Zero Punctuation: Fable 3

[dubious_wolf]

I went through lives and STDs like an alcoholic through the hotels mini bar in the second one, the third one kind of seemed cookie cutter and I got bored with this fable franchise after they introduced guns. I kind of assumed my character in Fable 2 died of some horrible venereal monstrosity before he could consolidate his power and keep the bandits from charging in and taking over. So it's obviously the bandit's problems now.

 

[The Harkinator]

The moral choices were not exactly difficult or thought provoking. Press 'A' for shining good angel wings choice or press 'X' for firey bad evil choice. When you become King it becomes A for the short sighted penniless and naive philanthropist or X for the rich, goal orientated bad actions for a good cause kind of person.

The menu system was annoying too because I had to access everything to find out what it does. Most of it just does nothing. When the butler stopped talking I decided that enough was enough and gave up on the side quests.

That quest where you play an RPG inside an RPG (a rather questionable one right now) is funny and well designed and self depreciating etc etc but the others were very boring.

Why not make the NPCs not all have an addiction to hats? When everyone looks the same its quite pointless to purposefully single one out as the one who gets your attention, except when you have a rifle.

 

[Pumpkinmancer]

Every single Peter Molyneux game is absolutely overrated. He, and his works, seem to be judged by perception of what they are or should be and not by the actual result.

The Black and White series sucked, not because of the concept but because of the poor execution. The Fable series sucks, again it's not an issue of concept but of execution.

And that is Peters problem. He cannot properly execute his ideas. Maybe he is years ahead of the technology, but that's not really an excuse because it still leads to poorly executed final products. His games are the sort that you really really want to be good so you just pretend they are as good as you want them to be or as everyone else is pretending they are.

 

[Micheal Kandeloussi]

never really liked fable anyways.

 

[Jonathan Fifer]

If you want an interesting game that came out recently to review, try Ghost Trick for the DS. Every review I've read has either loved it or hated it (either of which would make for an interesting ZP video)and it's a very unique game. I know you'll probably completely ignore this comment, but if you're really desperate for games this is a good one.
Also, it's by the genius who made the Ace Attorney series, so it has one of the best plots I've seen in a video game.

 

[fates_puppet13]

i do have to say fable 3 was woefully disappointing
usually the fable games had a sense of entatainment about them
or at least to me
maybe it was the almost total removal of the morph system

 

[Dan Shive]

What bewildered me is that the exact amount of gold pieces was the exact amount of people in need of saving. If each person donated one gold piece to the "I want to live" fund, there'd be no issue. It also raises the question of how messed up the taxes in that world ultimately are if there wasn't enough money to save everyone if one life = one gold piece. That's less than the cost of a carrot per person.

 

[VivaciousDeimos]

Instead of wreathing your choices in sparkles and flames, why not just present the choices without any overt good/evil alignment attached? I understand what the game was reaching for--being a ruler isn't easy, you can't please everybody etc, but I think it lessens the impact when there's a big arrow pointing down saying "this is the good choice", "this is the evil choice." Draining a lake to get resources to help fight off the incoming eldritch abomination is not an evil decision. The second half was disappointing because I could see the potential for actual moral dilemmas, ruined by the game's stubborn need to label everything good or evil.

For the most part, though, I enjoyed Fable. There were a lot of little fixes from Fable 2 that I liked, but I really appreciate that the games aren't stuck in fantasy medieval England; each successive game has the technology continuing to advance, the latest featuring an Industrial Revolution of sorts. Even if they gameplay and story isn't quite right yet I love that at the very least the civilization is still progressing.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

My friend likes Fable. I have no idea why. He tries to show it to me like it is cool, but I can't get into it. Plus I have seen Yahtzee's reviews, and know how big an ass Molyneux is.

There's really nothing in your post that makes sense.

You "know" that Molyneux is an ass because the most obtuse, biased and self-admitted agitator has said so, with no prior knowledge or even first hand experience on the matter?

Hold on, I'll get you a shepherd to herd you sheep off a cliff.

