Fable 2 - Review

Added October 30th, 2008 by Matti D'Aramitz

Having been a fan of Peter Molyneux’s creative output since his tenure as company lead at Bullfrog, the anticipation of a new Fable game for the Xbox 360 has been palpably immense. Ever excitable and fully immersed in the creation of his project, it’s hard not to share Peter’s enthusiasm when so many other releases are published by faceless development studios seemingly just going through the motions with whatever new release they have to push out.

Despite the first Fable title receiving its fair share of criticism, it was without a doubt one of the premier console Action-RPG experiences of the last hardware generation. Some gamers would even go as far to say it’s been the only real ‘credible’ alternative against Nintendo’s highly acclaimed franchise - Legend of Zelda.

Fable 2 (set 500 years after its predecessor) is set in a fantasy world named Albion. A land not too unlike England once was in the late 15th century with both wooden Tudor architecture and rolling green meadows in plentiful supply. The comparisons between the two regions continue as the population you meet in-game are all superbly voiced by a variety of dialects from around the British Isles.  Performed to perfection, it ends up being a true highlight of the game.

You play (initially) as either an orphaned young boy or girl living in the slums of one of Albion’s larger cities named Bowerstone. Taking the form of a brief tutorial, in this beginning section you’re acquainted with the worlds’ intricacies and also asked to make a set of moral choices alongside your older sibling. An example of this being whether or not you decide to locate a drunkard’s missing alcohol. Through making decisions such as this, you affect not only your own moral disposition but the game world around you, both in a present and future context.

After the tutorial plays out, it’s not long until a great tragedy befalls your character at which point the story zooms forward to yourself as a young adult. Having been taken in and raised by a blind searess in a gypsy camp, you and a faithful canine companion set off in search of revenge for what happened during your heart-rending childhood. At this point how quickly you want to progress with the main story (if at all) is entirely up to you.

Albion, while not on the same epic scale of Tamriel in Bethesda’s Oblivion, is still considerably large. The game world is rendered beautifully, with plenty of bloom lighting, a varied lush colour palette and a reasonably long draw distance. Further journeying and investigation of Albion’s countryside is also actively encouraged with exciting discoveries of treasure, items and other artifacts.

Your dog companion lives up to the pre-release hype and makes an excellent and unique sidekick. Scarily lifelike, it will growl when it smells enemy bandits nearby, bark for your attention when it senses treasure nearby and even deliver a bite or two during a vicious duel.  Somewhat like an advanced Tamagotchi, your pet also requires a certain amount of looking after such as feeding and positive praise for its actions, although the reality is there seems to be little penalty for failing to do any of this.

As was earlier established in the childhood portion of the game, your character is shaped by the moral choices you perform and how you interact with other NPC’s in the game world. This all effects your hero’s alignments on a sliding statistical scale of good vs. bad and evil vs. pure.

Interacting with the population of Albion is performed via canned gestures as your character remains mute throughout. Sadly it isn’t long before this system starts to irritate and instead you wish for a proper dialogue tree and a greater variety of responses as seen in other 360 RPG’s such as BioWare’s Mass Effect.

There is some degree of character customisation present in Fable 2. By visiting a barber or tailor in one of Albion’s towns and villages you can purchase a variety of clothing and hairstyles.  Weapons are also available at a town’s local blacksmith. One major complaint with purchasing inventory has to be the lack of effort involved in gaining the best equipment available for your character. Money being incredibly easy to acquire in the game, it’s possible to simply skip several classes of outfit or weaponry and go straight for the top quality gear. I find this really subtracts from any sense of achievement in being able to afford prestigious items and hurts the game as an RPG significantly.

The level of detail with character models is also severely suspect. Perhaps we’ve been spoilt recently with the amount of minute detail seen in games such as Lost Odyssey.  Fable 2’s characters could at close inspection, pass for the standards more commonly associated with the original Xbox. The frame rate also occasionally dips during more frenzied bouts of action which is near unforgiveable, all things considered.

Other than the character interaction and exploration, the third major crux of Fable’s core gameplay is in its armed combat.  Similar to what’s seen in Zelda, the combat in Fable 2 is focused on three sub-sets: Strength (melee), Skill (Firearms) & Will (Magic). Defeating an enemy with one of the three above attacks produces glowing experience orbs.  Collecting these orbs further increases your abilities in the associated category - such as the enabling of ‘free aim’ for firearms.

Each form of attack is assigned to one of the face buttons on the 360 controller: ‘X’ to swing your sword, “Y” to fire your gun/crossbow and “B” to launch your magic attack. It’s an easy system to master and even the most uncoordinated of players could slay most enemies with ease after a few minutes practice. While you can’t fault the control system, most enemies are very simple to defeat and it’s possible to progress through the entire game without coming close to losing a single encounter. This seriously negates any challenge for the seasoned gamer and can turn the regular surprise bandit ambushes into quite a tiresome affair.

Co-op in Fable 2 also turns out to be rather half-baked and not what we expected from the E3 press conference footage. Instead of being able to use your own character in another player’s universe you choose from a selection of six pre-made sidekicks to tag alongside your friend’s hero. All experience and gold gained from co-op carries over into your single player game, but the actual story progress is not saved for whoever plays the sidekick.

Another disastrous design choice regarding co-op is a fixed camera angle for both players. While this may be a reasonable option for ‘couching sessions’ locally on one television, during online play, this set view easily becomes a hindrance to gameplay. Treasure chests become impossible to find behind obstructive scenery and hidden gargoyles are now impossible to shoot down in free aim mode.  Considering how easy the single player experience is, playing co-op as a sidekick for extra experience orbs ends up being a rather pointless exercise which isn’t compensated with it being any kind of fun for either player involved.

If you choose not to join another hero’s game, you can instead enable ‘friend orbs’ to appear in your Fable universe.  Your friends are represented by a cylindrical version of their gamer tags.  As they go about their own separate business, you can watch them traverse the game environment with the added ability to talk via your headset, check their game stats and transfer items. For what limited purpose it really has, it’s still a nice addition all the same.

Fable 2 is a very humorous game, at least in the British sense of the word as plenty of self-deprecation and sarcasm can be found within most character conversations and item descriptions. It’s certainly something refreshingly different for an RPG to aim for fits and giggles rather than just the usual emotional drama.

Outside the main story you can also pursue character romances both straight and gay, purchase houses and businesses (eventually forming a real estate empire), take on various offers of work and also bare offspring. Some of these distractions manage to work better than others, yet the sad fact is none end up being as in depth as you would otherwise wish them to be.

While certainly ambitious, Fable 2 has plenty of other unique and interesting ideas which don’t always live up towards expectation. The moral choices, while making you think about your actions throughout the game, offer very little consequence which can’t be later corrected. Regardless of how you act you’ll always end up following the same story path and regrettably even this doesn’t turn out to be that particularly interesting.

The prime story from start to finish will take you roughly 12 hours to complete.  It offers a fair deal of replayability if you wish to choose alternate decisions affecting your character’s final outcome.

In closing, Fable 2 seems to be a light hearted, witty, casual role-playing game offering you more of an experience than an actual challenge. Despite a wide variety of activities available for participation in Albion, none feel fleshed out or developed enough to their true potential. Instead of an independent living world to be immersed in, it’s more akin to “by the numbers” questing with some lackluster mini games tagged alongside. Despite some great original ideas, witty humour and, of course, Peter Molyneux’s endearing enthusiasm, it’s hard to walk away from Fable 2 completely pleased with the end result.  Rather you’ll feel more than disappointed for what this game could have been.