Fable II – An Indepth Review

While having a kid in Fable II sounds neat, the dog ultimately proves to be a more lovable companion.

I never ended up playing the first Fable, but having now completed Fable II, I have to say that the series does deserve its fan following. Fable II is an adventure-RPG game that plays like an offline World of Warcraft style game while also including Sims-like character statistics and management. The game is quite enjoyable for the most part, with its main problem being that it suffers from not being able to deliver on some gameplay aspects it flirted with.

Good
– The dog companion is quite innovative and enjoyable
– Charming presentation
– Intuitive and engaging combat system

Bad
– Limitations on many of the grander aspects of the game
– Poor co-op
– Several bugs combined with no save slot management system

Intro
Fable II comes from Lionhead Studios, a UK based company most famous for the first Fable game on the Xbox and Black & White on the PC. Peter Molyneux, the lead designer at Lionhead Studios, got his start over at Bullfrog Productions as a programmer and designer for games such as Populous, Theme Park, and Dungeon Keeper. He has generally been a pretty outspoken invidual in the gaming industry and it has cost him a little. Nowhere has this been more evident than with Fable 1, a game that went on to pretty good reviews but disappointed several people due to the over-promises that Molyneux made.

It’s not surprising when features are cut due to time constraints for a game, but it’s even worse when the public is told about such a feature and then it’s cut. One such case was the ability to have children in Fable 1, something that Molyneux had talked about but ultimately never delivered. He also went so far as to hype the game up before it released, saying “It’s gonna be the best game ever.” It wasn’t and obviously the game took some flak for that but it was still quite successful, selling almost 2 million copies in the United States alone.

With such a large fanbase already, Fable II would inevitably sell well if it improved on its predecessor and Molyneux let the game do the talking instead of him. While Molyneux learned his lesson and kept his promises to a minimum, Fable II’s release was still not without problems.

Two months before Fable II’s October release, the team put out an Xbox Live Arcade title called “Fable II Pub Games” for 800 Microsoft Points or free with a Fable II pre-order. Some players found out ways to cheat the game and make tons of money. Molyneux responded and said that the glitch the players found was intentionally left in the game by the developers so as to affect the players in the Fable II game based on how much cheating they did. This was obviously a lie, as the developers had no idea that the glitch was in the game and could simply release a patch for the retail game to not allow such a vast amount of money to be transferred into the game (which is basically what they did).

Fable II also released with a Limited Collector’s Edition. Fable II was the first game I have seen released where the Limited Collector’s Edition was downgraded after what was originally promised. The Limited Edition was announced at $79.99 and was to include the following:

– a bonus DVD containing the “Making of Fable 2”
– in-game extras (The Hall of the Dead Dungeon, “The Wreckager” Legendary Cutlass Weapon, and an ingame Halo outfit)
– five printed Fate cards
– a Hobbe figure

Shortly before the release of the game, the limited edition was downgraded so it no longer included the premium box, the five printed Fate cards, and the Hobbe figure. The price of the Limited Edition was also reduced from $79.99 to $69.99. This left the Limited Edition with just the bonus DVD and in-game extras. But to make matters worse, several people who bought the Limited Edition did not get the code in their retail copy for the in-game extras.

Microsoft went ahead and announced that they would email the code to anyone who purchased a copy of the Limited Edition. Of course, Microsoft had no way of knowing if a player bought one version or the other, so anyone with the regular edition was able to acquire the code for the limited edition in-game content. The Limited Edition buyers were thus burned twice – first because several extras were removed, and secondly, because the bonus in-game content they paid for was handed out to everyone else. So in reality, they paid $10 for the “Making of Fable 2” bonus DVD, something that most people didn’t even really care about.

It was also discovered that online co-op, an advertised feature, would not be in the shipped version. Molyneux informed the gaming public that there would be a Day 1 patch that would enable this functionality, and pleaded with reviewers to hold off on reviewing the game until they got the patch. True to his word, the online co-op patch was indeed added in a release day patch.

During Sparrow’s childhood, a crowd gathers around a vendor selling “magical” wares.

Storyline and Premise
Fable II takes place 500 years after Fable I, in the same world of Albion. While it is the same world, storylines are not connected between the first and second game so players do not have to experience the first game to play the second. Albion is a fantasy world, with swords and sorcery, but the biggest change in the 500 years is that the present world of Fable II is more of a colonial one. Unlike in Fable I where projectile based weapons were limited to crossbows and bows, somewhere in those 500 years gunpowder was discovered so Fable II introduces muskets and such to complement arrow-based projectile weapons.

