Unlike other free-roaming RPG titles such as
Morrowind, the crux of your existence revolves around a guild. Here you will be able to level up your character, chat with others and complete missions that are pertinent to the resolution of the game. By heading to the map table in the center of the guild you are able to select your next mission. More often then not there is more than one mission available to you which is a nice change of pace. Tougher ones are unlocked until you can make a bigger name for yourself and gain some renown. To make the missions even tougher you can opt to take a “Boast” which is exactly what it sounds like. They are loftier goals placed upon the mission objective which makes it harder to complete. Some will require you to pass the mission with suffering a casualty while others require you to slay all of the foes in the area. The Boasts are a great way of earning renown and cash at an accelerated rate, if anything because they’re so easy to accomplish. You’ll rarely come across a mission that challenges your might and in the off chance you fail you’ll magically be given another go at it. Now this is something that I’d expect out of a lesser game, but Fable preaches the idea of consequences. Wouldn’t failing to protect a village from attack yield some major consequences for our hero? Everyone around the land would know him as the person who failed to stave off an attack which costs the lives of many. It seems like the designers should have capitalized on this instead of neglect it entirely.
Between missions you’re free to roam around the land and take in the goods that await you. I’d like to say that there’s plenty to do in each town but there’s generally very little that awaits you. There are a couple of side quests here and there but none that really amount to much in the scheme of things. When you’re bored you can usually find a man who invites you to partake in some mini-games. These range from blackjack to memory games, all of which can be wagered upon. They’re fun diversions that are a great way to boost your cash reserves. But you’re here for the main quest and if you’re not patient, you just might bore yourself out of the title. It all unfurls very slowly until about the five hour mark in which the characters develop a personality and a life of their own. Even then, all of the moral decisions you had made preceding the turning point won’t make a difference. The game pans out the same way no matter what path you take with the only difference coming at the end. Depending on your moral alignment you’ll see a different ending. It’s not like a
Knights of the Republic situation though, you can easily change your alignment by visiting the temples in the game and donating money to the good or evil god. It kind of ruins the game and negates the pressures brought forth by the moral dilemmas that the game presents in the early going.
Combat takes place in real time, moving the game into action-RPG territory. Hitting the white button will unsheathe your melee weapon while the black button brings out your ranged weapon. Players can lock onto their enemies by holding down the L button and perform blocks and evasive maneuvers with the Y button. The X button serves as your primary attack button which is used to have at your foes. After scoring consecutive attacks a stronger attack becomes available to you. By hitting B you can cause larger damage to your foes by dealing out a larger attack, one that’s capable of breaking through a guard. Magic is always readily available to you by holding down the R button. After holding down the R button you can perform one of four spells depending on what you have mapped out for your character. As the game places magic at your fingertips you’ll be able to readily access it in battle and chain it together with your melee attacks, causing even more harm to your opponents. If melee and magic attacks aren’t your bag you’ll have a third combat mechanism in the form of projectiles. Through the use of a bow you can attack enemies from a distance which allows you to deal out damage from afar. To register a decent hit players will have to hold down the X button in order to pull back the bow. In addition to the auto-target players can manually aim the bow to aim for specific body parts. However, the auto-target generally does a great job of nailing foes so it renders the manual targeting useless. Actually it seems like the whole concept of ranged weaponry is flawed. Most of the game’s combat in a mano-a-mano fashion, making it impractical to pull out a bow and try to nail a foe when he’s five feet in front of you.
Page 2 of 3
