Where Dave reviews Fable

I went out and purchased Fable the other day. This was something of a surprise. I didn't think I had the funds but checked anyway and was quite happy to discover that I was wrong by a reasonably comfortable margin. Checking the bank balance and finding it better than what you were expecting doesn't happen as often as it should. I would like to thank my thesis for prohibiting me from having much of a life (although it also reduces available moolah so...).

For those of you who don't know Fable is a role playing game for xbox. You take the role of a small boy who has been orphaned. You are adopted by the Guild of Heroes who train you so that you may wreak vengeance upon those who killed your family and most of your village. At the guild you learn melee skills, ranged (archery) attack and will power (magic). When you graduate you can go into the world and become terribly good, terribly evil, or something in between.

Without going into detail, I was pleasantly surprised by the plot. The game boasts that you can do anything you want - and that it true to an extent... as long as you do the essential missions. You can take guild missions to rid a farm of small and angry gnome-like creatures, or guide some traders through a wood and these help you gain money, experience and renown. Once you've finished these (or before if you're impatient) you can do the essential mission which is based on the plot in order to unlock more minor missions. At first I thought the plot was reasonably obvious with a couple of ok-ish twists. But then I reached a stage where I was knocked back by the overall coolness of the situation. This is a spoiler. Highlight the following if you want to read it (cheers, Miche, for figuring out how to do this). You are imprisoned in a jail when you try and rescue your mother (she's alive!) and all your goods are stolen. You have to figure out how to escape without using your knarly magic skills or weapons. That's not strictly correct - you have to find them armed with only your briefs and a stick (if you can find the stick). The use of atmosphere is quite cool and I became quite angry at the perpetrator (who I already knew was evil). It made me want to turn to the darkside. In this game I'm a bit good - I even have a halo above my head when I walk about! *ENDS*

The distinctive feature about the game is that you can choose whether to be good or bad. The guild of heroes doesn't differentiate between good and evil - they just want you to be good at it. If you do a good deed you become more noble in the eyes of the people. Likewise, if you do something nasty - such as vandalism - you become more evil. The missions also play a role here. One of the first missions is set on Orchard Farm. You can either accept the mission to defend the farm from bandits, or accept the counter-mission to attack the farm with the bandits. Killing bandits good. Killing guards bad. You are rewarded with the appropriate evil-light points which determine how good/bad/middling you are. This influences the way people interact with you. As you walk past townspeople the will often comment. 'He's a good man, to have married' (you can have a wife - or gay husband- in each town, and there is a sexuality section on the statistic screen) or 'Damn, I'd better show him some respect' or even 'I've heard some terrible things about him... Oh hello sir... I was...'. I've got 2 games going - one as good guy (with halo) and one as bad guy (don't have horns yet). You can improve you attractiveness and scariness factors by getting different haircuts, tattoos and clothing/armour. This also impacts on how townspeople interact. I dressed my guy up as a little Nazi with dark leather, buzz cut and sheriff mustache and had people cowering before me. That's kind of cool, but the shopkeepers are more kindly disposed toward people who aren't likely to eat their kids.

The decisions you make do have an impact. I've regretted making a couple of reasonably important decisions because they've ended up slowing me down later on. It's not strictly a black and white world.

Their are quite a few nice touches. Kids worship you as you walk past and pretend they are killing bandits. There is a statistic for how far you can kick a chicken. You can buy a house, rent it out, renovate it, sell it, mount trophies on the wall or live in it with your Mr(s). At the start - before the village is ransacked you are a boy who must get money to buy a present for his sister. You can earn the money by performing good deeds. In one instance you catch a man cheating on his wife. You can either keep quiet (bad deed) and take the gold coin the adulterer offers, or tell his wife (good deed - get gold coin from Dad). I did the good deed first time through and when I went back to the memorial cemetery years later the headstone for the wife was 'Killed before the divorce came through' and the husbands was something equally amusing. If you eat a lot of pies you become fat.

The combat is cool. It is in real time so it has something that I think Gladius lacks. Money has more value than in Galdius - as you're rarely comfortable. The spells are easy to use and the melee can be very cool. The two in conjunction work very well - I'm known as a spellwarrior. I'm not so good on the archery but it's useful on a number of occasions. There is also the usual augmentation of weapons available. The controls are reasonably straight forward although I've got the 'sword' and 'bow' keys muddled in my head and it can be quite frustrating when a bunch of minions are dealing out the pain close range to pull out a bow and arrow.

There are a few things which are frustrating. The manual isn't very comprehensive - which means if I have a question as to what is the significance of decapitations (you can kick the severed head around like a soccer ball) or - how the aging of your hero works - then you're going to be left in the dark. Sometimes - rarely - the game jumps or you find yourself half-in - half-out of a rockface. There are no old women in albion - which means although you age, your wife doesn't. They're all young and most of them want you (unless you look like Himmler). You can sleep with women (or men, I suppose) but you have to be married first. Damn morality I'm going to hell. Actually - it would have been a nice touch to have been able to sleep with someone before marriage and get 'evil' points if they were going to take that whole 'sex before marriage' line. And the Hero appears to be infertile and doesn't have kids. These are pretty minor and by and large the game is very very pretty. If you get cut on the face during a fight you will scar and they will age. I've got some pretty knarly scars and evil dave has groovy scars over his right eye.

Verdict: best game I've seen in a very long time. Just hope it doesn't have a short timeline.

Thesis in corner and cowering. I will own it tonight.