I played Fable 2 to completion last week. It's the latest game from UK-based Lionhead Studios, and I bought it before Christmas (it was fairly cheap) but waited for a patch to be released before playing because I had heard that it was really buggy. I guess that must have been a major factor driving down its popularity and the price, because even second hand copies of the game now sell for 1/3 more than I paid for a brand new copy before the patch came out. Even now it's been patched, I noticed it is still somewhat buggy...
"You mean like Dungeon Keeper 2?" my brother replied, when I mentioned that to him. "Funny you should mention that..." - you know, I don't even think he was aware of the fact that one of the founders of Bullfrog Productions - Peter Molyneux - created Dungeon Keeper, and later went on to found Lionhead Studios... ah, that man still hasn't learned the importance of quality assurance... yes, it's still a bit buggy, even though it's all patched up. The golden trail that guides you around the maps kept vanishing, and I got stuck in the scenery and had to reload a few times....
I didn't play the first Fable game for Xbox, though I have a copy somewhere... all I had heard is that it's an RPG with strong emphasis on good and evil; you choose what to do in various situations in the game and the game changes accordingly.
I heard that Fable 2 was more of an update than a sequel, that you now had a dog with you and could get married. I also discovered that people who do not listen to the hype about these games said by Peter Molyneux - the head of Lionhead Studios - tend to be a lot happier with his games than people who hang on what he says, because the games never turn out to have the freedom and features he talks about.
So, I avoided the hype and this is all I knew:
Buggy game, RPG, moral decisions, short, gets overall good reviews.
So I started it on Sunday, and finished it on Friday, having maxed out my character's stats completely, become max level in two jobs (blacksmith and bartending), bought every property I could, done almost every optional quest that was available, and having more money than I could possibly spend. (I had enough money for the mansion costing a million, with plenty of change left over. And in real life, I work full time Monday to Friday - I was only playing on evenings. So yeah, when they say short, they mean really very short indeed, for an RPG.
The first day I started the game, I went through the first bit of story, and then when I got to the first city (Bowerstone), I went and got a job and played the minigame to max it out and make a load of money, bought myself some new clothes, used some "expressions" on the locals, and some fell in love with me. I then married a nice lady ("Holly The Traveller"), bought a house for ourselves, had sex with my new wife, then got up and went to buy some nice furniture... ... ... ... ...then realised, hey! This wasn't supposed to be The Sims or Animal Crossing, this was supposed to be an RPG! >_< So I started to get on with the story.
The game felt like a Sims game with an RPG tacked on for a long time after that.
It's definitely a quirky game. I like quirky games. It's funny - there's a lot of hilarious dialogue in there, it does have this strong current of morality in it too... one that is... quirky and hiliarous.
Eating meat pies or drinking alcoholic drinks are considered immoral acts and will also make you fat, which decreases your attractiveness. Eating tofu will make you holy. Eating celery will make you thin, and there is no such thing as "too thin". Running hundreds of miles won't help make you thin at all!
Also, if you ever get "killed" in battle, you don't really die but you get a scar on your body, which permanently counts against your attractiveness. People in town also find "good" people attractive and will fall in love with them simply because of their heroicness. As attractiveness and morality seem so tightly linked, and the message seems to be "play well, be good, eat well, or the penalty is you'll get ugly!", are we then to think that vanity is a very "good" trait? It really seems like it, and the game forces you to make a decision about that later on. >:)
If you have a lover and if you're married, people will think you're more moral if you sleep together. No matter what gender you or your partner is. I noticed that putting a moustache or beard onto my female character would give her a +crossdressing stat, though wearing men's clothing didn't (?!), and neither that, nor having sex with someone of the same gender, affect morality. This is all "about right", I'd say, though I know my mother for one would disagree (to put it lightly)...
The relationships in the game worked strangely, though. It was as though there was a grand idea, but no-one really knew how to make it work right. As I became more famous and wealthier and "good", people would keep falling in love with me even though I hadn't met them, or in some cases, even gone to the city where they live. Now, I know that's kind of how things work with celebrities, except that there is no-one in the world who will dislike you if you're famous enough and that's just really un-individualistic and makes them seem more like some kind of hive mind. The generic "attractiveness" stat doesn't help either; everyone thinks you're attractive when you're an 8 foot tall muscle-bound woman with glowing blue skin and wearing upper-class clothes and purple / green eye makeup (really really not my idea of attractiveness) - there's no sense of individual preference in finding a partner beyond mere gender.
Also, all the townsfolk were all a little bit over-familiar (NB: this is understatement!), routinely following me everywhere around town, including following me to my bedroom when I've just beckoned my wife and she's said "I can't wait to rip your clothes off!". I mean, can't they take a hint? There's a huge crowd of people following me up the stairs! At the same time, they generally don't like it if you give their spouse or child anything (e.g. if they asked for an autograph). Except my wife who was always happy to see me flirting with anyone. What a warped sense of jealousy and voyeurism they have!
My wife... it became difficult to regard her as anything other than a generic clone by the end, when everyone was throwing themselves at me. When I was gone for 10 years and came back, the shopkeepers were all "Glad to have you back", and "oh am I glad to see you!" and it was nice to be back, and know I'd been missed. My wife... just wanted sex same as usual, as if my being away for a decade had had no impact on her, apart from making her a little hornier.
It was far too easy to level up and max out my character's stats. First of all, you can buy potions which act as experience points and if you buy a lot of property that's like having infinite money. Then with "The Crucible" (no, they don't play snooker there) where you can fight and get up to 5x experience bonuses. Combine the 5x bonus and the potions, and... By my 2nd time through I had maxxed out my strength stat, and by my 3rd I had maxxed out my will stat and most of my spells. Not that I really used most of them anyway.
By the end of the game, even though it was a short game I was glad to see the back of it because there seemed so little left to do that it had become boring. The characters in the storyline were all amusing, but the other characters in the game had completely lost their diversity and had become shallow. There was no feeling of challenge left, just repetitive tasks (though the treasure hunt quest broke it up for a bit).
The choices at the end of the game are supposed to leave you with a heavy heart, I think. For me, the choice was simple.
I might be in the minority but I remember seeing the film Titanic in the cinema when it came out and after it bored me for a few hours, it sickened and angered me as I watched the ship going down and all I could do was feel grief about the hundreds of innocent people dying; they had put so much hope into this journey, felt so much joy in getting to travel on this ship, and now were dying horribly in freezing seawater... whole families, parents and children, if not all the family, then you had children seeing their father give up his place for them to live on. And yet, the sickening thing was that I - the audience - was being asked, no, ordered, by the director, to care about this poxy couple and their piddling little holiday romance. Like that's anything compared to the great tragedy which has unfolded!
So bearing that in mind, if you have played to the end of Fable 2, you will know which of the options I chose. Yes I understand that it is to give the ending of the game a memorable bittersweetness, but due to one character being strongly tied in with a game mechanic, it's closed off some of the things I could have done in the post-game, and that is really annoying. I can't choose the ending I feel is right for my character and the world, and continue properly.
I don't think I like this game enough to buy the downloadable content. I was thinking the game was really short so the add-on probably isn't that substantial or value for money. I was getting a bit bored by the end anyway.
