RUINER ACTUAL said:
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 other reviews for Fable games. And after watching interviews, reading quotes, and playing some of his games, I know how big an ass and lier/hype machine Molyneux is.
Fable is one of those games that charms me and I see a lot of potential in it... although I think it needs to embrace its superficial qualities much more and not worry about trying to say anything important at all. On its face, it's essentially an adult-oriented version of the Lego franchise, although the Lego series has much tougher combat (which is surprising when you consider how piss-easy they are). While it's obsessed with bodily functions (including sex), it occasionally earns the Mature label with appropriate dark and disturbing imagery, which I rather enjoy.
The problem is the game never seems to grasp that the NPC and NPC interactions need to be much, much, much more interesting. Without it, it's an amusing enough Victorian England sandbox game with way too easy combat. Whenever I got a new expression in Fable II, I enjoyed checking it out... but, sadly, you get one animation per expression and the novelty wears off fairly quickly. I'd even go so far to suggest that they should make the good/evil thing even more superficial, letting the player choose how s/he decorates the world through their actions. Forget all that nonsense about making a wider point about morality, as even more complex games make a mess of it and they don't have an interaction system where farting in someone's face is the depth of its complexity.
I think the game needs to grab the whole Sims thing and run with it. Instead of letting character only buy properties, let them develop the property. Maybe even take a page of Roller Coaster Tycoon and let them build rides or mini-games. Give the NPCs different personalities and looks. The game really only gives them one default personality with a handful of different likes and dislikes. When you marry someone, they generally end up bitching about their house not being good enough, so there's really not much point in hanging around them. You should be able to marry a party girl, then hang out at the pubs playing drinking games with her.
About the only thing that separates Fable from other sandbox game is the fapping about. Instead of stealing cars and running over nuns, you fart in people's faces. Making the interactions with NPCs a lot more fun and getting the combat at least up to Lego levels of difficulty would go a long way toward the game series reaching its potential without fundamentally altering the franchise.
But seriously, I'm glad I didn't shell out 59.99 for this one (I would've, had it been on the PC). Hilarious as ever.
