Review By

Thom Moyles

My answer is that there is, and that to treat the game solely as a serious exploration of morals is to damn it with the weight of expectation, rather than allowing the game to succeed on its own merits.

Perhaps the most important word to think about when examining Fable is "serious." It's important because the game is neither serious nor does it take itself seriously. Instead, it has a pervasive sense of humor, possibly because the developers realized that it would be impossible to reconcile the various possible acts of the player within Fable's various systems of interaction and maintain a credible level of pathos.

Fable is highly aware of its status as a game, but not in a subversive manner, like Metal Gear Solid 2. Rather, Fable pokes subtle fun at the clichés and "videogame logic" that hold the game together. The humor is easy to gloss over, but it seems that the developers recognized that the experience would not work as a completely serious one and instead constantly lighten the mood with jokes. The end result, however, is not entirely seamless and feels schizophrenic, as the game never makes it clear whether it intends itself to be a self-parody or not.

But this doesn't put the player totally off-kilter because Fable is not concerned with creating a realistic game-world ("realistic" in the sense of representing our own world) so much as it is with creating a world in which the player can identify logical systems and experiment with them. The emphasis then is less on progressing through the game toward the end, but more on the interactions that the player carries out with the game world.

A major part of how the player interacts with the world is through the morality of the character, as represented by a simple index. As Dan pointed out, the quantification of the character's actions often feels arbitrary or incoherent when compared to our own complex ethical systems. But, if a game is to attempt to craft an algorithm that can reflect the actions/decisions of the player, there will have to be calculations taking place to translate these actions into some kind of discrete system. Part of the problem of doing this translation of decisions into numbers is that Fable is one of very few games that are interested in providing a mechanical representation of moral behavior, which means that there isn't a large body of work to draw upon. The result is that Fable is still taking baby steps in providing some sort of ethical mechanics.

Taking into account that Fable doesn't take itself seriously, the play-oriented nature of its mechanics and the experimental nature of providing discrete values for ethical behaviors, it should not be surprising that Fable's good/evil system works like it does. The point is not to try and simulate a real-world morality system, but instead to allow the player to manipulate his or her relationship with the world of the game, including the simulated inhabitants. The result, like most of Fable, is half-baked, but it should not be rejected out of hand as a false step. Often, failures have more to teach us than successes.

Like the undercurrent of self-parody, the game's focus on interaction as opposed to progression also sometimes feels confusing or distracting. Although it may be a satire of the fact that role-playing games are constantly urging the character to hurry, Fable still does not allow the player to feel comfortable engaging in the very activities that make up the meat of the game. This is a fancy way to say that the pacing of the game is poor, and perhaps a reason why so many have complained about the length of the game—less because of the actual hours spent playing, but more because the game is constantly shoving you along rather than allowing you to enjoy what it has to offer.

I don't want to sound like I'm championing the game as something wonderful or relegating it to the scrap heap. Fable is an unfinished, often unfocused game that has quite a number of flaws, many of which have been addressed by Dan and some of which I hope I've addressed here. But at the same time, there's quite a bit of Fable that works, almost in spite of itself, to make the game entertaining and intriguing. The game is not the revelatory experience that most expected it to be, but it is an enjoyable experience with hints of what could be possible given more a more cohesive design.

Anon E. Mouse says...
This is just because i think Fable is fantastic. I haven't read the whole review because i got more angry with every line i read. Fable is a very good game, the world of Fable is beautiful and there are lots of things to do. Do you even have fun at playing games? You gave it a 4,0 , only very bad games get such a rating, and Fable is far from that. I think you should stop playing games and find yourself something that will make you happy, because it seems to me that you dont have a lot of fun playing games.

RATING: 9.5
Published: October 13, 2004

kaldo says...
"So the flirting and marrying skills that I learned in the game can't even be used in the one sub-quest where they would fit. That's just bad game design"

No, that's just bad reviewing. You played 3 times and not once married anyone other then Lady Grey? You've just proven how little you actually played the game and how ridiculously unworthy you are of even writing a review for this game.

And by 'played this game', I don't mean 'time spent rushing through all the quests until it's finished'.

This game is designed that should you wish to rush things, you can. If not, don't. If you've never played an RPG before, then it's the best game I'd ever recommend to those in such a situation. I'd loved to of started off with something like this, rather then get thrown in the deep end with some of the other un-intuitive games out there.

At least have the class to read about features implemented, heck - read the freakin' manual! or how hundreds of thousands of people have worked out how to marry, before you start ranting and raving about 'bad game design'.

It is people like you that stop people from playing genuinely good games, because they can't get over themselves long enough to write a well balanced review.

Even considering this game anything less then 70% is purely for attention seeking purposes.

(Editor's note: This complaint has been a fairly common one about the review, and is based on a slight misreading of the text—the reviewer complained that no actual characters other than Lady Grey could be married, i.e. characters with names and written dialogue and a bearing on the plot. The 'bad game design' comment referred to the fact that it was odd that all of the marrying skills can only be used in a plot-irrellevant fashion, despite the fact that there is a plot-impacting marriage. The reviewer played the game for nearly fifty hours, marrying a number of people and thoroughly exploring the minigames, sidequests, and quirks of character interaction. And he still hated the game. Go figure.)

RATING: 8.5
Published: October 20, 2004

conner01_99 says...
While I don't think that the game is as bad as the above review makes it out to be I was expecting a lot more from it based on the hype. Maybe I just miss understood but I thought you started out as a kid and grew up over time in the game world. You don't. You're young for all of about a half hour. You go from 10 to 16 to 23 in a matter of about an hour and then you start the Quests. You can't name your character and the story is anything but open ended. On the good side I like the idea of the game world reacting to your actions and how your actions can effect your looks. I guess as a die hard RPG fan it was a little too much Action Adventure with a little bit of choose your own adventure mixed in. Now if they could mix all of that character personality and relationship development into a game like Morrowind I would give that game a 10.

RATING: 6.5
Published: October 27, 2004

flush80 says...
(Editor's Note: This review has not been edited in any way.)

this son of a bitch reviewer doesnt know what he is talking about, must be homosexual. This is the first game where i can have sex with girls if i want to. maybe he want too busy banging the guys that he didnt notice the sexy girls, this game rules

RATING: 9.5
Published: February 16, 2005

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