Fable II
One of my goals this year was to write more about the games I'm playing and I'd been intending to write a post about Fable II when I saw raeyashi's request for more information about the game. So, here's that post.
I haven't played the first Fable game, though I do own it and it is one of the games that is compatible with the 360. I'm a little bit of a gamerscore whore though, so given a choice I'll probably play a 360 game. Having said that, I have played a couple of original Xbox games, notably Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. I highly recommend Jade Empire. I'm a big fan of Bioware, partly (but by no means exclusively) because they seem to be the most open to the idea of non-straight characters. In Jade Empire your character can be straight, lesbian, or a gay male. I don't think JE allows for bisexual characters, though I understand a straight male can end up bedding two women. There's one scene that's less explicit for those who play other than straight, but otherwise the relationships are as well developed for non-straight characters as they are for straight characters. Bioware is also the maker of my favorite game to date, Mass Effect, which, by the way, has a 2 disc set going on sale for $20 on February 10. No gay males in that game, but you can have a lesbian or bisexual female character.
In fairness I should actually start my game posts with Mass Effect, because it is the game to which I compare all others. However, it's been a while since I played it (I've already beaten it 3 or 4 times, I left off in the middle of another playthrough) and I want to refresh my recollection first. I will say that in a lot of ways it's spoiled other games for me. More on that later.
The big promise of Fable II (and the first Fable, from what I understand) is that every action you take has a consequence not only for you but on the world at large. I have to say I never really felt that way. (BioShock is another game that supposedly has that premise and it got all kinds of praise for it when it came out which I never understood because the truth is, you were never punished for taking the "good," theoretically harder path).
Fable II opens with the main character as a child who has to earn 5 gold coins by doing a series of small quests. It's your basic tutorial where you learn to shoot with a bow, use a sword, talk to people, pick things up, etc. You have a choice toward the end which is a big neon sign saying I'm going to be good or I'm going to be bad. Whichever path you choose does affect that particular section of town. If you're good the economy is only slightly impoverished, if you're evil the economy is in the tank and you have the option to pick up assassination contracts almost immediately.
This is one of my complaints about the game. The choices you make as a player character are almost never subtle (arguably, having what you eat and at what rate you set any rent affect your good/evil purity/corruption numbers is subtle) but the big choices are really black and white. There's one other quest I can think of where your choices may have unintended consequences, but for the most part it's very straightforward.
Theoretically, you can affect the economy of a town by how much cash you spend there and how much rent you charge. I haven't really found that to be the case but maybe that's because I was never that particular about where I spent my money. I also haven't played the game that much since the the patch came out and I know at least one of the bugs was related to the economy in Borrowstone. Man, it'll be nice to actually have furniture in the furniture store again.
It took me a long, long time to get used to the system for social interaction. I really like branching dialog (again, Mass Effect) and so it was extremely frustrating at first to have to rely on nothing more than body language, and even more frustrating that not all of the body language/social options are available at first (or, if you don't want to pay the extra $10 for pub games, ever). After a while I grew to like the system and wished that other RPGs would have a sort of hybrid of speech and body language. After all, in the real world when we're talking to someone in person we have both words and physical cues to go on.
There is a part of the social system that irritates me though. When I'm playing an RPG, I really like the companion system. I like having individual characters I can interact with that each have their own personality and story to tell. Just because there are individuals with their own personality doesn't necessarily make them interesting (see Neverwinter Nights 2) but I found Lionhead's way of making all but a very small minority of quest characters NPCs with no real personality to be very frustrating.
Your character can have a sexual relationship or marry anyone of any gender, the problem is that none of these people really have a personality and you can't have a conversation with them. When you start an interaction you can see what their preferences are: gay/straight/bi, poor, humorless, raunchy, etc. but that never comes across in your interactions with theme except that their opinion of you is influenced by whatever social interaction you try. I admire Lionhead or allowing same-sex pairings, and I commend them for at least alluding to the problem of STDs but since none of the characters you can form a relationship with has a personality even the person or people you are married to feel completely interchangeable with any other NPC.
Fable II does actually have STDs, although if you contract one it doesn't do anything but change your stats as to how many STDs you've contracted. You can keep from getting an STD if you use a condom if you're in a heterosexual relationship. You can't use a condom if you're in a f/f relationship (although you can, apparently, still get an STD). I'm not sure if you can use a condom for a m/m relationship or not, I haven't played a male character. Female characters can also get pregnant, though apparently only if married. You never have to take care of a child, that is always left to a spouse. You can also be married to multiple people at once (there's even an achievement for it) although I understand it's bad news if any of them actually finds out about another spouse. There's also divorce, which only the spouse can initiate and it will cost you half your money.
