Hi guys!
I'm planning on writing a series of short articles about games from my childhood that I love and still enjoy after so many years. So, feel free to follow me, if you're interested.
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Fable is an action role-playing game created by LionHead Studios released in 2004 on Xbox and in 2005 on PC.
Fable: The Lost Chapters takes place in a world of Albion, a world in which every decision of our character influences his or her skills, appearance, and morality. It is entirely up to us to determine the path of our hero. It also depends on us if the protagonist will be praised in legends and loved by people or feared by them. It's entirely up to us if we become a hero with a halo over his head or a scarred murderer with an insatiable hunger for power and devil horns.
I first encountered this game when I was about 12 years old. I immediately fell in love with this game. It was and still is a really beautiful game. Although the game itself is presented in a heavily stylized fairy-tale like way, it's for older gamers, because of it's gore combat, absurd, adult, humor and a really dark story of the game.
The game magnetized me with not only with its great story but also with its great gameplay mechanics. Even though the game didn't meet all the expectations at the time I think it managed to be the best in the Fable series. Combat is fairly simple, but it can be challenging and feels really rewarding. All the experience points we can from defeating enemies we can spend on 3 attributes: strength, skills, will. Strength determines how much damage we can deal in a hand-to-hand fight, but also what I absolutely adore is that we can see our character's progression, with every point spent on strength our hero gets bigger. Skill impacts our ability to fight from a distance and use ranged weapons. Will is used for magical abilities. The players have a wide selection of spells to use from standard fireballs, lightning to slowing time, summoning magic swords.
Story and combat are great, but what really stands out for me in Fable are interactions with NPCs. We have a wide selection of "emotions" we can show to NPCs from clapping hands to farting. This game allowed me to feel really immersed in the world thanks to simple things like being able to buy a shop, getting a wife, or just being cheered by villagers after I'd have helped them.
Fable: The Lost Chapters is a great game. I gladly replay it every once in a while. Unfortunately, we still haven't received a good sequel. There is Fable 2, but it was released only on Xbox360 and I don't own the console so I've never been able to play it and there's also Fable 3, but in my opinion, it was just mediocre. I just hope that maybe someday we will receive a worthy sequel or at least a spiritual succesor to a great RPG that did not care about only saving a world, but gave us a choice to be who we wanted to be and also gave us a break from adventuring by fishing, chicken kicking competition and buying a house for wife.