That last sentence does not convey what I meant it to convey. It shall be changed.

 

[GoddyofAus]

Good to see you survived the floods, Yahtzee.

 

[debramster123]

great review, laughed my ass off;P

 

[TilMorrow]

lol your meant to gather the funds as you play through the game so at the end you are a dirty rich bastard . Well at least I was.

Though to counter your point about there only being the white heroes, in fable two your hero can become black though I'd rather not explain how as it makes me think that Peter Molyneux may be more than slightly racist (Hint: It involves spamming the fire spell and being evil).

Actually you know what I think Peter was trying to be racist with that option.

 

[sdgilbert]

They need to make these games more balanced, the magic was still the only ability that you should ever use in this game, again. Also I'm surprised, Yahtzee you didn't mention the COMPLETELY messed up menu system. It takes five times as long to do anything now.

THANK YOU! Will someone PLEASE explain to me why they thought it was a good idea to make the character go back to the sanctuary just to check his inventory?

Amen to that. The whole sanctuary thing just completely baffles me. Most of it is completely broken and even three second tasks can now take five minutes to complete!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Enduring a little hardship to ensure survival against cosmic horror from beyond? Sounds reasonable to me. That's that moral gray area that video games are not so good at touching on.
"Ok people, a Cthulhu wannabe is coming to destroy us all in exactly 1 years time. Now you have 2 choices, either a) endure a year of hardship in order that I can properly prepare and defend you from said cosmic Cthulhu wannabe and then after that have things be all sunshine and smiles etc etc or b) have a year of sunshine and smiles etc etc and then die a horrible horrible death at the hands of the big bad lovecraftian horror monster thing."

 

[megapenguinx]

You pretty much summed up my feeling of the Fable franchise. Kudos to you good sir.

 

[wench]

Aww, I totally missed that being Mark Heap. The good ending where you donate all the money is pretty much the same... I'm right there with you on the NPC-marrying, I can't for the life of me figure out why I would want to marry anyone. The only ones that would be cool to marry were the actual plotty characters like Ben Finn or Page. Hell, even Sabine would have at least been an interesting choice.

 

[imnot]

You're so eco unfriendly.
But it looks pwetty.


Another great review, never fails to disappoint.

To be fair it is really pretty:3

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Agreed 100% with everything Yahtzee said, which is rare for me. The only reason I bought this game was because it had John Cleese, but otherwise it's still worth a rent.

My problems with Fable:

1) The moral choice system is retarded.
2) Marrying NPCs is pointless.
3) Length, or the apparent lack thereof.
4) Story: Exactly what Yahtzee said. Why couldn't you just have the 'evil' policies for 1 year. Completely nonsensical and indefensible. The 120 day jump was just plain cheap. There was no real drawbacks to being good or evil, all you did was loose a few NPCs (which are faceless anyway) for being good. All the NPCs are completely fickle and faceless, so there's no real reason not to be evil either. Honestly, I made most of the Kingship choices based upon aesthetics (i.e. kept Bower Lake, and built the sewage facility) without any mind to the meaningless moral consequences. Epic fail Molyneux. The characters in the story were strong, if he didn't half-ass it and made it a complete action game, we could have had a developed main character, which would have improved the story drastically. But no, they had to cling to the last semblances of being an RPG for no apparent reason, even though the only RPG elements Fable has are completely irrelevant.

By far the funniest thing is that once you've accrued several million gold, you can instantly change from completely good to completely evil by transferring funds between the treasury and your personal account, thus making the entire moral choice system completely meaningless.

The game was fun, but it could have easily been 100x better if a more thoughtful designer was in charge. I'm pretty sure ol' Petey is completely off his rocker and should be committed.

 

[Diggah]

Glad to see it wasn't just me who was honked off by the 150 day leap. Sold the game straight after that point. Lionhead? Fail!

 

[Mechsoap]

Yeah, it does seem very strange you cant just say ''look, work for me a year, and i promise i will revert it all if we can live''.