The money system is a little screwy. The three jobs you can take for easy money are slightly amusing for a while but they quickly become boring. I found the blacksmithing job to be the worst, but I kind of enjoyed woodcutting and bar tending. You can also sell things you find, of course. You can also buy and rent out property (or buy property and choose to live in it). Fable II also has a unique system that lets you continue to accrue money even when you're not playing. It sounds like a good idea at first, but eventually you've bought all the property there is to buy, you don't play for a few weeks and come back to find you now have well over $5 million and nothing to spend it on.
The combat is okay but not terribly challenging. I only had to recover from "death" once the first time I played through. I still can't chain 5 sword attacks together, and that irks me.
The co-op system is, a word, atrocious. The camera only follows one player and at least once I was in a situation where for some reason my friend was a few minutes ahead in time of my character which made killing things irritating. She'd be finished and I'd still be hacking away. Amusing the first 5 seconds, irritating after that.
The clothes are purely for show. They will boost things like poshness, attractiveness, scariness, etc. but they provide no actual protection. The weapons system is also very simple in terms of damage and limited modifications.
One of the more frustrating things for me is that in a role-playing game I expect my character to have some sort of personality. That's not really the case here. You're pretty much good or evil but I never had the impression that my character had any emotion or depth. There was no opportunity to show remorse when a mistake was made, no opportunity to really connect with a spouse, child, lover or friend. Even after an extended absence there's no real sign that a spouse missed you (the relationship might worsen on a continuum but there's no dialog or anything) In the end, the player character feels as interchangeable as any NPC, and that's not a good thing.
I know I sound very negative about the game but I did have fun playing it. Combat that isn't a constant high level challenge isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's tedious when you play a game and you come up against a high level encounter and die again and again. I had a few near misses, and for the most part, that was about right.
I liked the idea of a dog companion (though not as much as I would have liked other characters I could interact with and have a conversation, but that is not this game) but I found that I was actually much more attached to my dog in Fallout 3 because that dog could be killed (and believe me, that dog was the cause of more restarts than anything else). This dog is a faithful companion who serves some useful purposes, but he can't be killed so there's no concern when he's injured in a fight. I liked my dog and tried to interact with him, but even the dog doesn't have that much personality.
Speaking of restarts, the save system took some getting used to as well. Most games these days have multiple save slots, so even if can't choose when to save, you can still choose where to save. So if you make a horrible mistake or you just want to see what would happen if you took another path you can just revert to an earlier save. That's not the case here. I can understand why Lionhead did it and I'm still trying to decide if I'm in favor or not. I guess I must be because I'm hoping Witcher does the same thing whenever it's released.
The graphics are lovely and the story is mostly interesting. There are plenty of sidequests, some very enjoyable. Finding all of the gargoyles and all silver keys was quite challenging.
The best reason to play the game came, for me, at the end. It was only at the end that I felt a deep emotional connection with my character and the ending left me with a powerful impression that made me immediately want to play the whole thing over. It was only at the end that I felt my actions actually had a lasting impact not only on my character but on Albion itself.
Then the DLC came out and Lionhead basically took away that feeling, bowing to complaints from gamers. I'm more than a little bitter about that. As for the DLC, I'd say it's overpriced at $10. $5, maybe, and it's best played when in the middle of the game, not after the game has already been beaten. The quest is simple and straightforward and the combat is laughable after you've finished the game.
As I've said, I know I sound negative about it but it's actually a decent game as long as you don't buy into Lionhead's hype. It was probably my favorite game to come out last year, if not my favorite game I played. (Outside of Mass Effect I think that honor probably goes to Portal). I did want to play it over right away (although I didn't actually do that, which probably had more to do with the other games coming out at that time than anything else) which I think is a good sign. I didn't have that feeling after Fallout 3, although I think that was a solid game.
From what I've heard about the PC version of Witcher (I haven't played it) I suspect if and when it makes the jump to the 360 it's going to be everything Fable II wanted to be in terms of your actions affecting the quest and the world at large.
So in summation, it's a fun game and I think it's worth buying, especially if you can get it for $40 rather than $60. It was long enough that I felt I got my money's worth and didn't feel like I was missing a lot if I didn't put in another 40 hours (Fallout 3 and Oblivion). The social interactions took some getting used to, but eventually I was charmed by the system. The main quest was fun if not particularly original and there are plenty of side quests to keep a person occupied. Finally, if you play, play to the end because it's the end that really makes the game.
