Fable: The Lost Chapters

Decisions are big in a role playing game. From what character to create to what equipment to buy, one could easily say that over 50% of any given role playing game is making decisions for the character you control. But, until recently, Role Playing games have been linear. Unless you necessarily want a pre-written story, for the most part, RPGs give you very little choice. Ever notice how Tidus in Final Fantasy X always seems to keep that same pair of clothing clean and never change?

That was, until recently. Introducing Peter Molyneux, genius video game creator of games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black and White. For the most part, the gaming industry either loves or loathes Peter Molyneux, ranging from quiet reverence of his ability to design good games to utter loathing of the mediocre games "Black and White" one and two. He has gone so far as to win numerous awards for his ability to create stunning "God Games", and on the 31st of December, 2004, was even made an OBE (Officer of the British Empire). While he in no way is perfect, many gamers consider him to be the closest thing to pure originality in the gaming market.

So, when Peter Molyneux announced he was making an RPG, no-one really knew how to take it. Being a primary creator of "God Games" like Theme Park, he had never really actually delved into RPG gaming. While his work with Dungeon Keeper was phenomenal, it was nowhere near what one would consider a RPG, more like a Strategy game with RPG elements. So, when a genius with heavy experience in one field moves to another, what do you think will happen?

Well, in this case, a little big of genius and a whole lot of problems. Originally called Project Ego for most of the development of the game, Fable had a lot of hype surrounding it. Marry a wife. Have children. Own property. Be admired by citizens. Customize your character good, evil, nice, or mean. In general, everything you could want and more. Of course, everyone in their brother was exited- not only was this the God Game developer himself, but it was a game that truly seemed to capture the open ability to do anything that everyone wanted to experience. But, unfortunately, not all hype is true, and it slowly came to light that the guys at Lionhead studios had to turn Fable from it's huge aspiring roots and actually do a game that would work and be able to actually be made. So, keep that in mind as I review this game: a lot of what you've probably heard about this game isn't exactly true.


Fable is about a young boy who lives in a village with his parents and older sister. As he buys his sister a birthday present, suddenly raiders break in and slaughter the whole village, leaving him alone and defenseless, but hidden. When a Guild of Heroes member named Maze appears and saves him, he is shot into a long storyline about his strength- his ability to be good or evil. His choices determine how the game slowly develops- if he will become a good man to defend the villagers and get revenge on those who killed his parents, or become an evil man and destroy people like his family was destroyed. It's a fascinating concept, and probably the best part of Fable. From the start of the game on, you are told very blatantly that anything you do- ANYTHING- can be considered good or bad. Helping a young boy find his cat? Good. Stealing from a drawer in someone's house? Bad. This means essentially that your whole game is revolving around what you do and how you do it. By the end of the game, your character will have developed one of two ways- either he will be a righteous person or completely evil, and it will change the story accordingly.

There's one problem with the above plot line, and it's going to probably become my huge lament in this review- the game itself is not deep enough for the concept. Yes, you can do bad or good things. But not only are these things blatant, they are limited in scope. The hype for the game originally set out that the game would allow you to vandalize houses, pillage, murder, and all those good things we find in games. However, in Fable, this isn't exactly true. You can vandalize houses, but only windows. You can pillage houses, but only drawers. You can't murder a single NPC that isn't an enemy character from the outset. You can get married and yes, you can have sex with your wife, but all of that is basic and reminds me of the Harvest Moon games- things happen, but it's so hidden and basic (And, by the way, stupidly simple) that it generally isn't worth your time. This is the irritating factor of Fable- it could have been so much, yet the hype didn't match up to the actual game (To the point where Molyneux actually apologized for over hyping the game). It's sad. But, let's look at the game from outside the hype and to what it truly is.

Fable: The Lost Chapters itself failed to interest me for three reasons. One, the game's play style and general goals are too linear. In the game, instead of letting you roam openly and essentially do what you want, it is "Mission Based". This means, for those of you just tuning in, that instead of letting you discover and progress, that the game basically tells you where to go and when to do it and expects you to put up with that. You can find other missions hidden through the game, but they all generally fall into general expectations, and remind me of a crudely set Devil May Cry system, rather than the huge RPG it attempts to be.

