Fable 2 review

This is your story

Fable 2 is a strange beast. It’s one of those titles that actually might be overlooked by many due to its release date, but will probably stand up as being one of the better games of the year. There’s a lot that’s been improved upon while a lot that still needs to be tweaked or minor additions that could have made this game a 10 out of 10 easily. Still, it’s an enjoyable experience for any gamer, whether or not they are fans of RPGs.

Story – 7/10

With a game that’s ambitious as Fable II, it’s a bit shocking that the story is almost underwhelming. Perhaps it’s due to insane amounts of hype, with Peter Molyneux referring to the game as being the one that fixes all of the problems and missing features of the original, but after playing some other newer games in different genres, it’s obvious that this is a weak factor. As did the original, this game takes you through the life of a hero that you are able to develop throughout the course of the adventure. While there is a lot that you can do in the world, the main story is fairly linear so don’t expect to get too sidetracked as was the case with Oblivion and most likely Fallout 3. Ultimately, the game is a quest for vengeance and justice, which is kick started by a plot twist in the first hour of gameplay. Aside from that, you do meet other significant characters, but part of the weakness of the game is that it relies heavily on a reputation system to unlock new quests, which can only be earned through side missions. So, while you might want to just press on through the game and follow the main story, eventually you’re going to be forced into doing side missions that have no impact on the story and actually detract from the experience because you kind of forget what it was that you were doing. The other characters you meet in your adventure all do feel as though they have their own lives and motives, which is a nice addition, but even with them, you’re really only on a few missions directly involving them so you won’t find yourself getting as attached as you would to your party in a traditional RPG. The end of the game also felt very…forgettable. I do like the fact that the game presented you with a primary villain at the beginning and you continue to pursue him throughout your life, but the ending just didn’t feel like it was what I was waiting for. The story in the game isn’t that bad and this would probably have been more impressive had their not been such high expectations. Lastly, there’s this really bizarre feeling that none of the characters go through any development. When you meet them, because they’re only with you for a short time, whatever it is that they portray, they stay there all the way through the end. On the plus side, the world that they crafted does feel as though it is actually a living environment with real human beings instead of AI that waits until you activate their trigger.



Gameplay – 10/10

I’m not going to lie: when I first started playing Fable II, I was absolutely loathing most of the gameplay mechanics. I didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t any range with the ranged weapons and that there was no zoom, there was just a basic hit for melee, there weren’t that many expressions and they didn’t seem to have any real effects. My list could go on and on with all of the things that are broken about the game, which is exactly why Fable II succeeds incredibly well here. Using a leveling system similar to that found in Oblivion, you gain 4 possible types of experience from fallen foes: Will (magic), Skill (ranged attack), Strength (…strength?) and General (…I’m not explaining this one). When you first encounter the experience orbs, it’s really confusing on what it is that you’re supposed to do. By holding down the right trigger, the hero summons all of the experience towards them, which can be used to buy and upgrade abilities. It’s in this part where you really start to see Fable II shine. Whereas most games that have this combat mechanic automatically level you up and force you to find or buy tomes to learn spells, Fable leaves the choice of what you do with the experience to you. By accessing the abilities section in your menu, the game shows you all of the possible skills that you can learn, and there are an insane amount of them. Generally speaking, most people are going to need to use melee combat simply so they can gain the toughness and physique skills, which increase HP and melee damage, but just a glimpse into the Skill section shows you how much this plays a part of the game. If you choose to focus on the Dexterity option, you’ll slowly start to gain more and more control over how you attack your foes from a distance. By the end of the game, I had this ability leveled up so that I could quickly dodge, zoom in, then aim for a head and scoring a headshot, which is an instant kill on most enemies. The Will screen has several spells from you to choose one and not a single one of them is useless. At lower levels, there’s not too much of a benefit, but if you focus specifically on one or two of these, you realize how important they are and how quickly they can turn the tides in combat. Speaking of these abilities, it’s important to know that whatever you choose to focus on has a direct impact on your characters appearance. If you choose to focus on magic, eventually your character shows glowing will lines running across their body. Focusing on melee makes your character more muscular. Ranged attacks allow you to slowly grow in height, and while none of those affect the real gameplay, it’s a nice little addition. There’s plenty of jobs and quests to be found, so you might actually find yourself taking the WoW approach of visiting a town, taking every quest possible, then completing them and gaining the reputation boost by finishing them in quick succession.




