Having been replaying a few games lately now that I have a new Xbox I happened to, in my browsing, see a copy of Fable 3 lying around which made me remember an issue that I had with Fable 3 back when it was still new.
Now I think we can all agree that the Fable series as a whole has problems but while Fable 3 in particular was riddled with issues I still managed to get some fun out of it in my initial playthrough as a psychotic evil villain and one feature that always stood out was the whole 'marriage-with-kids' angle that Fable prides itself on. I remember how my character wedded and then produced a child, a little girl who I abruptly named 'Cortana'. Owing to my alignment the little description given to my daughter was that she was 'evil' and while I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some fondness for the NPC the fact remains... she wasn't.
Little Cortana was no different to any of the other NPC children in Fable, the closest she got to being 'evil' was whining incessently for a present and having really high standards as to what that present needed to be. However even then that's not 'evil', that's just being a six year old.
I always felt that if I truly were to have an evil daughter then she should be truly evil. I'm going to assume you've all seen the Hunger Games by this point, remember the knife wielding girl from District 2 who seemingly killed for fun? That's what my evil child should be like. She should be starting fights at school, killing neighbourhood pets, starting fires and using magical spells to terrify other children and I should be right beside her teaching her how to do it.
Hell if the game was bold it could do the same pitch black hilarity of Big Daddy and Hit Girl being an adorable Father/Daughter team of killers but take it to the next extreme. Daddy smiling as his little princess maims her first peasant or take part in a bit of father-daughter looting of the local stores. Certainly she'd need to learn the skills to manage an evil empire, after all she is my heiress to the kingdom.
My point to all this is that in Fable 3 all the villagers feel like random ones and zeros and this includes your children. The fact that they never age and their personalities are almost exactly the same makes it hard for the audience to really give a damn or feel any compulsion to have children. That's why I reckon that having a child should mean more, you should have a child that takes on your alignment and gets their own character arc, growing up alongside you.
Little quests where you teach them how to do what you do and you watch them grow based on what kind of a character you are. Granted this 'turning an NPC child into a full fledged character' would require a full overhaul of the current Fable system but I honestly think it would pay off.
But still what say you, do you think Fable would work a lot better if your children actually aged and that your alignment affected what they grew up into and how they interact with you?
Now I think we can all agree that the Fable series as a whole has problems but while Fable 3 in particular was riddled with issues I still managed to get some fun out of it in my initial playthrough as a psychotic evil villain and one feature that always stood out was the whole 'marriage-with-kids' angle that Fable prides itself on. I remember how my character wedded and then produced a child, a little girl who I abruptly named 'Cortana'. Owing to my alignment the little description given to my daughter was that she was 'evil' and while I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some fondness for the NPC the fact remains... she wasn't.
Little Cortana was no different to any of the other NPC children in Fable, the closest she got to being 'evil' was whining incessently for a present and having really high standards as to what that present needed to be. However even then that's not 'evil', that's just being a six year old.
I always felt that if I truly were to have an evil daughter then she should be truly evil. I'm going to assume you've all seen the Hunger Games by this point, remember the knife wielding girl from District 2 who seemingly killed for fun? That's what my evil child should be like. She should be starting fights at school, killing neighbourhood pets, starting fires and using magical spells to terrify other children and I should be right beside her teaching her how to do it.
Hell if the game was bold it could do the same pitch black hilarity of Big Daddy and Hit Girl being an adorable Father/Daughter team of killers but take it to the next extreme. Daddy smiling as his little princess maims her first peasant or take part in a bit of father-daughter looting of the local stores. Certainly she'd need to learn the skills to manage an evil empire, after all she is my heiress to the kingdom.
My point to all this is that in Fable 3 all the villagers feel like random ones and zeros and this includes your children. The fact that they never age and their personalities are almost exactly the same makes it hard for the audience to really give a damn or feel any compulsion to have children. That's why I reckon that having a child should mean more, you should have a child that takes on your alignment and gets their own character arc, growing up alongside you.
Little quests where you teach them how to do what you do and you watch them grow based on what kind of a character you are. Granted this 'turning an NPC child into a full fledged character' would require a full overhaul of the current Fable system but I honestly think it would pay off.
But still what say you, do you think Fable would work a lot better if your children actually aged and that your alignment affected what they grew up into and how they interact with you?
