![]() I am the king. Albion is a very different place from when your parents ruled the throne. Your brother has become a maniacal dictator with no regard for the lives and livelihoods of his subjects. You, a lone hero, must gather an army and overthrow him before Albion is overrun by a mysterious evil darkness.
1. Gameplay
Unfortunately, the entire game leaves much to be desired. There are a large number of elements that make the vast majority of the game more work than play and the rest of it is almost entirely combat. Players who want to achieve the best ending will end up spending hours upon hours of property purchasing and maintenance using a system that is poorly designed and sometimes frustratingly slow. Houses must be “repaired” every few hours or else the tenants refuse to pay rent, but the repair process involves the player looking at each individual property on a map and repairing the house manually. The game requires the player to make certain alliances regardless of whether the player wants to be good or evil. There is some choice to the alliances, but it’s mostly superficial and said alliances did very little to the second half of the game. The game has a nasty habit of surprising the player with monumentally important decisions without giving the player any way to go back and review said decisions. But that didn’t end up mattering because most of the choices will inevitably involve the player having to fight someone new or gain the support of the leader of a faction. This ultimately led to the overthrow of the king, which was one of the few battles that felt like it had true purpose and played well as an introduction to the second half of the game. But immediately after completing the overthrow of the king, I was forced to sit on the throne and make some very important and somewhat costly decisions. This wasn’t so bad for me since I had made sure to accumulate more than enough gold before this point in the game, but someone who was unprepared for the course of events could easily be caught off-guard. I had two major problems with the second half of the game. First, even after the player becomes King he’s still forced to run around and do mundane tasks for average citizens. For example, citizens will still ask him to get them gifts in order to be friends. Think about how you’d talk to your butler. Now compare that to how you’d talk to a monarch or the President. It’s a little different, right? Evidently not in Albion. Second, and more importantly, there’s nothing to do after you save the kingdom! You’re still king and presumably still in charge of making important decisions that affect the overall outcome of the kingdom, but evidently no one ever has any major conflicts after the kingdom is saved. You never sit on the throne again. Not only was the decision-making process one of the highlights of the game for me, but it gave some purpose to the vast amounts of wealth that the player would continue to accumulate after the conclusion of the game. Since the vast majority of the items in the game cost a paltry sum compared to the hourly income of the player, I ended up getting a huge pile of gold and had nothing to do with it. It would be like having $1 million and only being able to buy $0.99 cheeseburgers from McDonalds. There are only so many cheeseburgers you can buy before you consider the entire thing a waste of your money. The end result is a game that feels like it was barely finished. There’s enough here for a main questline and a few side quests, but when the vast majority of my time is spent “farming” for gold so I can buy more property to get more gold, things get boring really quickly. If I wanted to spend my time earning money while being bored, I’ll work overtime.
Despite the fact that I spent nearly 20 hours playing Fable 3, the real meat of the content could have probably made up 5 or 6 hours. That’s a decent amount of time compared to some games, but considering there is very little replayability after the player gets the “best” ending, this ends up being very short. The vast majority of the player’s time will be spent in combat, which is good for some games but for a game that is supposed to have a deep, intricate story ends up making everything seem very shallow. Even then, the game rewards players who take their time completing tasks. The idea is that the player is supposed to accumulate at least 6.5 million gold before “Day 0” in order to save every citizen of Albion. Players who avoid completing the main questline until the very end of the game are much more likely to be able to get the required gold and make all of the popular “good” choices. Those that rush through this game will end up either losing a large portion of the population of Albion or becoming hated by the citizenry.
But fine, it was one action and it ended up being a drop in the bucket compared to how much good I did. Yet for some reason, the only thing people ever talked to me about was the fact that I killed the former king. They always asked “Why did you kill that person?” over and over again even though it had been over a year since I had sentenced the former king to death. The townspeople completely glanced over my true accomplishments, including the fact that I almost single-handedly saved them from a supernatural invasion force that would have wiped out the entire population of Albion. There were lots of other elements that annoyed me to no end. The “trail” that would point the player in the right direction often times pointed in an incorrect direction or sometimes didn’t appear at all. The dog that’s supposed to help you find stuff was rather pointless in the long run. The overhead map looked nothing like how each area was set up, making finding specific locations impossible. The jobs didn’t pay enough money and lagged horribly for no reason, often times making it impossible to complete them at higher levels. But in reality these things weren’t as frustrating as they were disappointing. In fact, other than the poor dialog and the points made above, the only thing that was truly aggravating was the fact that “split-screen” cooperative gameplay was shown on the same screen, which meant that the camera was always controlled by one player. This was a problem if the other player wanted to do something independently because the game simply wouldn’t allow it. Both players had to stick within a certain, very tight radius or else neither player would be able to go anywhere. It made it very difficult to do anything cooperatively. 2. Parental Notices
The player can also use a small assortment of spells that attack enemies, each to different effect. However, while spells like “shock” can pin an enemy in place with small bolts of electricity, similar spells such as “fireball” do little lasting visual damage. The one exception comes in the form of “executions”. These maneuvers are a sort of flourishing finish move for enemies. The move will vary depending on the enemy type, and this variation changes the level of violence, but in general ranged or small melee weapons perform relatively mild executions while large melee weapons (such as hammers and axes) lead to some rather brutal executions. The executions do occur, but the most violent ones only occur under specific circumstances. They only occur against certain types of enemies, with certain types of weapons, and at random times.
