up and tell you that the summoners are here because the jack of Blades has sent them he's apparently cheated death somehow and is now trying to figure out a way to get back to Albion from a place known as the bronze gate in order to get the gate open and put an end to this the soul of three heroes are necessary the mask that Jack was wearing seems to play a key role here also as Jack starts speaking to you directly through it the first soul that you're to collect is from a hero known as the king of the arena Thunder is the main choice for this so it's time to visit him again to see if he's recovered from that long sprint through the single room earlier the guy has apparently been begging for work from the mayor of Knothole Glade which is just sad he tells you that you can kill him for his soul or you can go to the arena and look around the sands of the main fighting pit for the souls of heroes who are long dead and may be haunting it still Jack encourages you to just kill him but I'm being the blessed boy so I decide to hoof it back over to the arena where dozens and dozens of bodies are sprawled out all over the place where the summoners have ripped through here your test with participating in another round of the arena destroying trolls valve summoners and pyramid heads that are all employed by Jack to stop you you're rewarded with the soul and you report back to briar rose the next inscription calls for the soul of a hero n' and Briar Rose fits the bill but she goes Hyo just use your dead moms soul I mean what you gonna do with that so I go off to the graveyard where my mom tells me that there's a legion of screamers here to stop me from gobbling down her soul what the [ __ ] were they thinking at least it's over quickly compared to the arena and finally the last soul required is the oldest soul jack suggest that I killed the guild master and the acolytes at the guild suggest that I go take nostro soul which is the skeleton in the graveyard who I retrieved all the armor for earlier the funniest thing about this is the fact that the guild master caught wind of this and he just note the [ __ ] out of there I really feel like playing an evil character would have been way more fun here oh well when you head over to nostrils fighting area there's plenty of zombies as always but there's also Jack's minions what's cool is that they actually fight each other which is a nice touch nostril is a badass warrior who's willing to give you his soul but only if he falls in battle so you blast him and capture his soul and then face down Jack for the final time except this time he's a big-ass dragon and I can't believe Skyrim ripped off fable this way god damn this fights pretty cool in that I take damage but Jack kinda just hangs out on the side and lets you hit his head only or flies around and waste time I guess it's about as much as I can expect at this point when you finally defeat the big bad evil man you get the final option of putting on the mask and basically becoming jack or throwing it into the lava I like this choice a lot it definitely exemplifies each side of the morality coin but after this that's the true end to the game and it feels a lot better than the vanilla games ending so let's wrap this whole thing up and give my final thoughts on fable the sheer amount of things that you can do in this game from changing your character's body weight scariness alignment and attractiveness to buying out a trader stock of cider and selling it at a higher rate to another one to fishing and digging for treasure to buying a house and upgrading it before renting it out or to just exploring all the nooks of a map to find treasures tucked away is honestly just delightful I guess I've just gotten used to this mindset that a lot of newer games have where the devs have just taken this huge open world map and put a lot of nothing into it and while I wouldn't call fable open world per se these little micro levels and areas of map are jam-packed with just enough content to make me go oh well what's the Rose Cottage or what's behind this building without going overboard and causing me to not care anymore about exploring the side quests in fable are a 70/30 split between short and sweet and tedious as hell there's the occasional uninspired or just plain boring one and then there's horrible ones like this godforsaken quest it's an escort mission except that you have to stick near your slow ass party at all times and if you stray too far during combat the prisoner runs away [Music] but for the most part the side quests are pretty enjoyable additions to the game with not much to complain about a few examples include the likes of this grandmother who comes off as a sweet old lady who's worried about her grandson in a cave when you fight your way to the end of the cave a nymph has the child locked up in a barrier and demands that you bring her another innocent to sacrifice instead of the kid I chose to kill the nymph instead resulting in a mini-boss fight when you return the child to his grandmother he tells you that she's worse than the nymph and that he's going to grab some [ __ ] from the cabin and leave then there's this [ __ ] who goes hey you want to date my daughter well you got to change your hairstyle to this really boring and unattractive one oh and mutton chops she loves mutton chops and hmm a big stupid snidely whiplash mustache and by the way I don't have a daughter so just look making heroes like you look stupid have you seen yourself the game isn't all great things obviously