Zero Punctuation: Fable 3

[Thespian]

Ha, he totally called it on all of it's faults.

And the EXACT same thing happened to me. I had Four Million in my pocket, Two Million in the treasury, but suddenly it was final battle time and there was no time to spend the four seconds it would take to drop the money into the treasury. Gawd demmit.

Still, loved the game. Und the review.

 

[Haderos]

Anyway, must be china, they don't care about human losses that much. ( ≖‿&#8790

It's not that they don't care it's that they want human losses because they have a bad case of overpopulation.

Oh in that case India must be next..
do i get another warning for this now? Was this inconsiderate?

 

[Bluecho]

Okay, I have no idea how I didn't get it before, but yeah, Peter Mollineux(?)'s idea of what constitutes good and evil comes down to a pure, uncompromising split down the liberal/conservative line. Which pisses me off to no end. I think in the first Fable it was more on the level, with good and evil choices being obviously good or evil. But people, you do realize that there are good and evil points to both liberal and conservative policies, right?

Back in Fable 2, the player got a choice to hook a gay man up with a dude, or set him up on a date with a nice girl like his father wanted. Now, naturally Peter arbitrarily decided that you're evil if you go against the man's wishes and obeyed the father, but is it really? I'm not saying gay people are inherently bad because they're gay, but I will ask whether letting a son go about following a path that results in no offspring and attempting to mesh two men together is really a good thing from the father's perspective? Do you think he's just homophobic? Do you think he's just trying to be mean? Maybe he just has the boy's best interest at heart?

The point is that moral choice systems of this ilk sometimes work when they try to deal with only unambigious things, but sometimes not all things one sees as good and evil are as such. I can't believe I'm the one saying that.

 

[samaugsch]

Anyway, must be china, they don't care about human losses that much. ( ≖‿&#8790

It's not that they don't care it's that they want human losses because they have a bad case of overpopulation.

Oh in that case India must be next..
do i get another warning for this now? Was this inconsiderate?

Nah. The only reasons that people almost never bash China is because a) we owe a retarded amount of money to them, and b) we get most of our crap from there.

 

[Jeffro Tull]

So all three games can end where the "good" option has a dire consequence on the hero? Oh Peter you soulless, silly *****.

 

[loip9114]

Haha nice review man, only played fable 1 and even that was for a short while. Some how I couldn't really pay attention to the story line and only just see the pretty things to be stolen, the people to be murdered and the houses to be bought. Made me a lot of money before games end.

But damn this moral choice system sounds the worst ever. Being 'evil' so we can all live another day, or being 'good' and die in a beautifull place on earth. Seriously if letting 3/4 die is good and none die except the world being destroyed a bit. You have to be an eco-lover to let all those people die.

 

[theshadowcult]

I got to say, i quite enjoyed Fable 1, when i first played it it was quite a fun novelty, though i didn't spend a whole lot of time on the frivolous things, the over all game was light hearted,and funny. Even playing it the second time as the Lost Chapters or whatever, was still a fun time. However the crap in Fable 2 and what i assume will be in Fable 3 seem to have gone from a conservative fantasy Saints Row 2, to a meaninglessly boring game version of Fear and Loathing...

 

[teknoarcanist]

Mass Effect does everything Fable wishes it could do, with the extremely elegant good-cop-bad-cop "paragon/renegade" mechanic.

Not really, Mass Effect has no deeper or more believable a morality system. You either choose to be a giant ass or a nice person. You aren't rewarded unless you commit to a single path, it's totally facile. And you don't benefit unless you rack up an arbitrary amount of renegade or paragon points, sometimes awarded incongruously.

They are awarded pretty arbitrarily, and the persuasion/charm/scarymofo stat checks (serving your gaming needs since 1985 :O) are a little old-school, but you actually don't have to choose. You can take the middle path and be neither Paragon nor Renegade -- it's just less suited to getting shit done.

Idk, maybe it was just me, but having the morality system contextualized as good cop / bad cop and being put in situations that tested THAT rather than my ability to agree with Peter Molyneux felt much more immersive and enjoyable.

 

[Vohn_exel]

Haha, oh man this one was great. I was laughing all the way through, especially at the "Xbox wasps."

 

[Vault Citizen]

Have attempts made by Lionhead to simplify and slim down the gameplay improved it, added not much change or just dumbed it down?

 

[NoCure]

I hope other games don't take the approach of combining genres into one game. Let's make it FPS/RPG and then a Civ-Type game.

The only game that has done this well is Rise of Nations, and that was about 8 years ago.