Before I go on, don’t glance over this section and assume that this game has suddenly become less “adult” in terms of sexuality. All of the elements are still completely there. The player is still technically able to have sex with other characters. The game includes condoms so that the player can have “protected sex”, and if the player fails to use a condom occasionally he will contract an STD. No sex is ever shown, but it is definitely audible when the screen fades to black. Slapping sounds, squeaking springs (as of something bouncing on a mattress), the participants laughing and talking, and carnival music is all heard. Yes, carnival music. It took an already slightly awkward scene and made it even stranger. I felt like the scene was more like something from a freaky circus than a sex scene. The player also supposedly has the opportunity to participate in “group sex”. The idea is that the player takes multiple people back to the bedroom and participates in some sort of orgy. The results are exactly the same as normal “sessions”, but the problem is it was nearly impossible to get this mechanic to work correctly. The player can only lead one other character at a time, which makes trying to keep characters in one area close to a bed nearly impossible. The only time that I definitely managed to get it to work properly was when I had a cooperative partner in addition to another character. The only time having sex would even make any difference was when the player was trying to procreate. As with previous Fable games, it is possible for the player to have children. The player must first be married, then have unprotected sex with their spouse. Sometimes this will result in the conception and birth of a child, both of which happen instantly while the screen is black. The game simply fades in where the character is standing in front of a crib. Voila, the miracle of reproduction without any of those awkward conversations about birds and bees. In the end the entire sexual element in this game seemed more pointless than it had been in previous games. It was difficult to accomplish and even more pointless than it had been. I’m still not sure why the developers even bothered to continue including it (aside from the ability to have children). Those players who are looking for a game that will “feed their fantasy” may find this enjoyable, but this is no longer a prominent feature within the game.
However, the player will have the option of modifying the drinking laws in Albion. When the player becomes king, the opportunity will arise to outlaw alcohol, keep the law the same as before (which results in only a few, rare cases of public drunkenness), or allow alcohol to flow unrestricted. If this last choice is selected, public drunkenness becomes rampant. Imagine you’re walking down the street, which is sparsely populated with a few other random pedestrians. Now imagine that every single one of them has been drinking so heavily that they’re puking on the sidewalk. Evidently that’s what happens when alcohol use is not restricted in Albion. It was fairly gross, but anyone who has an even remote understanding of alcohol consumption will realize this is supposed to be satirical. There is also at least one instance of characters smoking cigars. However, the player is never able to smoke.
3. Other Factors
The player is able to do things like steal and kill civilians, but these acts do very little to forward the player’s overall goals. So you stole a necklace or a teddy bear? There’s nothing you can do with it except sell it or hope that someone asks for it as a gift. Killing people is even more pointless, unless you want people to hate you. Some of the “expressions” that the player can do to random people could be considered anti-law. I’m pretty sure farting in someone’s face is illegal in most states.
The player is also able to get certain weapons that can be upgraded by completing certain challenges. The upgrades would sometimes add on a magical ability, but most of the time it would just add some odd stat (i.e. hitting an enemy gives the player 1 gold). Completing challenges might change the way the weapon appeared (i.e. make it glow more), but I couldn’t tell if this was an effect of my moral alignment or an effect of the weapon’s “level”. There are a good number of enemies that will use magic against the player. The Hobbes, miniature goblin-esque creatures, have a special class that is able to throw green orbs and summon skeleton hobbes. A somewhat aggravating class of mercenary will shoot fireballs at the player. At the end of the campaign, if the player chose to be morally polar the player will get a set of wings that will appear under certain circumstances. Morally good players will get a set of angel wings, while morally evil players will get a set of devil wings.
Executions happen fairly frequently in Fable 3. The first is very early on. The player is given a choice by his brother (the current king). Someone is going to die (why is never really defined). The player has to choose whether it will be the player’s significant other or a group of innocent people. It’s supposed to be based on a classic “the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few” argument, but the “execution” of the scene is so poor that it left me wondering more about the writers who made the scene and less about the characters who participated in it. Executions like this occur multiple times throughout the course of the game. One character, Reaver, executes a worker in front of everyone else as a demonstration of his power and dominance over the working class. One of the player’s friends, Major Swift, is executed by the King as well in order to demonstrate what will happen to anyone who even thinks of rebelling against the monarch. After the monarchy is overthrown, the player becomes the monarch and is able to decide the fate of the former King. The player can choose to either execute Logan (the former King) or spare him. If the player chooses to execute him, a brief cutscene plays and Logan is never directly mentioned again. Kidnapping There are two instances of kidnapping that I found in Fable 3. The first is when a man’s fiancée is kidnapped and held for ransom. The man asks the player to go and rescue his fiancée. The player also has the opportunity to find some “involuntary workers” for a man. Basically, the player is selling people into slavery. The act will give the player a good number of “evil” morality points but also give the player some gold. However, there was only one mission involving this and it’s extremely easy to avoid completely. Slavery
As I mentioned before, there is a mission that involves the player finding someone to sell into slavery. However, this mission is extremely easy to avoid completely.
1 Comment
Jonah Mann
1/31/2013 04:11:46 pm
I'm not criticizing anyone here, but honestly, i think this game deserves a recommended age of 16 and a minimum age of 15. I know that may seem like a bit of an overreaction, but topics such as Marriage, Group Sex, (Secret) Polygomy, Childbearing etc. are just too complicated and controversial for even a 14-year-old to understand. In addition, STD's have no serious effect on the player in this game. I hardly think that's a good message to be sending across to teens. It's just my own personal opinion, so you don't have to listen, but I just think it's worth noting.
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