there's a lot of [ __ ] where it's like how do I do this I've had to look up a lot of different things because the menuing and different systems like marriage have no obvious tutorial I gave this girl like 10 boxes of chocolates before trying to give chocolates to every person in town before giving one a wedding ring before she gave me the option to marry her I actually tried to marry the barber first but it turns out that she only ever gives you the option to shop with her and not actually marry despite me giving her a wedding ring when you do get married and you're ready to take grandma to Applebee's you have to flex on your wife until she's ready to get it on I mean that's just real life [ __ ] right there but I guess I just didn't expect it to translate so well to a videogame I was instead trying to go to bed and get her to follow me to it and was trying to press some kind of bang button from there I will say that you're at the very least rewarded with 30 seconds of uncomfortable black screen which is honestly a really apt depiction of the real-life act oh I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to use my hotkey [ __ ] because I didn't realize that you have to hold the trigger to use them because usually that's just the XP collection button which in and of itself is kind of a silly mechanic as mentioned before the whole sacrificing people for rewards is some of the most overly complicated [ __ ] in the game and I'm offered little to no explanation on how to maximize my rewards without looking it up boasting confused me at first because it seemed like if I had backed out of it I would cancel the quest the game explains how boasting works after you've already been through a cycle of boasting the menus look nice and sorted but there's entirely too much to them and I can't stand trying to navigate and sort through them the majority of the time although I praised the concept of an economy where you can buy goods from one merchant and sell them at another for profit it's actually horrendously broken because you can just buy a bunch of stuff in bulk from a vendor and with enough guile you can sell it right back to them for profit the voice acting is charming when you're going through a minor side quest or something that's intentionally goofy I'll just go out of Gaunt cottage last week and see more hostage recovering but it hurts the game when more serious stuff happens because of how its pasted or how the voice lines seem rushed or confused finish it quick then I do the same for you there you are what's wrong don't you recognize your own sister the final few quests side quests and areas of the vanilla game range from a bit of a slog to just not good I wasn't as entertained with any area north of Bower stone beyond the hook coasts the vanilla story was very mediocre up until the DLC starts and then it becomes a bit more bearable when it's explained that jack is some kind of entity which forced itself unto Albion and by extension explains mazes betrayal but despite all of those negatives none of them stop me from having a blast with fable overall all of the bad stuff combines slow the game down from being fantastic but they don't make enough of an impact to keep it from being a great and entertaining experience in its own right especially for 2004 you can pick apart the definitely shitty animations the cartoonish voice acting and the decent at best plot but the game is ridiculously ambitious for its time so is fable as good as I remember yeah it actually is maybe even a little bit better there's a feel to it that I don't think any other game is replicated in quite the same way and I really had a lot of fun if you haven't played the game in forever or you still haven't tried it out I highly recommend that you do well if I haven't ruined it for you that is thanks for watching I've been meaning to hit this series for a while so it's nice to finally get around to it plus it's only like an hour long I think beyond that I have a twitch where I make my absolute best effort to stream stuff every week er two or three or four I stream I swear sometimes just not recently I have a Twitter where I tweet out my videos as they get done sometimes I complain about stuff yes I have a discord where we discuss the hottest gaming trends but mostly it's just non-stop [ __ ] posting at an alarming rate and and that's about it have a good one

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 1,352,572

Rating: 4.8515615 out of 5

Keywords: Fable, Lionhead, Fable Anniversary, Lionhead Studios, Hero, Heroes, Microsoft, Albion, story, review, breakdown, analysis, evaluation, Main quest, Lost chapters dlc, dlc, Arena, Whisper, Maze, Thunder, Guildmaster, boast, Temple of Avo, Chapel of Skorm, demon door, age, attractiveness, marriage, good, evil, Not sure what else to put really, I recently got engaged, I'm really excited about that, Anyways, Bowerstone, Lady Grey, Jack of Blades, villain, Sword of Aeons, Avo's Tear

Id: 85NlL7t9BfU

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

100%. Aged like a good wine.

[u/[deleted]]

Yes.... Yes is was.

[u/zapiekanka777]

Yes

[u/Stoned_Villager]

Salt Factory is a pretty cool content creator. I like how long-winded his videos are and I can be lost for (increments of) hours just listening to his perspective on different video games. I wish there were more people willing to make videos as long as this. Though, there are others, of course.

[u/ThePreciseClimber]

Wouldn't it make more sense to play the original version?