About 50 or 60 years have passed since the events of Fable II, and the once idyllic land of Albion is now dimmed by the sooty pall of industry. The men, women, and grubby children of Bowerstone hunch beneath a bleak Victorian edifice of tottering smokestacks and grinding assembly lines, virtually enslaved to the tyrant king – and your big brother – Logan. It’s London circa 1860, basically.<\/p>\n
One thing leads to another, and you’re forced to flee the castle alongside your mentor, Sir Walter Beck, your butler, Jasper, and your furry four-legged friend, Major Bone (or whatever undoubtedly inferior name you decide to give him). The cogs and flywheels of Bowerstone’s factories must be turned around to civil revolution, and who better to lead them than a guy and his dog and maybe an STD.<\/p>\n
So, is it any good? The Fable franchise has always polarised gamers – people either love or hate the games, and this one won’t be breaking with that fine tradition. If you hated one or both of the previous games, it’s probably safe to assume you’ll hate this one too. And that you have no soul. For everyone else, then, Fable III is quite grand.<\/p>\n
The bad stuff first. The combat is simplistic and quickly becomes somewhat of a chore. You don’t even have to target enemies, you just keep mashing buttons and stuff eventually falls over dead. Including you, from time to time. At which point, you miraculously resurrect, and simply carry on mashing buttons, but now with a new scar somewhere on you. The scar might make me look totally butch, but everything else about this system makes me look totally unimpressed.<\/p>\n
It’s not much of an RPG, either, although I’d argue that was never the point of Fable anyway. Instead of managing character statistics, encumbrance, and lockpick chance failure rates, you’ll accrue a sort of esoteric hero currency called “Guild Seals” (it’s XP, it’s just not called XP) as you go along that you can spend to upgrade your three basic melee \/ ranged \/ magic attack powers, as well as unlock new spells and useful things like the ability to buy and rent property. Apparently it’s not as obvious as just, you know, applying for a bank mortgage.<\/p>\n
There are also a number of technical issues and glitches. There’s significant, if only occasional, frame dropping; the Tinkerbell fairydust trail that points you in the direction of your current objective is, to say the least, rather temperamental; and most people will discover that Jasper decides to shut up forever at some point during the game. Although I was able to complete the game without it breaking, Lionhead’s forums have been inundated with complaints about a few serious issues that for the moment necessitate waiting on a fix or restarting entirely. <\/p>\n
But there’s so much to love about Fable III. The inconsistent objective trail notwithstanding, the interface has been substantially improved over its last iteration, with a hub “Sanctuary” location (itself quite reminiscent of Black & White’s Creature Room) replacing all menus, and featuring an interactive map of the world for quick travel and keeping track of current and available quests, as well as inventory and the ever-important wardrobe management, daaaaahling.<\/p>\n
The co-op actually works now. And it works very well indeed; in fact, the game is mostly rather more enjoyable with two players. Local co-op players will still have to stay reasonably close to one another, sharing screen space, but online visitors can wander around and do their own thing as long as they stay in the same map area (much like Borderlands, either player attempting to leave this space will prompt the other to join them). While you’re technically playing as a henchie in another player’s world, you’ll bring along your own hero, your own dog, and all your own gear.<\/p>\n
Much like its predecessors, you’ll be busy making cash a lot of the time, and the game presents loads of opportunities to do so. Alongside the regular hero-for-hire business of rescuing brats and catching chickens, you can take on jobs rolling pie dough, forging swords, and playing the lute, and\/or building and maintaining a gargantuan real estate empire. Then you can blow it all on hookers and guns.<\/p>\n
The social system has been overhauled, as well as simplified – now, instead of an expression wheel, initiating interaction with the inhabitants of Albion offers up a random selection of options from whatever expressions you’ve unlocked. The subtle matter of turning a friendship into a romantic relationship is now handled with its due caution and care – it’s necessarily deliberate, and inadvertently farting at the wrong time will no longer result in some submissive fetishist following you around the place and nagging for a wedding ring. <\/p>\n
But Fable III’s real chemistry is a formidable combo of superlative, authentically L-O-L writing backed up by a veritable who’s-who of British TV and film personalities. John Cleese as Jasper is an obvious delight, and Stephen Fry returning as the outrageously rakish Reaver is as fabulous as ever, but it’s the criminally underrated Mark Heap who totally steals the show, reprising his role as Green Wing’s pathologically neurotic Dr Statham, now reinvented as a pathologically neurotic… well, let’s just say that watching him sing tenderly to his extensive collection of recently demonic garden gnomes as the sun sank in a dappled sky over Brightwall Village is definitely going down as one of the most surreal experiences of my life. <\/p>\n
It might be a bit clumsy at times, but Fable III thoroughly overwhelms its few shortcomings with heaps of charm, humour, and good fun. If you enjoyed previous Fable titles, or are looking for something really unique in a console catalogue otherwise mostly dominated by mutually indistinguishable FPSes, I just can’t recommend it enough. <\/p>\n
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