Putting Fable II Through Its Paces

Kotaku recently had a chance to sit down and run Molyneux's new Fable game through its paces. Fable II is set as an action RPG, and while the combat options were somewhat limited, there is an implied depth that is definitely going to be worth a look. "Molyneux showed off some of the game's Expressions, the silly jigs and smooth moves that let you woo ladies and forge new friendships, prior to our hands-on. You'll pick them from a radial menu when you want to take a wife or receive a gift. They were fairly limited in our demo of the game, but look to provide some welcome options for adding variety to the game world. You'll see non-playable characters throughout town that you can interact with using Expressions, each with icons over their heads indicating their disposition. Wow them with your moves and you'll reap the rewards."

Comments

Fable 2

[Narpak]

With Molyneux's track record for exaggerating his own games; I do not trust any product he develops until I have seen it for myself. Or usually, read a lot of reviews and tried a demo. Even then, I am sceptical.

OT: Fun, but rubs me the wrong way

[Moraelin]

Well, you illustrate another point, namely: games who try too hard to judge my actions into good or evil, and guilt trip me about them.

Almost any choice you get in The Witcher will sooner or later come back to "haunt" you. Or rather, it will be twisted into pretending to reveal something about you (or your character, same deal) that you didn't actually mean. The witch situation does have at least a right(er) choice, but a lot of other choices just have two "wrong" options.

Warning: minor spoiler alert. It's from the tutorial, though, so nothing major.

You remember how you had to choose whether you want to go inside and prevent the theft, or stay outside and help fight that beast? It doesn't actually matter which you chose. In both cases your character will have an "OMG, it's all my fault. If I had gone the other way, this wouldn't have happened!" moment. Essentially, it'll try to blame you either way.

At other points I even got blamed for deaths that weren't my fault in any form or shape, and couldn't have possibly prevented, no matter what. And stuff like that.

I realize they were trying to make a game where there is no good-vs-evil in the D&D way, but at times methinks they tried _too_ hard. They don't need to twist everything I say or do into sounding like a wrong, immoral, selfish or heartless choice.

Just so it's not completely OT: B&W at times suffered from the same problem. There was more than one situation where being merely being incompetent (e.g., failing to save your villagers from an attack) got judged as being more evil than Satan.

Re:Fable 2 another action RPG...

[_xeno_]

I remember getting to the end of the game and having a halo.

Which was annoying, because I'd tried to play as "neutral" as possible. But apparently killing thieves was considered "good" so, even though I had gone out of my way to hunt them down and mercilessly kill as many as I could, I was apparently the paragon of goodness. Mindless vigilantism for Fable sainthood!

Apparently to be evil you had to go on killing sprees amongst villagers. (Or just dump a lot of money at evil temples.)

I still find it strange that sniping bandits who can't even see you is considered good. Seems to be a bit of a strange moral to Fable.

Re:I still have a problem with that

[Endo13]

Clearly these types of games just aren't for you. That's fine. Your personal taste is for sandbox RPGs. But that doesn't make these games bad. These games are more or less like a choose-your-own-adventure book. You're not really changing the story significantly, but you do make some choices along the way that will change the ending somewhat. These types of games are for people (like myself) who like reading fiction to see what happens to the character. In these games, it's not your character. The character is not a representation of you in the game. Rather, you have limited control over the character and have the ability to make some choices for him. The fun part in that is seeing how you can change the character by the choices you make. If you're really feeling devious, it can be fun to see if you can force the character to act out-of-character by making certain choices. Some such games will allow that; others won't.