I haven't played the first Fable game, though I do own it and it is one of the games that is compatible with the 360. I'm a little bit of a gamerscore whore though, so given a choice I'll probably play a 360 game. Having said that, I have played a couple of original Xbox games, notably Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. I highly recommend Jade Empire. I'm a big fan of Bioware, partly (but by no means exclusively) because they seem to be the most open to the idea of non-straight characters. In Jade Empire your character can be straight, lesbian, or a gay male. I don't think JE allows for bisexual characters, though I understand a straight male can end up bedding two women. There's one scene that's less explicit for those who play other than straight, but otherwise the relationships are as well developed for non-straight characters as they are for straight characters. Bioware is also the maker of my favorite game to date, Mass Effect, which, by the way, has a 2 disc set going on sale for $20 on February 10. No gay males in that game, but you can have a lesbian or bisexual female character.
In fairness I should actually start my game posts with Mass Effect, because it is the game to which I compare all others. However, it's been a while since I played it (I've already beaten it 3 or 4 times, I left off in the middle of another playthrough) and I want to refresh my recollection first. I will say that in a lot of ways it's spoiled other games for me. More on that later.
The big promise of Fable II (and the first Fable, from what I understand) is that every action you take has a consequence not only for you but on the world at large. I have to say I never really felt that way. (BioShock is another game that supposedly has that premise and it got all kinds of praise for it when it came out which I never understood because the truth is, you were never punished for taking the "good," theoretically harder path).
Fable II opens with the main character as a child who has to earn 5 gold coins by doing a series of small quests. It's your basic tutorial where you learn to shoot with a bow, use a sword, talk to people, pick things up, etc. You have a choice toward the end which is a big neon sign saying I'm going to be good or I'm going to be bad. Whichever path you choose does affect that particular section of town. If you're good the economy is only slightly impoverished, if you're evil the economy is in the tank and you have the option to pick up assassination contracts almost immediately.
This is one of my complaints about the game. The choices you make as a player character are almost never subtle (arguably, having what you eat and at what rate you set any rent affect your good/evil purity/corruption numbers is subtle) but the big choices are really black and white. There's one other quest I can think of where your choices may have unintended consequences, but for the most part it's very straightforward.
Theoretically, you can affect the economy of a town by how much cash you spend there and how much rent you charge. I haven't really found that to be the case but maybe that's because I was never that particular about where I spent my money. I also haven't played the game that much since the the patch came out and I know at least one of the bugs was related to the economy in Borrowstone. Man, it'll be nice to actually have furniture in the furniture store again.
It took me a long, long time to get used to the system for social interaction. I really like branching dialog (again, Mass Effect) and so it was extremely frustrating at first to have to rely on nothing more than body language, and even more frustrating that not all of the body language/social options are available at first (or, if you don't want to pay the extra $10 for pub games, ever). After a while I grew to like the system and wished that other RPGs would have a sort of hybrid of speech and body language. After all, in the real world when we're talking to someone in person we have both words and physical cues to go on.
There is a part of the social system that irritates me though. When I'm playing an RPG, I really like the companion system. I like having individual characters I can interact with that each have their own personality and story to tell. Just because there are individuals with their own personality doesn't necessarily make them interesting (see Neverwinter Nights 2) but I found Lionhead's way of making all but a very small minority of quest characters NPCs with no real personality to be very frustrating.
Your character can have a sexual relationship or marry anyone of any gender, the problem is that none of these people really have a personality and you can't have a conversation with them. When you start an interaction you can see what their preferences are: gay/straight/bi, poor, humorless, raunchy, etc. but that never comes across in your interactions with theme except that their opinion of you is influenced by whatever social interaction you try. I admire Lionhead or allowing same-sex pairings, and I commend them for at least alluding to the problem of STDs but since none of the characters you can form a relationship with has a personality even the person or people you are married to feel completely interchangeable with any other NPC.
Fable II does actually have STDs, although if you contract one it doesn't do anything but change your stats as to how many STDs you've contracted. You can keep from getting an STD if you use a condom if you're in a heterosexual relationship. You can't use a condom if you're in a f/f relationship (although you can, apparently, still get an STD). I'm not sure if you can use a condom for a m/m relationship or not, I haven't played a male character. Female characters can also get pregnant, though apparently only if married. You never have to take care of a child, that is always left to a spouse. You can also be married to multiple people at once (there's even an achievement for it) although I understand it's bad news if any of them actually finds out about another spouse. There's also divorce, which only the spouse can initiate and it will cost you half your money.
