SPOILERS
So a few weeks ago I turn on my Xbox and am browsing the "sales and specials" section as I'm a cheap ass for everything besides Madden. Not that I needed a new game mind you, I still have 2 Mass Effects, Darksiders 2, and a steam library full of things I haven't finished. But lo and behold in a small box in the corner "Download Fable III FREE!"
Um what? Seriously?
I had never had any interest in this series because my cousin had pretty much said "meh" to it and we tend to agree when it comes to games (except for Call of Duty..everytime I think about that game I do this:
). I had heard a lot of fans complaining when Fable III happened as it didn't live up to the hype, was shitty, wasn't fun etc. But I wanted to try to judge this game without all that in my head. For free, it was a perfect chance to do that.
So the game starts oddly with a cutscene of a chicken (this game has a serious chicken fetish, I have no idea why) running through the kingdom of Albion until at the end it is caught by the chef and killed for dinner. What the fuck? We just went from slapstick to grimdark in a matter of 5 seconds. Ok fine whatever. Let's just move on.
You start as a poncey prince being woken by your butler (John Cleese...seriously, I'd pay good money to have John Cleese wake me every morning). You put on some clothes and proceed through the castle, hearing rumors of what an asshole your brother, the king, is. I roamed around a bit before following the mystical yellow hero path (a quest marker that comes and goes as it pleases) shaking servant and nobles hands alike. They instantly became my friends....Umm what? All it takes is me shaking their hand and they love me? OK....just..yeah lets move on. You find your love interest, have some faux-deep discussion, then go to the throne room to see your brother make some horrific decision.
The storyline is so insignificant I really don't remember the details, but through some series of events your brother asks to pick between your girl and random villagers to be put to death. If you don't pick, they both die. I've only been playing the game 5 minutes Fable, how am I supposed to make this decision? Why is it more heroic to let my girlfriend die? Who the fuck are the villagers? Why is my brother such a cocksucker? Answer me dammit!
No such answers are given before you are woken in the middle of the night to escape the castle with Sir Walter (a grizzled military veteran who knew your "hero"father) and your butler. Suddenly, you realize you can throw fireballs and have the genetic mixture from your daddy to be a "hero." Umm..How come I'm a hero and my brother's not? Was he not my father's? Is he like Joffrey? Should I slap the shit out of him? Walter convinces you to rebel against your brother by gaining followers in the various villages. You head to the poor ass miner village and start your main storyline.
Now that's the set-up, which is all well and good. Until halfway through the game you overthrow your brother. His poor decisions were to make the kingdom money as they must have 6.5 million gold to hire a big enough army to fight the coming "corruption"/evil dark being that will destroy the kingdom. Umm what? How the fuck did you not say this earlier? This is also where the game starts to fall apart. Seriously? I'm a fucking immortal hero throwing fireballs and lightning and the only way to save the world is gold? This makes no sense. By buying up businesses and houses that you rent out to tenants, making 6.5 million is a walk in the park. How did your brother not think of being a businessman rather than iron-fisting every man, woman and child in the kingdom? Ugh. After the overthrow, you have to make kingly decisions on whether to keep promises you made to lose money or to make money by screwing over the people. With my entrepreneurial and landlordy skill, I simply took the hit by donating my own funds to the treasury and still had over 6 million gold in my personal stash when the game was done. Much like the Chewbacca defense, none of the 2nd bit of the game made sense.
Let's talk about the other game aspects now, having nothing to do with the storyline. To progress your skills and get stronger, you must receive guild seals to spend on chests provided by the mystical hero guardian powers that be. You can receive these from quests, treasure chests, or...making friends with villagers. How do you make friends? Find a villager. Hit the interact button. Hold A for you to whistle, dance, flex, or a plethora of other stupidity to make friends. Also, they won't be your friend until you play errand boy for them by either delivering a package or picking something up for them. After that, if they happen to be into your character's gender, you may take them on a date, kiss them and have them automatically in love with you. You don't have to continually date them. Buy them anything. Just one kiss in a pre-meditated location and you have lovers across the kingdom. Because you danced and flexed for them. Unfortunately to get all the upgrades, the quests dont provide near enough seals to get all the upgrades and you will spend 3/4 of your game faffing about (especially as some weapons upgrade through your sleeping your way through half the kingdom).
Let me show you my Love Sword baby. Seriously, this is the in game name of the weapon and it gets stronger when you sleep with 20 women.
The graphics are pretty decent for when it was made but nothing that quite made me stop and say "Wow look at that" as the developers didn't seem to be able to decide between making this a cartoon or a medieval simulator. Soundwise? The music and dialogue gets so repetitive from NPCs I played most of it on mute (unmuting for cutscenes) and felt I missed nothing.
Combat is actually pretty sparse as once you start fast travelling to locations you never see anything to kill outside of quests and it's not bad...but its not especially good. You have the typical melee, ranged, magic choices. But the odd thing is? Melee, even when powered up, is about as useful as walking up and humping the enemies leg. You'll spend most of your time shooting your guns or throwing fireballs (no mana here, keep shooting! Burn down the forest). Some enemies are far too overpowered (those werewolf fuckers) and others are so weak you can sit and laugh as 20 of them try to kill you (hollow men). The way to survive Fable 3? Dodge, Fireball Dodge, gun till clip is empty, dodge, fireball until things are dead. By the end it was rather monotonous and the final boss was a joke as there was only one of him.
The other big part of gameplay is shopping in the towns you faff about in...but you have no inventory screen, you just have to guess what you're carrying. On the plus side, there's no limit to the amount of bullshit you can carry and once you make money from owning every building in the kingdom, you can just keep everything without worry.
I feel like I should say something nice about this game. I played it all the way through and I was still dicking around with collectibles a few hours ago. This game actually despite its "what the fuckness" is pretty damn funny. The fact you can get STDs, wear a chicken suit for the entirety of the game, get fat from eating pie, and hunt down foul mouthed gnomes throughout the world makes for good entertainment. I also give it mad props for having not only gay characters, but allowing gay relationships that function as fully as the straight relationships in the game. You can marry anyone who likes your gender. Even the town whore if you like. I also like this truly is a game you can play at your pace. Nothing pushes you to quest or stop doing what you're doing at any time.
Overall its probably a 30-40 hour game if you take your time and insure you collect everything/make enough money to be a good guy, but feels so much longer. So much time is spent doing filler actions for villagers that this game never flows. You have action sequences followed by long faffing about sequences, without the great payoff that the Assassin's Creed series always has. Its choppy, awfully paced, and makes no damn sense, but will give you a few good laughs. I really can't complain about any game that's free, so if you have XBOX you may as well pick it up, but don't expecting a revolutionary genre expanding trip here. You have a poorly done medieval adventure game here, nothing more. I'd like to actually see this become a CGI or animated mini-series with this humor/style instead of a game with so much padding it might as well come wrapped in bubble wrap.
Kicking chickens and shooting gnomes that called me a twat,
-Oz
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