Also new to the sequel is the ability to play as either a male or a female character. The player does not have an actual name in Fable II, but rather, is given titles. He/she begins the game as a child with the nickname Sparrow (the player’s title can change throughout the game based on feats accomplished) and is accompanied by an older sister named Rose. The two are poor orphans that dream of living in Castle Fairfax one day. The young Sparrow accompanies Rose to look for ways to make money, and rescue a dog during the brief gameplay that takes place during their childhood.

One night, Rose and Sparrow are summoned to Castle Fairfax by Lord Lucien, who ends up submitting them to some of his magical analysis. Upon discovering his findings, he shoots both Rose and Sparrow, killing Rose, while knocking Sparrow out the window of the castle’s tower. Sparrow survives, and awakens 10 years later. Joined by the dog rescued as a child, Sparrow sets off to find Lucien to stop his evil plans and seek justice for his sister.

Fable II’s main quest line can be completed in about ten hours, and this was no different from the first game. And just like the first game, there are many sidequests and jobs that the player can pursue, which add more depth and longevity to the game. Many of these sidequests have interesting and amusing storylines themselves and some can only be undertaken after the main storyline is finished. The unique aspect to the Fable games is that there is a certain level of consequence to the player’s actions in the world. The player is often presented with several choices throughout the game in various quests whether he/she wants to go down the good or evil path. These choices not only affect how the player is perceived by citizens of Albion, but also the character’s appearance. Going down the good path will keep the player’s complexion clear, a halo will form over his head, etc. while the evil path leads to horns and flies.

While melee combat can be pretty fun, the sheer number of enemies thrown at you make it quite difficult to rely solely on it.

Gameplay Mechanics
Combat System and Leveling
The combat system simplifies the leveling up process and does not force the player into being a particular build. There are three fighting styles: melee, ranged, or magic. The player is free to use any of those fighting styles when encountering enemies, and experience orbs will drop during combat. There are four experience orb types, pertaining to each of the three fighting styles and a fourth general one. While each hit on an enemy will drop certain experience orbs based on the fighting style used to attack the enemy, killing the enemy rewards the player with the fourth general experience type, which is spendable on any of the three fighting styles. Thus it is possible to play through the game using only magic to fight foes, leveling the magic abilities with the magic experience orbs they drop, but using the general experience orbs to unlock the melee and ranged abilities.

The player is able to use the experience orbs to unlock three different abilities under each of the melee and ranged skill trees. Only orbs earned from that fighting style and the general orbs can be used to unlock skills in a particular tree and when a skill is unlocked, the next tier for that skill can be unlocked next, but usually with an exponentially higher orb cost. Most skills max out at tier 4 or 5.

Increasing melee damage, melee-related skills (like defending and countering), and your maximum lifebar tend to come from the strength-based melee tree, while faster attack speed, dodging, and targeted attacks (like headshots or groinshots) come from the dexterity-based ranged tree. The magic tree is a little different, as there are six or seven different magic spells that can all be leveled out to tier 5 and the skills are all magic-based, rather than some of the more general benefits gained from the other two trees.

I originally decided that I would play through the game as a ranged specialist due to the fun of shooting people with localized damage, but after some time I realized that I would need to rely on some magic in order to be able to use ranged weapons without enemies closing in too fast. Two of the magic spells I used were ones that summoned “undead minions” to tank for me and a time spell to slow down enemies. While the combat system is pretty fun in terms of an action/adventure sort of way, I came to discover that magic is far more powerful than melee and ranged. About halfway through my game, I switched over to magic soley due to not only its damage output, but because it had area of effect attacks that were quite useful against larger packs of enemies.

I personally felt that magic was too imbalanced because it made getting through enemies and bosses with ease. The main drawback to magic is that when you want to cast a tier 5 spell, you have to charge it all the way until it hits the tier 5 meter. This leaves you open to attacks for several seconds, but with the minions spell to tank for you, enemies go after them allowing you to freely charge. Then you just unleash your tier 5 area of attack-styled spell, such as lightning, and it kills everyone in the entire room. Once I went down that path, it was too difficult to go back to “swashbuckling” with 6-7 enemies at a time since I could just clear the room and go along my way.

