Fable 3
Alright, finished Fable 3 tonight, and while as a whole, the game was good times, the conclusion has left an extremely sour taste in my mouth.
The plot of Fable 3 is divided into two categories - The first, in which you, the prince/ss of Albion organize a rebellion to overthrow your brother, who is currently king, and is not so good at it.
The 2nd is when you are king/queen and are struggling to protect your kingdom from an impending evil while trying to financially support promises you made to key figures when gaining their support for your rebellion and rise to power. Cool concept, tricky to pull off.
Essentially, if you don't have enough gold stored in the treasury to fund guards and military power and what not, your citizens die. The less gold you have, the more citizens you lose. To save the most citizens possible, you need a treasury with 6.5 million gold. The fun comes in the idea that making "good" or "popular" decisions as a king always costs you money, and puts you in a defecit of around 3-3.5 million. You can fill the treasury from your own pocket, of course, but it takes a -lot- of effort to get that kind of scratch together. So it becomes a moral balancing act...committing evil deeds/rulings in order to protect "the greater good".
Now me? I'm an idealist with this series. I want to do everything good AND still kick ass and take names, so I was working on raising 10 million in personal funds with which to fill the treasury.
As king, I had been keeping promises, and maintaining the integrity of the land on a day-to-day basis. You are given one year before the attack on Albion. So you do a day which consists of several rulings and generally one big quest, and the day ends. When the day ends, it doesn't go to the next day, just skips ahead in time a month or two. No problem right? You're allowed, between rulings, to go do side questing and build up whatever resources you need, so I'm laughing.
With 151 days left, I decide I'm tired of side questing for the moment, and do the day's rulings to see what the next day holds. I go to sleep and wake up, and suddenly there's 1 day left. Quite the leap. But I think "That's alright...this must be the point where they let you know that the point of no return is coming". Yeah...no. Suddenly it's 1 day left and then the battle begins for some reason, and I, with a total of negative 1.7 million in my treasury, lose just about every bloody citizen in the country, and go down in history as the king who damned the land.
A little warning would have been nice, I think. Like "Hey, finish up anything you've got to do, because there's no turning back!" Hell, the game did that earlier for a sequence when you left on a voyage. It said "we'll be gone for a while...wrap up anything you want to wrap up here." So why not for endgame? Especially if you're going to be thrust into a situation where you, in planning a full on super-good-guy win, are suddenly cast as the worst idiot king of the century.
That makes it sound like I'm taking it personally...I'm not, really. But this was a poor decision on Lionhead's part. What the hell were they thinking with a move like this? Did nobody stop to think "Hey...we should tell them that 151 days left means the battle's tomorrow..." That's a 5 month period for christ's sake. Almost half the year you were supposed to be given.
Beyond that, the ending sequence is a big disappointment...unexciting climax, dull boss fight, and uninspired conclusion, all made a little worse by the annoyance that I didn't want to be finishing this up yet. With all the thought and work that went into Fable 2, I expected more from Lionhead for this game.
Don't get me wrong, they delivered up to this point. The story had been really cool, the actual rebellion attack was a load of fun, and the mid-section of the story in which you meet the "impending evil" is one of the creepiest scenes I've ever seen in a video game.
In the end, it feels like this could have been the best Fable yet, were it not for an end sequence that feels incredibly rushed and poorly thought out. And considering this is the first video game I've been able to afford in over a year, I'm a bit miffed, but c'est la vie.
The plot of Fable 3 is divided into two categories - The first, in which you, the prince/ss of Albion organize a rebellion to overthrow your brother, who is currently king, and is not so good at it.
The 2nd is when you are king/queen and are struggling to protect your kingdom from an impending evil while trying to financially support promises you made to key figures when gaining their support for your rebellion and rise to power. Cool concept, tricky to pull off.
Essentially, if you don't have enough gold stored in the treasury to fund guards and military power and what not, your citizens die. The less gold you have, the more citizens you lose. To save the most citizens possible, you need a treasury with 6.5 million gold. The fun comes in the idea that making "good" or "popular" decisions as a king always costs you money, and puts you in a defecit of around 3-3.5 million. You can fill the treasury from your own pocket, of course, but it takes a -lot- of effort to get that kind of scratch together. So it becomes a moral balancing act...committing evil deeds/rulings in order to protect "the greater good".
Now me? I'm an idealist with this series. I want to do everything good AND still kick ass and take names, so I was working on raising 10 million in personal funds with which to fill the treasury.
As king, I had been keeping promises, and maintaining the integrity of the land on a day-to-day basis. You are given one year before the attack on Albion. So you do a day which consists of several rulings and generally one big quest, and the day ends. When the day ends, it doesn't go to the next day, just skips ahead in time a month or two. No problem right? You're allowed, between rulings, to go do side questing and build up whatever resources you need, so I'm laughing.
With 151 days left, I decide I'm tired of side questing for the moment, and do the day's rulings to see what the next day holds. I go to sleep and wake up, and suddenly there's 1 day left. Quite the leap. But I think "That's alright...this must be the point where they let you know that the point of no return is coming". Yeah...no. Suddenly it's 1 day left and then the battle begins for some reason, and I, with a total of negative 1.7 million in my treasury, lose just about every bloody citizen in the country, and go down in history as the king who damned the land.
A little warning would have been nice, I think. Like "Hey, finish up anything you've got to do, because there's no turning back!" Hell, the game did that earlier for a sequence when you left on a voyage. It said "we'll be gone for a while...wrap up anything you want to wrap up here." So why not for endgame? Especially if you're going to be thrust into a situation where you, in planning a full on super-good-guy win, are suddenly cast as the worst idiot king of the century.
That makes it sound like I'm taking it personally...I'm not, really. But this was a poor decision on Lionhead's part. What the hell were they thinking with a move like this? Did nobody stop to think "Hey...we should tell them that 151 days left means the battle's tomorrow..." That's a 5 month period for christ's sake. Almost half the year you were supposed to be given.
Beyond that, the ending sequence is a big disappointment...unexciting climax, dull boss fight, and uninspired conclusion, all made a little worse by the annoyance that I didn't want to be finishing this up yet. With all the thought and work that went into Fable 2, I expected more from Lionhead for this game.
Don't get me wrong, they delivered up to this point. The story had been really cool, the actual rebellion attack was a load of fun, and the mid-section of the story in which you meet the "impending evil" is one of the creepiest scenes I've ever seen in a video game.
In the end, it feels like this could have been the best Fable yet, were it not for an end sequence that feels incredibly rushed and poorly thought out. And considering this is the first video game I've been able to afford in over a year, I'm a bit miffed, but c'est la vie.