The second issue is that Fable is far too easy. Killing new enemies just requires re-entering an area and killing them till you achieve experience points. Experience is gained like water, so this doesn't take long, and you progress quickly and max your character out with minimal effort. Money is sometimes a strain, but not as bad as you may think, as I was able to buy an extremely powerful sword at the very outset of the game that lasted me over half the main story. The equipment is no better, generally coming to me easily and without much work. Sure, this may be just a result of the hours I've spent recently on MMORPGs working hard for my equipment, but it still doesn't matter- Fable: The Lost Chapters is brainless. I could stick any mediocre gamer on Fable and expect brainless victory, and that's a disappointment. It's a nice entry level difficulty for gamers not used to adventure or role playing games, but for the rest of the world, it's far too easy.


The third issue is that the story of Fable becomes boring quickly. While the plot slowly moves along, for the most part, the missions you participate in typically have nothing major to do with your goals. Think of it- if someone went to your house and killed your family, would you go and help people fish in a mini-game? Hell no, you'd grab the biggest sword you could and kill everything in sight. That's the kinda questions I had. Why can't I just go to every Raider camp and just slaughter them and ask questions later? The raider enemies in the game are easy anyway, just lemme take em on, I'll be fine. But nope, you're going to spend your time killing oversized bees and doing tasks of negligible use while you go on your quest for revenge. It's basically being in a rush to work and taking the scenic route.

The game also, by the way, is easily cheated and exploited. Using various spells and modifiers, not only can an astute gamer max their characters stats out in minutes, but they can do it with so little effort or knowledge, it's quite stupid. Something that simple should have been discovered by Lionhead studios, and Fable suffers from it. Knowing you could cheat your way through the game and still playing it normally is kind of a killjoy, because if the game is supposed to be about freedom, and there is no real penalty for cheating, it just makes the game stupid.

Now to the part of the review where I talk about Fable: The Lost Chapters, as in the slightly modified version for the XBOX and PC. In The Lost Chapters, the game is improved by adding new quests and opportunities, and in the case of the PC version, with significantly better graphics. In this case, I played the PC version- so let me rant about that, then I'll go on about the quests themselves.

The PC port is the absolutely worst PC port I have seen in the history of console to PC ports. Not only did it take me a whopping 30 minutes to trick the game into accepting my resolution (Which it "Accepted", but never changed to), but it also took a long time to make the game work adequately in ANY resolution or graphic scheme. The controls are tied to WASD and the mouse, which is nice, except no mouse sensitivity controls are given, and the mouse is painfully slow when rotating the camera. The Talk/Use key is Tab, which could be considered a huge mortal sin, right beside "Space" being "Target". If I would have had my way, I would have bound Talk/Use to space, target to F, the two weapons buttons to Z and X, and Shift to collect EXP, and create a whole new button for "Use Spell" instead of using the same button as collect EXP, which causes problems. Combine this with odd graphical glitches and an obviously tossed together GUI and you have a rather embarrassing port of an XBOX game that really should not have been made.


The new quests featured in The Lost Chapters are worthy to mention briefly, but nothing amazing. Just like the quests in the original game, they generally have nothing new or amazing, and end up being just more killing, collecting, saving, and good/evil deeds. Basically, if this wasn't obvious before, an expansion pack to make the game more attractive to people. Is it worth replacing your old copy of Fable with a new one? No. But it is nice to see a game company put that extra work into their title instead of the fire-and-forget theory many companies seemingly adhere to.

Now, I have truly torn Fable to shreds. Does this game deserve this? In my opinion, yes. While Fable is not a bad game, the combination of an over hyped, under delivering engine coupled with a horrible PC port and a lackluster new array of enemies means that Fable: The Lost chapters, as well as Fable itself, should have been sent back to the drawing board for more refinement. It's a lesson to us all- if you're in a position to brag, you better do it when you're sure you can back it up. Actually, that's a lesson in the game's quest mode, you would have thought Lionhead would have exercised more restraint before shooting off their mouth about features that would never see the light of day.

What I would truly like to see from Fable is a sequel. Yes, I'm giving this game a low score, but that doesn't mean I don't want to see a sequel. If Fable can turn itself around and provide a new engine with more features and less hype, coupled with a PC version that actually works, I might complain yes. It's an amazing idea that definitely deserved to be thought of and put into motion, it just needed more incubation time before it was released to the public- more time to give the game the openness and variety it truly needed. So, with this rating, I warn you that you may love this game and think I'm an idiot if you play it- but when you look at what this game was supposed to be, and could have been with small modifications, you really will see that Fable's great features were truly fables, and the game ends up being another mediocre Action RPG at the end of the day.

2 star(s) out of 5

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