Fable Finally Real?
Author: Dan "Supermonkey" Reiley
Publisher: Microsoft Games
Developer: Big Blue Box


At Microsoft's booth today I got to check out something that I (and I'm sure many gamers like me) have been drooling about eve since it was first announced at E3 in 2000; the latest bit of magic from Big Blue Box and Peter Molyneux entitled 'Fable'. The thought of being able to run around in a dynamic RPG world where your actions matter as much as the dialogue trees you go through while talking to the myriad NPCs that inhabit said world. That's what most of the game seems to be about: the choices you make, and how you interact with the people of Albion (the world that the game takes place in). And that's what makes a game exciting, no?

As the game opens, your family is happily living their lives in one of the sleepier towns of the world. As a child, your father is trying to instill good values in you, and he offers you a gold piece for every good deed you go around town doing for people. The gold you earn is *supposed* to be for a birthday gift for your sister, but of course how you spend it is ultimately up to you… The dev who was touring me through Fable informed me that the early portion of the game where you are a young boy will have more puzzle oriented challenges, and the later parts of the game where you have grown up a bit will have more action oriented challenges.

Not to say that there won't be elements of either action or puzzles in either side, respectively… For example, the childhood portion will have an encounter where your character can choose to face down a bully, help him in beating up his current victim, or just continue about your business, to the strangled cries of a peasant boy receiving a medieval wedgie… Fable is truly a game about choices and having to deal with the consequences of your actions. Also, as a side bonus to all of the consequences of your actions, the game foreshadows much of what will happen later, so that you may be finding down the road that karma is coming back to bite you on the ass.

Once you feel you're ready to start your hero training, a gathering place of adventurous souls, named The Guild sees something special in you and begins to train you and will continue to do so throughout your career, or at least until you no longer wish to be associated with them. Again the game will enforce a consequence for your action, so keep that in mind. The Guild is a good organization to be associated with, however, for they are rife with quests for many an adventurous bravo to engage in. However, The Guild has no over-guiding moral code, so there will be plenty of missions for adventurers with a slightly more anti-social bent to participate in.

As you participate in different activities in the world, the abilities you use will grow stronger as you use them, just like working out muscles in real life makes them bigger. If you use an ability/spell that relies on Will, you will gain Will experience. If you use weapons or perform other feats of strength, you will gain Strength experience. And to balance these two different categories of experience, there is General experience to help offset the cost of buying new warrior or wizard skills when you are ready to beef up those areas. And yes, you can come up with ways to combo the use of a sword and magic in order to really hassle your foes. There are many cool combinations that you may find useful, but the devs hope you will explore them on your own and find the ones best suited to your style of play, rather than spitting out a list of recommended combos for you to try.

I also got to learn about how well the expression system is coming along. The expression system lets you have non-verbal communication with the NPCs that inhabit Albion. Some of the non-verbal cues are flirt, belch, and fart. Needless to say, some of the ruder expressions are sure to lower your standing in the world significantly. Besides rude behavior of the explosive sort, the game also lets your appearance affect how those in the game world perceive you. For example, ridiculous haircuts are sure to get the world's inhabitants talk about what an oddball you are and for them, to laugh at you. It is also possible to strip down to your skivvies and run around the game world that way which will also elicit much laughter from the previously mentioned denizens.

The game is regionally bounded, just to ensure that the character can't reach places he can't handle yet. The environments are still big, but they do have some limits so that the difficulty level doesn't ramp up and out of control. Speaking of out of control, it *is* possible in the game to have more than one wife, if one so desires. Just be sure that they are in different towns, and you should be okay…you hope. If all is going smoothly with your wife/wives, you may find that they go shopping for you when you're out of town, and their shopping trip may include equipment and provisions for your next foray into the untamed wilderness/next foray to see your other wife who lives two towns over… When you marry, you may choose to marry into a family that has a lot of Renown. You will probably have to have a fair amount of renown your self in order to pull this off, but it is possible and theoretically socially advantageous for you to do so. Of course, differing Renown levels will affect how you may socialize with other NPCs and how they may socialize with you.

So all of the text above is great and all, but you may be wondering if I got to play it at all…and the answer is a resounding YES! I got to play through as a character who has been going on the evil path, so his appearance was quite monstrous (he had horns! And pale, pale white skin! And he had a passel of flies buzzing overhead! Ewww!). As I played, I familiarized myself with the controls a bit. Pretty soon I was casting magic and wielding my huge club with brutal efficiency. I also got to see the flourish system in motion, which is a very cool thing. After some practice I was pulling off the flourishes, and a lot of the flourish moves are so different from each other, they truly are a joy to watch.

Something about the game which I felt was a nice touch, was that weapons' strength requirements really matter in this game. The character animations will be different if you don't have enough strength to carry, let alone use whatever weapon you have in your hands. They will also be less accurate and do less damage if your strength is below the minimum requirement.

All I can say at this point is: WOW! When can I get my copy? And apparently the answer is not as far off as you might have feared: Fable is set for release in September of this year. Once I have beaten the game, I can die happy!

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