The job system is new to me here in console RPGs at least. You can find different jobs hiring throughout the world, but they’re basically minigames that earn you money. The better you do and the more gold you accumulate allows you to increase in that job skill, which earns you a higher base pay and more money as you max out your multipliers. Something else that really is a different perspective on RPGs is that you don’t ever really level up. Because you’re constantly trying to improve your abilities, it’s technically possible to defeat everything in the game if you can purchase a powerful enough weapon and are skilled with the in game combat mechanics. There’s the real estate and homeowning systems, which aren’t super deep, but are incredibly beneficial in the long run. As you earn money, instead of investing it in items for yourself, you could go buy property to move into alone or with your family or rent it out. If it’s a shop, you have direct control of the price margin, which can also affect your appearance. Marking up prices, while it may earn you more money, will affect your corruption stat which alters your appearance and people’s response to you. Marriage and having children is in the game, and it’s another nice addition that wasn’t really necessary. In order to convince people to marry you, you just have to do things they like, give them presents and… bam. Once I reached adulthood, it literally took me 5 minutes to get married for the first time, then another 2 to find a house and have a kid. While your child does grow, it’s important to know that they don’t do anything that affects the real game, so don’t expect to go back through the game again playing as your child. Peter Molyneux got too ambitious again, I guess! Last but definitely not least is the good and evil system. Most of the actions you do don’t really affect the outcome of the game, with a few minor exceptions. I took the evil approach from the outset and as a result, one of the towns in the game looked completely different when I got older and had a different group of citizens populating it. If you chose to do more and more nefarious deeds, you’ll eventually find yourself sprouting horns, with altered skin color, and citizens running in fear at your mere presence. While this might sound like a downside, it does have some nice benefits: unless they hate you, store owners are more inclined to give you discounts out of sheer fear for their lives and villagers will be so frightened that they give you presents (…what?) Sure, you could be nice and have all of the same things ultimately, but I mean…if I see a person that has a present, instead of wasting time and being nice, I could easily just turn off the safety mode and kill them to get it! Trust me, it saves a lot of time! The total playtime for me was 21 hours, but you might be able to finish it in 16 or so if you sprinted through everything and didn’t get involved in the marriage or property owning thing. Oh. There is no minimap, which means you’ll have to go into the menu, wait for it to load, then look at where you want to go and set it as an objective, leave, causing it to load again, then load the next scene. It’s not the best thing ever, but ultimately, it didn’t detract too much from my experience.



Sound – 6/10

This was a super weak effort in my opinion. There’s nothing in the game that really stands out to me when it comes to sound, especially after having playing Dead Space right before this. While there’s plenty of talking in the town, it really does sound like there are only about 3-4 voice actors/actresses for the hundreds of townsfolk you meet. I understand that it’s impractical to hire a lot of actors, but.. even the game points out during the loading screen that all of them sound the exact same. There could definitely have been some work done here. The weapon effects are pretty underwhelming as well, even considering that they are just standard swords and crossbows for the most part. The enemies don’t really sound as menacing as they look, with perhaps the exception of the bandits that you face which do occasionally yell something at you. The banshees are particularly creepy because of the altered voices they have, voices barely emanating above a whisper, but I only encountered 5 of them at the most in my playthrough, and they aren't around until the last few hours. There’s funny dialogue written in there, but you seldom get to hear it. Lastly, there’s the soundtrack. It’s a really good soundtrack but, there’s like..1 or 2 songs, just as in Morrowind. Taking that into consideration, I’ll take my same opinion and refer to the song as The Love Song Of Fable. Thank heavens for custom soundtracks! The Heroes also have some very distinct voices and each sounds injected with their own personality, sans the main character (who is a mute hero in the vein of Crono from Chrono Trigger).

Graphics – 8/10

When you first start up the game, you’ll probably be visually offended by the horrendous character models, which are the same as the ones from Fable 1 on Xbox, but with more detail. The world is just another drab city, full of browns. The main characters walking and running animations is, to put it a nice way, very animated and cartoony. With all of those negatives, it’s amazing how the weird character designs start to grow in you. Instead of trying to make hyper realistic characters, Lionhead stuck with a very cartoon-like style, but utilized a very imaginative color palate. The easiest way to tell that this was the look they set out to achieve is that almost none of the models suffer from any texture warping or jagged edges that usually results when people try to upscale lower resolution models. After you grow, you get to finally adventure into the world and it really is quite impressive. The entire world is actually reminiscent of Oblivion, but with the character models, it almost reminds me more of World of Warcraft. Due to the artistic style though, it’s very obvious that some are going to be a bit refrained in actually enjoying the game since it’s not really designed to look like something for everyone. Just think about it as if you’re reading a fairy tale, or… a fable! Ha! I made a pun!



Overall – 7/10

If you go into this title expecting a successor to Oblivion that features a more developed storyline, actions taking a strong effect on the world (such as completely changing it), playing as your child, etc, you’ll be completely let down here. The way the game was hyped portrayed it was like that, but in reality, it’s a bit closer to being a blend of World of Warcraft and Zelda. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do know a lot of people will probably pick this up expecting something a bit different. In terms of replayability, there are 3 different endings, but from personal experience, the one I made didn’t seem to make too much of an outcome on anything and doesn’t really make you feel like you need to play through it again. While the game is 20 hours, I would actually recommend most people to rent it if possible instead of investing 60$ into the title. There’s better purchases out there this holiday season, so wait for an inevitable price drop or pick it up as a rental.