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| The difference between good... | ...and evil |
To start of, I should introduce you to the storyline, which is as follows. As a little boy, you lived with your mother, father and big sister in a quaint little village. You start of by doing chores for a piece of gold so you could buy sour sister a birthday present. After you buy her a box of chocolates, you both head towards your home when, suddenly, a villager appears screaming and without warning falls with an arrow in his back. You hide behind a bush, hoping that the bandits won't find you. Later on that evening, you come out of hiding and run towards your home, where you find the village burned to the ground, and your father's corpse lying lifelessly on the ground. Crying your poor little eyes out, you raise your head only to find a bandit running towards you with a sword in his hand. A bright flash! The bandit falls to the ground, and from behind him emerges a seemingly powerful mage. The mage introduces him self, and teleports you to the Guild of heroes. After saying goodbye to today's lunch, you get an explanation of who the mage is, what the Guild is, and the mage's status as guild leader. There you begin your rigorous training, and leave your boyhood behind.
Fable: the Lost Chapters is an action RPG set in a fantasy world which seems to be a piece of heaven fallen to Earth. In this game you can be almost anything, from an evil warrior to an emissary of the heavens, using your will powers as holy tools to banish the wicked. As in all RPGs, you advance your character by killing monsters, gaining experience points from them, and spending those points into skills divided into will, skill and strength. The experience gathering is done in a somewhat different fashion; instead of automatically gaining the points after killing a monster, the monsters drop little green experience balls which you later pick up by walking over it or by dragging it towards you with the shift key.
An interesting asset to the game is the aging of the main character. As I've said before, you start the game of as a boy of no more than 10 years of age. After your training at the Guild, you reach puberty at the age of 16 or so. From that moment on, you grow older as game time progresses. A bit of a snag is, that you seem to be the only character in the game that ages... but that's just me nitpicking, never mind. *Cough-cough* where was I... uhmm, right, the character; well, you can as easily finish the game as someone specialized in one form of combat or as a jack of all trades. For instance, a warrior is quite effective with just a hammer in his hands; bashing, smashing and doing those things warriors just love to do. But, if you add a couple of Will powers (i.e. spells), your character turns into an unstoppable machine bent on the annihilation on whatever unlucky thing finds its way near you.
At first glance, the game seems to offer allot of freedom, such as buying a house and then renting it for money, or wiggling your way into the heart of a special lady, playing games with the local bar flies, or even instructing a bard to do a little number on your behalf. But, to quote myself, this is only at first glance. As far as freedoms of actions go in this game, the things named a few lines up are pretty much it. As for the adventuring part of the game, the entire world is divided into smaller portions that are strictly limited by mountains, lakes, forests or something in that manner. To ensure the player wouldn't have to walk across the entire globe just to take a new quest at the Guild, the game was implemented with a teleport system much like the one in Diablo 2. Meaning once you enter an area that contains a portal, that portal becomes active and can be used to go to any other portal in the world. One more thing is the guild seal, given to you by the guild master at the end of your training; using it results in the instant travel between points in the world (i.e. the portals mentioned earlier). The seal also serves as a means of long distance communication.
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| An evil will user. Looks nice doesn't it? | You start of as a young boy in a beutiful and peaceful village |
As far as weapons and armor go, this game offers quite a few of them, but nowhere near the item count in any normal PC RPG. This is another issue where the console background of the game comes to the surface. To be more precise, the game offers a bunch of different types of armor (such as leather, chain, plate, will user etc.) and a normal, bright and dark version of each of those armors. The purpose of these is quite obvious, I think. That leads us to the ever existent good vs. evil portion on the game. In this aspect, the game reminded me much of SW:KoToR, as the actions you take dictate your good or evil "meter". The more you progress towards any of the alignments, the more your appearance changes. For instance, if you go evil, your eyes will turn black, your hair will start falling out and you'll sprout horns. Opposite of that, if you go good, your hair starts turning white, you get an angelic halo over your head etc.
Speaking of appearances, customizing your character at the start of the game is not an option. But to compensate, you have barber shops and tattooists all over the world. You can easily make your character look like a filthy, smelly hermit or a sleek city merchant, the choice is yours. Tattoos play various roles in the game, most of them just being eye candy, while others increase your beauty (for the ladies *wink wink*), or add to your threat level, or even your alignment.
The graphics in this game are beautiful, and give the game a certain anime feel. Mostly because of the over sized weapons and the face of the main character. The scenery ranges from lush fields and lakes to cold mountains and snow. All these are portrayed very well and add to the atmosphere. Armors look very nice, as do the weapons and spell effects. But, to be honest, so does the entire game. As for the audio part of the game, it's very good, but nothing that would stick out. The sound track is very fantasy like and melds with the game very well.
The game's biggest downside is its length. Doing the main quest and a big portion of the side quests takes about 14 hours of gameplay at most. The game does have a certain replay value, though, since each time you play the game it can be a different experience. And after you complete the main quest you can still browse around the world at your leisure. Another downside is that it's very obvious that this game is meant for consoles, and is more of an arcade than an RPG, but that just depends on how you look at it.
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| That doesn't look at all encouraging | A big scorpion... he's big |
FABLE: THE LOST CHAPTERS VERDICT
Considering every factor, this is a game well worth playing. It’s perfect for a rookie in the genre, and can offer quite a bit of entertainment for the average RPG player. Its replay value makes it even more worth while, but considering the initial length of the game, that replay value is nullified and amounts to the game time an average game would be played. My own personal opinion is that this game should not be skipped, weather you like RPG’s or not.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Hammering hundreds of wimpy skeletons in a bloodlust frenzy caused by an evil Will power.
