Or something like that. It’s been the week of Fable 2 – the game where you decide who you will become. Apparently. In short, it’s an RPG where you’re free to be a dick, should you want to. In long.. well.. it’s an RPG that plays on genre conventions while greatly simplifying the whole experience. And.. it works. Mostly..
First of all, it’s an Action RPG. This means you’re actively swording/shooting/burning band guys, rather than selecting actions from a list while waiting for the bad guys’ turn to smack you in the face. Much more preferable, for me. They’ve managed to pull off a combat system that’s both exceedingly simple to use, yet deep enough allow you to utilise many different tactics to slaughter whomsoever looks at you funny. A button to swing your sword/blunt object at them, another button to fire a bullet/bolt at them and another button to set them on fire/slow down time/make them scrub the floor. There are many moves you can build up to, and the experience system allows you to specialise in the areas you use more than the other ones, but still allows for improvements in other areas. It’s a very good system that I can see other developers borrowing. At least, they should do.
Storywise, it’s a little light on. Essentially, it’s a revenge story combined with saving the world. Nothing groundbreaking at all, yet motivation enough to go rough up the bad dudes. It’s actually the side quests that had me more motivated. Things like finding a farmer’s boy a wife, exacting revenge on a lover for a ghost and finding the sections of a body that have been scattered across the world for a gravekeeper aren’t your usual RPG fare, but this isn’t your usual RPG. It’s also all voiced by British people, which lends a certain air to the proceedings. Somehow it makes the slightly farsical nature of things more fun.
The biggest selling point though is the fact that you can choose to be nice or nasty, or just tread the middle ground. I went through mostly as a good person this time, but only when people were watching. I’m going to try it again as nasty though. This time I only stole things from peoples’ houses when they weren’t looking… Unlike most RPGs you can’t just wander into peoples’ houses and take what you want without them caring at all.. this time if they see you they’ll call the guards and you may have to do some community service if you can’t smooth things over. You can also have sex with pretty much anyone you want to.. or with multiples of them should you choose to. By the end of the game for me pretty much everyone in the game would swamp me guy trying to get me to marry them. There was a particular blacksmith guy that just wouldn’t go away.. even when my guy’s wife and kids were there. All in all it’s a fun mechanic to mess around with just to see what happens.
Another new mechanic in the dog that you have that will sniff out treasure and help you attack bad dudes. He’s a bit useless to start with, but you can train him up to be more effective. A bad dude kicked him once.. he died real quick. There’s also a glowing trail in the game that leads you do your quest’s destination. If you fixate on the trail you’ll miss out on treasures and whatnot, but it’s great to keep you on track for destinations. It’s billed as an open world game, but it’s not really. Most areas have clearly defined trails that lead to the important areas in them and the glowing trail will stick resolutely to them, but it’s open and non-linear enough for that not to be an issue.
All in all, it’s a game that has enough depth to entertain you for a while, but only if you’re willing to be sucked into it. Taken purely at surface level it’s really nothing special, but if you’re prepared to put a little bit of effort in to play with the various mechanics and experiment with what the world will allow you to do, then it’ll entertain you for multiple play throughs. It certainly managed to get me into another play through.. I’ll probably start that tonight in fact. I’ll let you know how evil I can get with it…