The money system is a little screwy. The three jobs you can take for easy money are slightly amusing for a while but they quickly become boring. I found the blacksmithing job to be the worst, but I kind of enjoyed woodcutting and bar tending. You can also sell things you find, of course. You can also buy and rent out property (or buy property and choose to live in it). Fable II also has a unique system that lets you continue to accrue money even when you're not playing. It sounds like a good idea at first, but eventually you've bought all the property there is to buy, you don't play for a few weeks and come back to find you now have well over $5 million and nothing to spend it on.
The combat is okay but not terribly challenging. I only had to recover from "death" once the first time I played through. I still can't chain 5 sword attacks together, and that irks me.
The co-op system is, a word, atrocious. The camera only follows one player and at least once I was in a situation where for some reason my friend was a few minutes ahead in time of my character which made killing things irritating. She'd be finished and I'd still be hacking away. Amusing the first 5 seconds, irritating after that.
The clothes are purely for show. They will boost things like poshness, attractiveness, scariness, etc. but they provide no actual protection. The weapons system is also very simple in terms of damage and limited modifications.
One of the more frustrating things for me is that in a role-playing game I expect my character to have some sort of personality. That's not really the case here. You're pretty much good or evil but I never had the impression that my character had any emotion or depth. There was no opportunity to show remorse when a mistake was made, no opportunity to really connect with a spouse, child, lover or friend. Even after an extended absence there's no real sign that a spouse missed you (the relationship might worsen on a continuum but there's no dialog or anything) In the end, the player character feels as interchangeable as any NPC, and that's not a good thing.
I know I sound very negative about the game but I did have fun playing it. Combat that isn't a constant high level challenge isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's tedious when you play a game and you come up against a high level encounter and die again and again. I had a few near misses, and for the most part, that was about right.
I liked the idea of a dog companion (though not as much as I would have liked other characters I could interact with and have a conversation, but that is not this game) but I found that I was actually much more attached to my dog in Fallout 3 because that dog could be killed (and believe me, that dog was the cause of more restarts than anything else). This dog is a faithful companion who serves some useful purposes, but he can't be killed so there's no concern when he's injured in a fight. I liked my dog and tried to interact with him, but even the dog doesn't have that much personality.
Speaking of restarts, the save system took some getting used to as well. Most games these days have multiple save slots, so even if can't choose when to save, you can still choose where to save. So if you make a horrible mistake or you just want to see what would happen if you took another path you can just revert to an earlier save. That's not the case here. I can understand why Lionhead did it and I'm still trying to decide if I'm in favor or not. I guess I must be because I'm hoping Witcher does the same thing whenever it's released.
The graphics are lovely and the story is mostly interesting. There are plenty of sidequests, some very enjoyable. Finding all of the gargoyles and all silver keys was quite challenging.
The best reason to play the game came, for me, at the end. It was only at the end that I felt a deep emotional connection with my character and the ending left me with a powerful impression that made me immediately want to play the whole thing over. It was only at the end that I felt my actions actually had a lasting impact not only on my character but on Albion itself.
Then the DLC came out and Lionhead basically took away that feeling, bowing to complaints from gamers. I'm more than a little bitter about that. As for the DLC, I'd say it's overpriced at $10. $5, maybe, and it's best played when in the middle of the game, not after the game has already been beaten. The quest is simple and straightforward and the combat is laughable after you've finished the game.
As I've said, I know I sound negative about it but it's actually a decent game as long as you don't buy into Lionhead's hype. It was probably my favorite game to come out last year, if not my favorite game I played. (Outside of Mass Effect I think that honor probably goes to Portal). I did want to play it over right away (although I didn't actually do that, which probably had more to do with the other games coming out at that time than anything else) which I think is a good sign. I didn't have that feeling after Fallout 3, although I think that was a solid game.
From what I've heard about the PC version of Witcher (I haven't played it) I suspect if and when it makes the jump to the 360 it's going to be everything Fable II wanted to be in terms of your actions affecting the quest and the world at large.
So in summation, it's a fun game and I think it's worth buying, especially if you can get it for $40 rather than $60. It was long enough that I felt I got my money's worth and didn't feel like I was missing a lot if I didn't put in another 40 hours (Fallout 3 and Oblivion). The social interactions took some getting used to, but eventually I was charmed by the system. The main quest was fun if not particularly original and there are plenty of side quests to keep a person occupied. Finally, if you play, play to the end because it's the end that really makes the game.