Your Dog Companion
While it may seem silly, your dog is one of the major highlights of the game. Not only does it accompany you everywhere, it can learn tricks, attack enemies when they’re down, and even play fetch. But the most welcome aspect of his addition is that he starts barking whenever he is aware of treasure or an enemy in the area, often leading you to the location in question. There is also various random treasure buried, and your dog also barks and starts digging in an area where he knows something is buried. Often times I don’t try to check every single nook and cranny as I’m traveling, so it’s quite useful when I’m walking past an area and the dog barks to inform me that there’s actually a treasure chest in there so I won’t miss it. In short, your dog is an instrumental part to finding many of the secret treasures in Albion.

“The Sims” part of the game
Fable II is one of the only RPG games that I have seen where the people in cities and towns actually react to you. In most RPGs, you may see citizens wandering around town, but they always have the same sentence when you talk to them and are basically a talking cardboard cutout. In Fable II, each citizen has particular likes and dislikes, particular locations they enjoy, and even sexual orientation. Each citizen’s impression of you is impacted through three different meters: Hate/Love, Ugly/Attractive, and Fat/Thin. These meters general represent a scale that will determine when a citizen will want to either give you a gift or marry you. While most citizens will want to give you gifts if they love you enough or find you attractive enough, if you go to the slums sometimes the opposite will be true. Being a jerk may get you rewards with certain types of people.

You are also able to get married and have a kid. In fact, you are able to get married as many times as you want, and have several wives all over the world. You’re able to take several people to bed at once, get STDs, etc. While all of this sounds pretty amusing and interesting to play, it’s actually pretty rudimentary and doesn’t have much depth at all.

The concept behind the particular likes and dislikes of each citizen are supposed to help you in terms of being able to win their adoration and love. But with the simplicity of the attribute design, I don’t have to even do any of that stuff. I can just dance like a fool in the middle of the town square for a few minutes and then every woman will want to marry me. That just doesn’t seem right.

I was also disappointed in the family aspect of the game. Basically, by marrying someone you just need to set an allowance aside for them every day to keep them happy. If they are happy, they won’t leave you. You can also have protected or unprotected sex with people, and by having unprotected sex when you’re not married you have a higher risk of catching an STD. Having unprotected sex with your wife will net you a child.

The wife and child don’t really ever do anything – they’re just citizens in the town you found them in. If you married a poor woman who wore poor clothes, even if you moved to a mansion and bought rich clothes for her, she can’t change into them or become any different than you first met her. Being married serves no general purpose but maybe some rudimentary amusement but it’s annoying that every time you see your kid she wants a present. The kid doesn’t ever seem to grow up past childhood, but since you don’t particularly age yourself, it’s a wash. The game has a clock so there’s night and day, but there’s no actual calendar or aging.

There is also the element of fame. Completing enough quests increases your fame meter. High fame causes other citizens to follow you whenever they see you, kids will ask you for your autograph, etc. While it’s pretty cool at first, it gets a bit annoying when the citizens follow you into your own house and block the door so you can’t even leave.

I do appreciate that the stats and attributes of the citizens increases the depth of how the world of Fable II reacts to you, but I feel that it didn’t quite live up to what I expected. It’s definitely an increase over Fable I, and fans of the first game will probably love how much more depth the sequel has in terms of socialization with the citizens, but for a game that talks about change and consequences of your actions, being able to dance or whistle away to get the world to love me after doing a bad deed seems a bit silly.

You can buy practically every habitable place, including this guy’s wagon.

Earning money
In Fable II, enemies don’t really drop money when they die. Money is found either in treasure chests, or through jobs and real estate. There are several jobs offered throughout the game such as blacksmithing, lumberjacking, etc. Most of these jobs rely simply on timed button presses that provide multipliers on income the longer the streak goes.

The best way to earn money though is through real estate. Practically every store and residential area can be bought, and by owning it the player is able to adjust the rent or pricing of the goods through a simple meter. Setting it to double the prices on everything will double the income, but get the citizens of that town to hate you while setting it towards nothing will get them to love you. By owning any property, you will get a certain amount of money every few minutes in the game, and even when you’re not playing. If you log off for the night and play the next morning, when you log in you will accrue a nice chunk of change from the time you weren’t playing.

In a sense, after buying real estate and making more money, it’s wisest to buy even more real estate with it. Eventually you will own so much real estate that the money earn from them makes money trivial. While not completely realistic, I found that the handling of real estate and earning money was simplified enough to be enjoyable without overly frustrating.

