Fable Review
Review by - Me
Fable - Microsoft
****
Fable begins in Albion, a fantastic land of thriving villages, deep forests, snowy mountain peaks, and dark marshlands. As a young boy in the town of Oakvale, your father tries to instill the concept of good deeds in you at an early age, but like any child, it will ultimately be your decision as to what path you will take. Along with father, mother, and sister, you spend your early years being faced with situations that will shape the man you grow up to be.
You are just about to celebrate your sister's birthday. When a tribe of bandits raids Oakvale, slaughters the townsfolk, and murders your father. You are saved by the head of the famed Hero's Guild, Maze, and taken there for refuge. At the Guild, you are instructed and trained in the ways of a hero and prepared for the ultimate quest to determine who was behind that fateful day in Oakvale. The Guildmaster acts as your mentor and trains you in the three core hero disciplines of strength, skill, and will. Again, though most of the students at the Guild choose a noble path, you can become the ultimate evil through your actions and deeds. After your training is complete, you set out in the various lands of Albion to become the most revered hero that ever lived.
Fable is deemed a role-playing game, yet it plays very little like traditional RPGs and more like a adventure game. The controls are fairly easy to obtain use of as it uses a real time battle engine as opposed to the static, turn-based combat in most other RPGs. The controls are intuitive and easy to dive right into, yet complex enough to give you the ability to really attain masterhood.You will have to access the Inventory screen quite often in order to check current quests, a logbook, change equipment, or look at your current statistics, which Fable has more than enough of to satisfy any RPG fix, no matter how badly you're tweaking out for one.
Though the game obviously has a strong core story to keep everything tied together in a nice little package, which gives it a sense of purpose, it is the freedom and pace of Fable that sets it apart. Molding your character from a little boy to an old man is something we've never seen before on a console at this scale. Since its inception Microsoft has promoted the concept that with every choice, there is a consequence. While this is true to a degree, the gameplay of Fable isn’t as open-ended as you might think. The primary objective, aside from completing the story, is to become Albion's most legendary hero. The word hero is a bit misleading being that we usually think of a noble person when thinking of a hero. In Fable, a hero is the general term used to describe the character you'll ultimately become; good or evil.
The graphics are solid, but not quite making the spot as the greatest graphical game. Yet, it's not far from the top. The music is also pretty good, perfect for the gameplay, though you wouldn't sit and listen to the soundtrack all day. If you decide to rock out to these mediocre minstrels' tunes, it's high time you invested in a Walkman.
Overall, though it did not live up to it's vast ambitions Microsoft was touting, through it's very long and drawn out development, Fable is fun and definitely delivers an experience worth your loot. It's entertaining to watch your avatar go from evil to good, though it may be a lot more fun to see a goody-two-shoes learn to smite the weak
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