The game which I am going to be writing about today is from a series that I absolutely loved growing up as a teenager, it's called Fable III. Fable III as you might have guessed is the 3rd game within the Fable franchise, following the successful and well received Fable and Fable II. This game is an action/open world/role playing game that was developed by Lionhead Studio and then published by Microsoft Game Studio. It was released back in October of 2010 for the Xbox 360, with a later release happening in May of 2011 for the PC. The PC version has a special hardcore mode that isn't available to play on the Xbox version, but otherwise both games are exactly the same.
Now, I'll be up front and say that I wasn't the biggest fan of this game. The Fable series has always held such a high potential for an amazing game, and I would say Fable: The Lost Chapters was the pinnacle of the series and came the closest to being a 10/10 game within the franchise. I also really enjoyed Fable II, but felt that it fell a bit short on itself with a few issues. Fable III, however, really falls short of the expectation and hopes that I had for the series. Maybe sometime in the future the Fable series will be back on track to making a masterpiece game within the open world/rpg genre, but that time definitely did not come with Fable III.
Now, it's always a pretty common theme with the Fable series to tell a tale of small beginnings and huge, magnificent finales. Like within the first game, you start out as nothing but a small child within a tiny village living on a farmhouse with his family. Of course, things change and towards the end of the game when you are an amazing hero or villain who stops a world ending threat, and changes the fate of Albion. This game tries to step up that kind of concept, instead giving you a grand start and aiming to provide an even more majestic ending.
Fable III takes place 50 years after Fable II, and instead of being a farm boy or something more simple, this game starts you off as a prince of the country of Albion, whose brother Logan has just inherited the throne after the hero from Fable II as well as the ruler of Albion have passed away. The player begins hearing whispers about his brothers personality becoming twisted over the past few years, becoming someone who is cruel and tyrannical. This along with rumors of Logan putting an innocent man to death prompt you to start investigating what exactly is going on.
The rumor causes a huge protest of citizens, which pushes the player into having to intervene within the situation. This is where the moral choices of the game begin, as your brother Logan decides that you can make one of two choices. Either save all of the citizens protesting from being put to death by sacrificing your childhood sweetheart, or let the protesters die so that she or he may live (Depending on whether or not you're playing a boy or girl). No matter what choice you make, you then proceed to leave your home and flee alongside your mentor Sir Walter Beck, as well as your faithful butler, Jasper. From here on out, you decide whether or not you want to be good or evil.
But, honestly, it doesn't really matter as much as it did previously. The reason being is the ending is basically the same, just with citizens having a different view on your character. Yeah, kind of disappointing, right? *MINOR SPOILER* Later on in the game you become the king, and the game devolves into a boring video game version of an adventure book where you choose your path. The player sits down upon his throne and listens to good and evil propositions and chooses which one he wants to follow through with. There isn't really much else that happens there besides a few little quests here and there. While the game does make it extremely clear on what choices are good and what are evil, and the plot itself isn't terrible or anything, it isn't all that fun. I really was bored throughout the last half of the game, and just wasn't very engaged. But, hey, maybe that is just me.
The gameplay of the game isn't all that great either, and doesn't bring anything special to the table. There are quite a few issues with it, some of which were present in Fable II, apparently I guess Lionhead must have either just quietly forgot about them or figured screw it, not our problem. The trail of light that helps to guide you to your destination often times fails, and just does not work correctly. This is one of the most annoying issues that transferred over from the second game to the third. Another issue that both games share is that the AI is just awful, whether it be a friendly AI or the enemy AI. The enemies often times just do dumb things and don't really make the game very difficult, while the friendly AI tends to just get in your way most of the time.
Another thing that the game has done poorly is your item management and quest management. Instead of having a normal user interface menu for these options, you get to hit the start button on the controller and you're taken to an area called the Sanctuary which has rooms pertaining to each section that you enter to configure. It's like this not only for the items but for the quest, making equipping items and selecting quests feel like a very dragged out, tedious and annoying process. So, you know, it sucks. Seriously, I don't know why they thought this would be something positive within the game that players would appreciate, but it's not. At all.
A lot of the gameplay itself such as the combat is just a rehashing of the previous Fable game, and it's a very shameless one at that. It doesn't try to dress itself up as anything else, there are no tweaks or additions. It just openly uses the same mechanics and elements that Fable II used, such as the combat being a single button mash depending on which type of attack you want to use. While I enjoyed playing Fable II, I didn't want to play a revamped version of it in Fable III. Again, there just wasn't any innovation with this game and while it isn't a terrible combat system, we've seen it before. So, there's nothing fun or new there.
The setting of Albion itself feels like a shell of its former self as you play through the game. Everything has been scaled down heavily, and it feels like even though the game is open world, there's so much less to do than what we had in the previous games. Elements of the previous games like buying houses or shops and marrying NPC's aren't really all that prevalent in this game, though they're still there. There are less shops and blacksmithing stores around in the game, and just generally less things to explore and check out while you play. It's certainly an open world, just a more empty one than I would have liked.
I will say that a few things from the previous games are definitely in here, where you can tell that the feeling of playing a Fable game is there in the background. The customization for your character is still a fun experience and there's a fair amount of things to swap up for the player. There's still silver key chests lingering about the world for you to find, with 50 keys total being available for you to open up the 13 chests. There's also the return of the co-op mode we saw in Fable II, allowing you to own real estate together, marry one another and of course help each other during combat sections of the game.
One other really positive aspect of this game that surprised me is how good the voice cast actually is, and how many great actors have taken part in it. Actors such as Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Star Trek), Ben Kingsley (Schindler's List, Lucky Number Slevin, Iron Man 3), Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, All of the recent X-men films, 300) and so many other legendary names in acting take part in this game. All of their voice acting is top notch, even with the cheesy and sometimes quite awful dialogue. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into it, and it is probably the best thing about the game in my opinion.
Now, I won't sit here and say that Fable III is a shit game or anything. It isn't a terrible game or anything exactly, just a big disappointment that has quite a few issues going on. While it's quite playable and has its moments of fun and entertainment with the minor roleplaying and decent narrative, it never felt like a step in the right direction for the franchise and it seems like it helped to cripple it for the most part. Between cutting out a lot of what would make the game open world in comparison to the old games, the hot mess of managing your character and just the unimaginative design of the game overall (enemies, boss battles and lots of other sections), I'm not sure I can say I would recommend this exactly.
I would say that this game is quite mediocre overall, and while there's some fun to bad here, there isn't enough to really say it's fun. I would personally rate it somewhere between a 5.5 and a 6 out of 10. I'd recommend you go check out Fable: The Lost Chapters or even Fable II before checking out this game, honestly. And, if you're a huge fan of those games, then maybe check it out.
Thanks for checking out my review! Hope you've enjoyed it!