 

[The Cheezy One]

It always seems that everyone has a very fluid idea of a game until the ZP review comes out, then "Yeah thats what I thought". I am not saying that you can't have the same opinion, but feel free to disagree with him, and I'm not saying this just because people have a different point of view to me. It's not like he won't invite you to his birthday party if you do.
Like here - I really enjoyed F3. I liked F:TLC, I spend a while on F2, but I haven't had fun like in F3 for a while. Magic+guns+swords all merge together fairly well, the fights are fun, if they would last longer, and the decisions are challenging, if you are trying to be good at least. Oh, and thanks for the warning - I was about to leave the game running for ageslike you, but I am trying to be good, so have to go co-op with my brother - FOR WHICH I GET PAID! Hehehe!
Oh, and please bring back the mini-map. Otherwise, I don't bother learning directions, I just follow that gold thing, and never bother learning where things are.

 

[Rafe]

That was one of the best videos you've made. I especially liked the dog fucking bit!

I was really pissed off when the game jumped 150 days or whatever and everyone called me a bad leader even though I had a plan!

 

[Monsterfurby]

Concerning Characterization: The story writers for the Fable games should simply read the Discworld novels and take notes from the characerization of Lord Vetinari.

Concerning Peter Molyneux: This man is the avatar of over-hype, essentially the less nerdy version of 1980s and 90s Richard Garriott. But while Lord British actually MADE GOOD GAMES* (until around Ultima IX), Molyneux tries too hard to please too many people in the process of developing the game. It's always the same thing: He presents an awesome idea where you think "you know, it might just work", but over the course of development it gets less and less magical and more profane. Same thing happened to Spore and probably to Civ 5 because they went for mass appeal, for action adventure instead of simulation in Fable's case. If they ever make a personal-level Kingdom management game with a detailed world, moral choices and a revolution to lead, heck, I'll buy six million copies.
Right now, though, I think Maxis and The Sims Medieval is closer to achieving what Molyneux promised for Fable 3 than Lionhead.

Also, handholding. How did anyone believe that was a key selling point? I had Fable fans biting my ears off when I even so much as dared questioning that idea's brilliance.

Concerning XBOX-Fanboys: Hey, I have an XBOX, it's my primary game system after my PC. I like neither Halo nor Fable. Actually, I like strategy games, simulations and RPGs. Am I a bad XBOX-Owner?

Concerning this Review: Best thing in a while. When it came to the point about morality, I was literally hurting from laughing too hard.

* - interestingly, the article that introduced me to the Escapist was called "The Conquest of Origin", about the Origin takeover by EA. Interesting read, I sill recommend it if you can find it in the archives.

 

[necronmm]

wow that's really messed up... this is from the plot summary on the wiki page for Fable 3:

"If the player passes lots of time by sleeping, civilians will start to return, but they will react hostilely to the monarch's presence, regardless of whether they previously acted as a benevolent or evil ruler."

So... it just forces you to sleep for a long time at a certain point?

 

[jmarquiso]

Mass Effect does everything Fable wishes it could do, with the extremely elegant good-cop-bad-cop "paragon/renegade" mechanic.

Not really, Mass Effect has no deeper or more believable a morality system. You either choose to be a giant ass or a nice person. You aren't rewarded unless you commit to a single path, it's totally facile. And you don't benefit unless you rack up an arbitrary amount of renegade or paragon points, sometimes awarded incongruously.

They are awarded pretty arbitrarily, and the persuasion/charm/scarymofo stat checks (serving your gaming needs since 1985 :O) are a little old-school, but you actually don't have to choose. You can take the middle path and be neither Paragon nor Renegade -- it's just less suited to getting shit done.

Idk, maybe it was just me, but having the morality system contextualized as good cop / bad cop and being put in situations that tested THAT rather than my ability to agree with Peter Molyneux felt much more immersive and enjoyable.

Morality in any of these games doesn't work beyond unlocking dialog choices. Ultimately you are the good guy and ultimately the missions involve you doing good things (helping people, saving the galaxy, stopping Armus from wiping out Albion). So it's all rather bullshit.

If there were actual gameplay consequences, this would be interesting. If characters leave you, etc, that would be interesting.

The problem being that they tried that with KOTOR, and characters left. This made plenty of gamers angry that they were being jipped of content, but they weren't. They made decisions and the characters following them made the judgment, so-to-speak.

I don't know how much morality has consequence in Fable, and yes, I've heard that Real Estate subverted the entire dilemma. And it's an incredibly interesting and thoughtful dilemma - be the King and balance happiness over, basically, national security. They should treat this as a true dilemma instead of Good or Evil - there is no RIGHT answer to that question.

 

[Curtisthekiller]

Evil? EVIL?
Sir/Madam i am attempting to prepare for an invasion of evil things from beyond the veil of time and who-knows-what-else, your opinons are invalid now get back in the mine so that while noteing your proper positioning i might be able to tell you to get BACK IN THE KITCHEN/ARMY