Zero Punctuation: Fable 3

[dunnace]

I did enjoy Fable 3, but only as a linear game with a clever if limited ending. I agree the king segment could have been better, but I think the biggest disappointment was the revolution. No organisation at all? Not even choosing who goes where? Oh come on, a little bit of strategy never hurt anyone who was on our side!

I also think the 100 day jump is kinda deliberate, lulls you into a false sense of security and BAM your plan has failed. I too got ultra good ending, because I took each decision properly and I didn't try to cheat. I also built the mine and the brothel but only because I believe in full employment.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Ooooo pretty lake! And good riddance that the damn NPCs are gone! Now it will be easier to choose your bride!

 

[LadyRhian]

Not first (yes, irony), but why are those your only two options in the game? Why are the only paths to fighting the monstrosity paying it off or letting everyone die? I'd be throwing my money into finding ways to do away with the thing besides killing it by lobbing gold bars at it. It seems like a failure of imagination on the part of Peter Molyneux... something that would turn me even further off from playing this game (don't have the right console, sorry).

 

[Bombastuss]

Not as funny as usual but good nonetheless.

My hopes for Fable 3 (I live in the past so I haven't played it yet...) have been slightly crushed but I'll still probably try it out.

 

[glyphseeker]

i knew there was something after the old king was overthrown but i had no idea THAT is was happens

 

[Cobaltmotari]

Yahtzee, you are officially my hero. The ending was what pissed me off the most about Fable III. I mean as useless as the NPCs were, they at least made the world seem somewhat alive, and I can't help but feel that Peter Molyneux seems very bad at deciding what to do with his NPCs. Anyway, loved the review more than ever, and I don't say that lightly!

 

[Cobaltmotari]

Yahtzee, you are officially my hero. The ending was what pissed me off the most about Fable III. I mean as useless as the NPCs were, they at least made the world seem somewhat alive, and I can't help but feel that Peter Molyneux seems very bad at deciding what to do with his NPCs. Anyway, loved the review more than ever, and I don't say that lightly!

 

[Chronologist]

Huh. Now, I feel glad that I didn't buy the game. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Fable, and I thought Fable 2 was decent, but I suspected that Fable 3 would pretty much be the same as Fable 2, and it looks like I was right. Plus, I just finished playing one game where a Lovecraftian monstrosity turns out to be the final boss FOR NO ADEQUATELY EXPLAINED REASON, so I guess I dodged a bullet there.

Honestly, the Fable games have an interesting premise, and they fill the rpg-comedy niche well sometimes, but if you don't innovate sufficiently between games, then they're not going to sell (unless you have a massive fanbase like Halo, but even then it feels like you're cheating your fans).

If Fable threw out the good-evil axis for a truly open moral choice system that relied on consequences instead of arbitrary points (and made the game like 20 hours longer), THEN I'd buy it again. In the mean time, the Elder Scrolls will continue to beat Fable in pretty much every category.

P.S. The above is my opinion, you don't have to agree with it, and it doesn't mean that I'm right.

 

[hawk533]

I hate it when games use an arbitrary days counter and then flip forward a random number of days so that you have no idea how much longer the game will be.

This was one of the problems I had with Kingdom Hearts 358 days/2 (Another problem being the stupid name). At one point near the end of the game I was starting to get sick of it and just hoped that I could finish it soon. I was about to give up and put it down for a while when all of a sudden the game jumps forward a huge amount of days and I'm now on day 357. I wish they would just keep jumping forward a set number of days so that I would have known I was almost done. Or just not have the stupid days counter in the first place.

 

[Unhappy Crow]

I thought at first he wasn't going to review it after seeing his comment on his Twitter.
Oh well. I knew he was going to have the same feelings about the game as the other two prequels.

And is it just me or is the whole morale choicee things a little too boring in Fable III? Because I always thought Fable was an RPG game. This one feels more like a simulation game. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't own an Xbox nor an Xbox 360 and knows little to none about the Fable series.

 

[Ashcrexl]

damn. the brilliant last 2 minutes or so recalls your equally brilliant halo wars last 2 minutes. you should definitely do this sort of thing more often.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Wow. That actually was a pretty good twist in the storyline, providing a justification for the stuff everyone hated the king and wanted him dethroned for. Too bad they had to royally fuck it up by deciding he was still evil for doing it. I mean, really, what the hell. I can only assume this came from the gameplay mechanics designers and the writers working separately with no communication between them.

 

[Frankfurter4444]

Thank you Yatzee for pointing out that the worst part about any game's moral choice system is that everything is good or evil based upon the game designer's perspective of what good and evil are.

 

[Falseprophet]

I find most epic fantasy in general to have fascist undercurrents, of the kind satirized by Norman Spinrad in The Iron Dream [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream]. Another reason I appreciated Dragon Age so much: the king-making is a necessary evil so you get on with your mission to save the world, and even then you get your choice of regicidal paranoid xenophobe, rudderless whiny emo bastard, and deceitful opportunistic *****.

But it sounds like the Fable III final choice had so much storytelling potential that was just squandered. Ah well, another reason I never need to own a 360.

 

[The Mapper]

Nice one i was w8ing for you 2 get round 2 this

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Sounds a bit better than Fable 2 but the end choices make it worse... oy...... you'd think by now Bethesda, bioware and lord god Peter M would have realized that a 2 choice pathing system for stories just blows.

 

[duchaked]

It wooks pwetty!!
yeah that's definitely gonna take priority in the grand scheme of themes

hahaha and this was really funny
don't have anything new to say about the gameplay so...
love it when it's just an analysis of a game's [sequel's sequel's] story or whatever

 

[roostuf]

All i can say is, about-fucking-time.

 

[Savagezion]

lol wow seriously? I guess I don't have to look into this one either then.

I played the first fable and it really wasn't very good... I played a bit of fable 2, but it was crap... Thanks Yahtzee!

Same here. Luckily I borrow Fable 1 TLC from a friend and recognized the horrible game it was. Since then I have just followed all the others releases through the press. 0:25 to 0:50 of the review covers my take on the franchise. I keep hearing "good" stuff about them so I look up reviews and they are "good" technically by score but all of the features in them I hated in 1 are now there and more pronounced in the latest sequel be it 2 or 3. I don't get how these games score so highly.