Fable 3 The Worst Chapter
For this I thought it would be useful to firstly list the things I liked. Therefore I leave more room for me to bitch about the game. However the only plus for this game that I can think of is the cast of Voice actors. Michael Fassbender brilliantly captured the bastard brother role and was generally a detailed character. John Cleese as the butler, even though it's a no brainer, was a match made in heaven. and the list goes on and on and on and on and on. Honorable mentions are given to Simon Pegg, Sean Pertwee and Ben Kingsley as well as reprisals from Stephen Fry and Zoe Wanamaker. And that's the only good bit.. now for bad...
- The southern continent was REALLY not my taste. This is an example of you can't please everyone. If this was a review I would have left this out. However this is an opinion piece, "What I think about" and I thought Aurora was kinda bland. The addition of ancient giant statues and temples would have interested me more if the player was told more about them. Nevertheless those structures acted only has center pieces and some eye candy to make up for the pretty bland areas of Bowerstone which was, to be perfectly honest, the worst looking bowerstone to date. It kinda looked like a bastard child of Fable 2 and Jack the Ripper, some more interesting building types would have been good, rather than reused buildings for entire streets. Aurora missed an opportunity. To be something radically different from any Fable game ever imagined combining elements of the Shadow court that had not been driven out by the Hero of Oakvale temple of Skorn like elements bringing back the generally scary feel that the temple gave me in Fable 1. The music also missed the mark, making me feel more like Indiana Jones than someone fearing for their life on the brink of death, or someone walking through dangerous uncharted desert.
- Lack of Weapon variety. You best like Hammers and Swords kids. Cause that's all you're going to see in Fable 3. Where as in Fable 1 we had a decent selection of weapons (9 weapons types as well as different levels of craftsmanship as well as legendary for each type) in this game however. They seemed to listen to the whinny little brats who moaned for "more legendarys" as a result we got less types of weapons (2 Close combat and 2 ranged) and about 10 legendary versions of each in different peoples games, meaning that you had to trade to get all of them (+ there were those downloaded via DLC) This made the gotta catch them mentality grow exponentially at the sacrifice of diverse combat. In Fable 1 every weapon felt different. A sword was an all round decent light weapon where as the Pick-axe sacrificed damage capability to be faster to block with and to hit with. In Fable 3 the only differences were what you do more damage to. Furthermore the apparent 'shifting weapons' is so unpredictable and contrived it makes my head truly shake. You'll end up getting a sword that has a weird bone hilt because when the game went over your stats it found that you killed 1 more guard than you did bandits and there's no going back to change it other than starting a new game or praying the game didn't autosave (which you cant turn off)
- The most evil thing is man! So, remember Trolls, Krakens and even spire guards that were in the previous games? Ditched. What has replaced them? 3 types of Aurorian stuff one of which is pretty much the Highway men from Fable 2. Remember Balverines? You don't encounter them in the story till the 2nd act and you don't encounter them in the wild until the VERY END OF THE GAME. Hobbs are still in the game however I will be honest and say that I preferred the ones Fable 2 (they got rid of the ones wearing stilts for lord sake.) Bandits come in only 2 forms Bandit and fire ball throwing bandit (which I liked). The undead make a return however they're very repetitive and hold no challenge for the player past the first encounter of them. But where's the other types of enemies? what about boss creatures? well there's ONE unique boss character/creature in the entire game. ONE! Fable 1 had (from the top of my head) SEVEN Fable 2 had two. The end boss (SPOILER) is a character introduced to you in the opening MINUTE of the game and he puts up next to no fight what so ever (Still better than Lucifer though)
- The Dog. Why Peter? Why did you put the dog in the game? It serves no relevance to the plot. In fact a character interacts with the Dog ONCE. ONCE! In the entire fucking story. said interaction lasts for three seconds. There's no emotional bond to build with it, there's reason to care what happens to it and there's not even a point to paying any attention to it other than when it acts like a fluffy metal detector. Even then it's path finding is broken so bad that you're better off looking for the treasure yourself. Seeing this dog had one good effect though. It made me want to stop playing the game and take my Dog for a walk. Even if it was raining outside. What would have been cool? If you had created some sort of creature that followed you around and acted like a creature in black and white. Casting spells and shit. That would have been cool. Barking constantly and making you want to stuff cotton wool in your ears isn't cool!