Co-op & Online
Fable II supports offline co-op and online co-op (after a free patch). Both are quite disappointing. In the previews, Molyneux described how you’d be able to enter another player’s game, earn money and experience in that player’s world, and take it back to your own game. What he did not specify was that when you entered that player’s world, you would just be a generic henchman to the player, and not your own character. Joining in a co-op game online or offline forces you to pick one of the generic henchman templates, and the host decides how much percentage of the money and experience he earns will be given to you during the playtime. It works exactly like Molyneux stated – that you do take the money and experience back to your game (if the host gives you some), but many were disappointed that not only did you not see your character, but you also had only the abilities of the host and not your own character’s.

With the co-op being pretty silly and stupid, the Player Orbs is perhaps one of the coolest aspects of the game. It really does make the game feel like an MMORPG. The initial setting for Player Orbs is “Friends Only”, and what that means is that if you are playing Fable II and are on any stage or town in your game and one of the guys on your friends list is also in the same area, you will see them in your game. They will be a spherical orb with their Gamerpic, and if they run down the street in their game, they will run down on your screen too. You can go up to them and trade with them or inspect their stats, etc. It’s pretty neat. What’s even cooler is that you can set the Player Orbs to “All players” instead of just friends, and then anyone on Xbox Live that is playing Fable II and running around the town will show up in your game. Very neat and innovative.

The undead are a major enemy type in Fable II.

Achievement System
The Achievements in this game were generally pretty well designed. There are Achievements for beating the main game, getting the various endings, accomplishing certain tasks, and even ones that require some pretty good skill. There was a majorly annoying one though which revolves around collecting six different dolls. These dolls can only be won by scoring high (a feat in and of itself) on a shooting range, but the worst part is that each player can only earn a particular doll. That means, in order to get all six, he would need to win the shooting range six times to get six of the same dolltype he already has, and then trade the other five to other players that have the other ones. How is this fun?

Another issue I have is an Achievement called “The Completionist”, which requires you to find basically everything. The only problem with that Achievement is that two of the items on that list are only awarded to you if you beat the Fable II Public Games, which was free as a pre-order or 800 points to buy now. Forcing the player to have to play a game on Live to get an Achievement in a retail game is just ridiculous.

Fortunately, Lionhead Studios made a controversial decision with many of the Achievements, including the two that I found very annoying. While their decision was ultimately to my benefit in the end, I would argue that both the earlier two Achievements and this decision were both stupid and canceled each other out. The controversial decision was for many of the Achievements, including the most difficult ones (the dolls and the Completionist) to be received by a player in co-op that simply sees another player acquire it. We’re not talking the only time the Achievement unlocks for the player, but any time the criteria is fulfilled.

In order to get those last two Achievements I didn’t want to jump through hoops to get, I found generous players who were willing to share the Achievement with me. I joined their games, and all they did was sell an item that was needed for the Achievement, and then buy it back from the store. Then the Achievement unlocked for me. This trivializes more of the difficult Achievements, even the unfairly difficult ones. If it were up to me, I would have removed the dollcatcher Achievement, made the Completionist Achievement not rely on spending another 800 Microsoft Points on, and not allowed any of the Achievements to be shareable. There’s no feeling to accomplishment if anyone can get them.

Magic ends up being the most powerful fighting style.

Final Thoughts
Fable II was quite ambitious in scope and nearly succeeded in delivering what it went for. While it didn’t quite hit the mark, it’s still quite an enjoyable game when analyzed from a pure gameplay standpoint rather than measuring it against what it was planning to achieve. Unfortunately, the game is also saddled with bugs that are still being worked out to this day. Some bugs I encoutered were minor, such as not being able to untarget citizens until I restarted the game (happened a lot but a recent patch seems to have fixed it for the most part), main quest events not triggering (I would sit there wondering why nothing would happen until I restarted the game and on the next iteration it would magically work), to even being able to doing a unique subquest more than once (got two Diamond of Sorrows because Chesty’s Quest was offered again). On top of that, you can’t have multiple saves – only one that gets overriden with autosaving from time to time. This makes things worse because some people have encountered game-ending bugs that they could not skip because they had no other save to revert back to.

I give the game a B+. Bugs aside, the game was still quite enjoyable. I have to admit though, that my overall impressions with the game started out enthusiastically high, but as the game went on it started to decrease as I began to realize certain aspects that I felt were grand ended up too simple and limited. The storyline is still quite charming and it’s worth checking out if you are enjoy adventure-RPGs of any sort. Most of the bugs are being fixed or have been fixed already, and while co-op is forgettable, the social aspect of being able to see every Xbox Live player playing Fable II and running around is something that has to be seen to be believed. Fable II delivers an entertaining single player experience while being slightly marred by developer decisions. But in the end, it’s still quite fun and that’s most important.