One of my fondest memories of Fable on the Xbox (read DailyGame’s review) was when I was in a town where I was insanely popular. I entered a store owned by a woman, and she happened to have a big heart floating above her head and spoke very nicely to me when I entered the shop. She sold odds and ends, and I noticed a doll of myself in the store’s window, so I purchased it, just to check out of course.
It wasn’t a very good resemblance, but cool just the same. Before I left the shop, I decided to hit the flirt expression button just to see what happened. The heart above her head turned into a ring, and she spoke of our future together, and how I was the one for her.
So I decided to steal something from her shop. She wants to marry me and live with me forever, why not? Let’s see what happens.
“What are you doing there?” she says as I’m stealing a book from one of the shelves, and then she presses some alarm button that they had in those medieval worlds that I didn’t know about.
“Thief!” she shouts.
The constable comes in and knocks me back, and some options presented themselves. I could spend money to get out of the crime, go to jail, or just fight them all. So I went with the money, because I sure wasn’t hurting for cash at this time.
Next thing I know, I’m outside of the town with guards around keeping me from getting back in. That’s fine, I’ve got lots of quests to go on, so I depart and make a mental note to come back and pay this town a visit.
Adventures later, when I return, I go immediately to the same shop and walk in the door. Stupid game isn’t gong to remember what I did there.
I walk in and she says in a very angry tone, “What are YOU doing in here?”
And then she pressed that button again, and the bell starts ringing, and I look at her and notice that there’s no heart above her head this time. She REMEMBERED. The guard came in again and approached me, but no options were presented this time. I was kicked immediately out of town.
And at that point, I became very impressed with Fable.
There were lots of people who flew through the game and bashed it to pieces once they got to the end. They didn’t take time to play around with things, and that’s a shame, because exploring was exactly what the game was all about. It wasn’t a point A to B to C experience. If you played around with everything in the Fable world, it would continually surprise and impress you.
So now Fable’s been moved to the PC, and some new goodies have been thrown in to play around with. As you can see from our review linked above, DailyGame loved the original, but if you’re looking for a Morrowind or Gothic type of experience, you might want to look elsewhere. It’s not deep like that; it’s a bit more claustrophobic and arcade-like. But in the end, it’s very entertaining.
In Fable: The Lost Chapters (the new name for Fable PC), the mouse and keyboard interface is smaller and simpler than in the console version, helping to keep the game intuitive and quick to learn. Other games should take note of the way it dynamically shows prime buttons to press and make things happen. You can step away from the game for a while and not have to bring out a keyboard map to get back into it again.
The fighting system from the Xbox version is still in place and as fun as it ever was, with combos and other tricks being available for those that want to dig in. You can switch between ranged and melee attacks easily, and magic is always there should you need it. When surrounded by hordes of creatures trying to take you down, the lock on system will keep you focused and allow you to have some hack and slash fun. (And for the record, there’s an Xbox version on the way of Fable: TLC, so those of you who are averse to keyboard combat will be able to experience the new goodies too.)
If you’ve played Fable before, the graphics might not be what you were hoping to see. We all remember the original screenshots of Fable that made everyone’s mouth drop, but at some point in development they had to tone all of that down. And unfortunately, when they did that, they couldn’t easily go back. Don’t get me wrong; the game’s graphics are listed under “very good” in my mind. You’ll still be quite happy with them, but it might not be the super-great, jaw-dropping graphics you were hoping for. There’s increased texturing in some areas, and the anti-aliasing that comes from PC graphics cards smoothes everything out, but you can still see its console roots showing here and there.
The sound, as it was with the Xbox version, is fantastic. The Burton-esque (actually created by Danny Elfman) score is excellent and shifts around in tune with what’s going on. The fighting and environment sound effects are immaculate, the voice work is top notch and anything in between is just excellent. I don’t think I need to say anything more about the sound in Fable. It rocks.
As this is an expanded version of the original Fable, there are new areas to explore, side quests to discover, expressions to try and new monsters to fight with new armor and weapons. There are more spells, talents, and other tweaks you can do to your character that you couldn’t do on the Xbox, but its essentially the same game. That’s not a bad thing at all, but if you’ve played Fable a lot in the past it looks like The Lost Chapters won’t offer a whole lot more for your money.
If you’ve never played Fable before, or you’ve only played through it one quick time, this looks like I has all the makings of a fun and adventurous game. But if you’re looking for a super-deep and involving game like Gothic or Morrowind, you probably won’t find that here unless you do a lot more than just race through the main missions. In other words, only if you play Fable the way it was meant to be played.