- I lost all connection to character and his story in the first few minutes of the game. It may possibly be a record. You see the thing is. Fable 3 assumes at points that you've already played the other Fable games. This is evident by nothing resembling a tutorial and no explanation the fundamentals that a new player would need to the story (about the Heroes guild, The Court of Shadow, Hero of Oakvale, how Hero abilities are preformed, why Heroes have an urge to eventually control etc. Luckily enough I know these answers. But I expect my character to ask these questions or at least be told about them, as we spend every waking hour with this character for what we're believed to be the stretch of about 2 years. In this time, none of the above is mentioned. Not even by Theresa how has literally been there since the beginning. And don't get me started on Hero blood line. (I'll talk about it anyway) When even one of your parents is a hero YOU BECOME A HERO. It doesn't skip children and it doesn't skip generations. Even in Fable 2 every single one of your kids would have the line "Daddy(/Mummy) Why can I do things the other children can't" A reference to the will powers evident in all his children. So why doesn't Logan have the power of will? It's a question that will never be answered however its a JOKE that the writers skipped over this fact and enraged me more than you would believe. I didn't believe for a second that the Prince/Princess in this story was a direct decedent of Scarlet Rose. Not for a second. On this note. Why doesn't the blood line ever get brought up again after Fable 1? In this characters blood there is the power TO END THE WORLD! even Theresa has the power to summon up from the void dark conjurations from the Old Kingdom and why doesn't she help with the events of the story. Other than being now over 700 years old. I feel that these sort of continuity errors (my best way to sum it up) have almost made the game unrecognizable as a Fable game. They should have just made it under a different name instead of tainting the original story like how it has been.
- The cock tease that was the Crawler. So there are some speculations that that the Crawler and Fable the Journey's Temptress are supposedly agents of The Court of Shadow, however this is just mere speculation as they both seem to have Shadow minions under their command. There's also speculation that they're agents of William Black (the first Hero, First Archon of the old world, creator of the Spire, Original wielder of the Sword of Aeons and the distant relative of the Hero of Oakvale. However this is also just speculation and is never touched upon in the actual games. Gamer's and Fable lore nerds like me have been praying for the return of Jack of Blades or other members of the Shadow Court. Instead we're presented with the Crawler. Now he does have some cool moments, resembling Banshees from Fable 2, which in turn resembled Screamers which were in turn, servants of Jack. However you never actually fight him, he's scared of light and he has next to NO power over a Hero. And this was supposed to be the main bad guy. The most evil thing since Jack? Yeah... I'm not very convinced. He was very disappointing and seemed to be a huge fucking middle finger to those of us who wanted to see Jack again.
- EVERY POINT made in the Angry Joe Show's video "32 reasons why Fable 3 sucked" I recommend that you watch it as there are actually 32 reasons why he hated the game. Such things include awful Co-Op, combat being too easy, the character not being able to die, the lack of menus, so many loading screens and many many more. Again, I highly recommend that you watch that video. It doesn't cover some of the points raised in this blog however.
I'll be honest with you, reader. I almost had a tear in my eye at how bad the Mass Effect 3 ending was. However this is a pale shade at the upset that I had at Fable 3. I know it's only a game. But to me it's also my childhood. Fable was how I interacted with my uncle whilst he was away with the navy. I used to level up his character, collect gold for him (I didn't realize how annoying that can be at the time). When I had a bad day at school, when depression got the better of me when I lied about things I shouldn't have and had to escape from the world. Fable 1 was my turn to game. It was escapism of the umpteenth degree for me. Some people have music, or books. I have video games and my own head. When someone RUBS SHIT into a story that you love and have a deep connection to you, you get pissed. Yes. I'm biased. Yes. Lion Head studios is effectively no more and there will be no more Fable games past this point unless someone has the balls to try and improve the cluster fuck if a mess this game is in. But this is a Blog. It's personal. When you destroy something that is dear to me. You make it personal. That's why I don't just Dislike Fable 3. I hate it!
... The Following picture is of a Cat.. I need to try n' cheer myself up! Tune in next time for Part 3...
Even the Lion is sad :(
Thanks for reading, If you have a positive or negative response let me know. If you think Sad Lion is Sad... let me know that too. I've been ThespianHunter... I'm going to cry in my pillow or some shit. I'll catch you next time.
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