Throughout October, I reviewed a number of games in preparation for the late releases this year. Earlier I did Fallout: New Vegas, but now it's time to do another. This is the follow up to Fable 2. It's the Illusive One's Fable 3 review.
The Plot
The game begins roughly fifty years after the end of Fable 2 and Albion has entered the Age of Industry. After defeating Lord Lucian, the hero from Fable 2 unites all of Albion under his/her rule and becomes king/queen. The hero from the last game is now dead and his/her eldest son, Logan, is now ruler of Albion. At first he is a fair but firm ruler, but almost overnight becomes a tyrant and the people suffer under his harsh rule. It opens with a cinematic that explains the entire situation in the land that depicts a chicken running through the streets of Bowerstone. You play as the Prince or Princess, Logan's younger sibling, who, after being forced into a terrible situation by Logan, start a revolution against him to place yourself as the ruler of Albion. After obtaining the throne, however, you find that your promises are harder to keep when Albion faces one of its greatest threats of all time.
The Game Play
For the most part, the game play of Fable 3 was identical to Fable 2. The controls were the same, your dog did the same things, you're still able to buy and sell property, and most of the enemies were the same as they were in Fable 2.
One major change in the game was the way you upgraded your character. All of the other Fable games had your character go into an upgrade menu, where you spent strength, skill, will, and general experience for new abilities. In this game, however, in order to upgrade your character you need to go to a surreal area called The Road to Rule, where you find chests along a path that upgrade your skills. Rather than using experience, you use these things called Guild Seals to unlock the chests that are earned through combat, missions, and obtaining friendships with people in the world.
Another change was the way you used spells. In previous Fable games the ability to cast spells seemed to be innate, but in this game, the Hero must use a gauntlet in order to channel the power. The number of spells you are able to use has also been reduced and I and many people I know were disappointed by this.
One irritating thing about this game is the enemies and let me tell you, they got lazy in this department. They are almost the exact same as those of Fable 2; bandits, (though they call them mercenaries), Hobbs, Balverines and hugely overused Hollow Men. While they did include a few new enemies that come from a desert land they don't really do anything to lift the problem, as they only appear sparsely and only in certain areas at certain times of the game.
The jobs in this game have also changed. In Fable 2 you could be a bounty hunter, an assassin, a black smith, a bar tender or a wood cutter. In this game however, only the bounty hunter and black smith jobs return and adds in the jobs of a lute player and a pie maker. The way you do the job has also changed into a button sequence rather than hitting the A button at certain times and I thought it was a great improvement.
The game also includes more cut scenes than in previous games. But they and many other parts of the game were very glitchy, as trails of the characters seemed to be left behind as they walked and made playing it nauseating. Often when getting a critical hit, the camera would remain zoomed in on the enemy in question making you open to enemy attacks. Even the trails leading to your destinations were glitchy; often disappearing or leading you to God knows where and made the game infuriating.
The last thing to mention in this department is the karma system. While there are decisions to make early in the game, the major ones don't start until you become the ruler of Albion. They mostly have to deal with the promises you made to the people who supported your rebellion and whether or not to keep them. In the end, you can either become the tyrant you fought to overthrow, or become the greatest ruler Albion has ever known.
The Characters
Unlike the characters in Fable 2, the characters in this game were flat and extremely forgettable. Walter is your typical mentor, Jasper is your typical supportive butler and the rest were just as clichéd. Even the antagonists were boring and forgettable, although it did have a decent final boss fight.
Reaver returns in this game as the head of a company called Reaver Industries and is your typical evil CEO and I found it a bit disappointing that you never get the chance to fight him. Theresa is also back, once again as a kind of guide to the Hero but her involvement is minor and disappointingly lazy. Even the dog in this game was downgraded and wasn't nearly as charming or entertaining as it was in Fable 2.
This game was also the first to give the Hero a voice. But the Hero hardly has any lines and the voice acting for him/her is so bad that it makes you wish they never gave him/her a voice in the first place. All around, the characters were a big disappointment.
The Verdict
All around, I enjoyed this game much more then Fable 2. The characters and upgrade system went down, the enemies remained the same but the plot was by far greater. There was just as much, if not more, to nitpick at as Fable 2, and it was still no where nearly as good as the original Fable, it was still, in my opinion, a much better sequel then Fable 2.
All Around
8/10
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