Fable 3

[Patters]

What other games these days have done anything but have a two-sided sliding scale? Knights of the Old Republic did go against the fabric by having what you'd expect to be inherently "good" actions actually turn out to have "evil" consequences, but I haven't experienced any game recently that uses the two-sided scale in any way you wouldn't suspect.

The Witcher.

[pabosher]

On that note, The Witcher 2 looks amazing.

[Orv]

What other games these days have done anything but have a two-sided sliding scale?

As previously stated, The Witcher and Dragon Age did not have a fixed definite-moral-compass, which was quite nice.

To be honest, I think I'm more disappointed with Fable for doing it than I might be for another game, because Molyneux just continues to promise better morality systems, and fails to deliver.

I like the guy, I really do. But he annoys the gamer part of me with frightening regularity.

[Murdoc]

As previously stated, The Witcher and Dragon Age did not have a fixed definite-moral-compass, which was quite nice.

To be honest, I think I'm more disappointed with Fable for doing it than I might be for another game, because Molyneux just continues to promise better morality systems, and fails to deliver.

I like the guy, I really do. But he annoys the gamer part of me with frightening regularity.

I like Fable, but overall I feel the same way, I mean it has a lot of potential since they do so much right, yet so much wrong(drop the fucking fart jokes already, it's dumb, actually all the humor in fable is dumb, except for the write up descriptions of items)

I will say this though, Fable 2 did introduce many elements that did hit this ambiguous grey area and really defined heroism and selfishness that all other games I've played haven't touched.

The idea of personal sacrifice to be good and a hero that was presented in Fable 2 was pretty ground breaking.

[Roderick]

I've been getting increasingly frustrated with any sort of representation of morality in games in the form of bars, karma or whatever binary (or not!) system. The big mistake developers make is thinking that just because they have moral choices in their game, they need to make it into a gameplay mechanic.

BUT THEY DON'T.

Using it in gameplay mechanics only causes the player's moral choices to become min-maxing decisions based on whatever perks either way (good/evil) brings. It robs those choices of any real roleplaying value. Imagine a game that doesn't track your morality, but simply lets the interesting moral choices be their own reward. Suddenly, the whole experience is much more fluid and you choose based on what you actually feel like, on what seems most exciting, rather than thinking 'golly, I went for the 'good' path, so now I'm stuck with it or I won't get the Good ending or the Good perks all the way to the top'.

I increasingly can't believe many developers don't understand this.

[toblix]

But what should they use to determine whether your eyes are glowing Evil Red or Holy White?

[Orv]

But what should they use to determine whether your eyes are glowing Evil Red or Holy White?

I have this horrible feeling, that if someone created a moral ambiguity system with shades of grey and black and white as is real life, either the game itself would suffer, it would be the entire game or the universe would collapse in on itself.

(I'm having this horrible problem with run-on sentences lately and I do not know why. . .)

[Roderick]

It's so strange that Fable 2 had the right idea when it came to clothing: it (usually) does NOTHING for you, so whatever you're wearing boils down purely to your own fancy. Which is great, 'cause now you're wearing exactly what you want to, it's the deepest expression of yourself. But then when it comes to morality, which is the whole fucking point of their game, they fall into the trap of removing any real choice.

Here's the thing. Imagine if Mass Effect didn't track your choices and put them into a paragon/renegade bar. That would increase the freedom you feel and experience a thousandfold. As soon as you understand how these bars work in games, you're stuck. The first decision you make as to your alignment is the one you're stuck with for the rest of the game. The whole point of having moral choices is made null and void right there, at the start.

Interestingly, I spoke to a Bioware developer last year on the Gamescom in Cologne about this, and he told me my point had never been raised in the team at all. It had just never occurred to them.

[SiN]

Interestingly, I spoke to a Bioware developer last year on the Gamescom in Cologne about this, and he told me my point had never been raised in the team at all. It had just never occurred to them.

Weird! I've definitely thought the same thing. I don't mind when moral dilemmas make incidental changes to the storyline. I expect there to be narrative consequences to my actions. However, there's a fine line between a subset of characters reacting to you according to a decision you made, versus good/bad ending depending on the moral stat or whatever.

In Fable 3, it would be interesting if you made political decisions that were not good/evil, but liberal/conservative. When you become King, certain groups of people would be pissed at you, others would support you. Crucially, both groups are justified in their feelings. You've pissed people off because your thinking is different, not necessarily wrong or right, good or evil.

Cheers,

Mo

[Roderick]

Just to be clear on this, I have no problems whatsoever with moral choices having in-game consequences as they would have in real life. In fact, that's what makes it interesting in the first place. Otherwise, why bother? My grief is purely with the inclusion of a 'game' mechanic on top of those moral choices, systematizing it and thereby lessening the experience in the ways I've mentioned above.

[Thrik]

The biggest problem with most games that have a good/evil mechanic is simply the inclusion of a way of tracking it visually. In real life you don't really change appearance or have some metre telling you how evil you are — it's just the way you are, and people who know about you will act accordingly.

I don't mind the appearance changing a bit as Fable is a fantasy story and such universes often have characters that look distinctly good or evil (ala Lord of the Rings), but it shouldn't be too extreme and the metre is definitely a step too far. Such a feature should be subtly woven throughout the game rather than being treated as a gimmick.

As a side-note I think the approach to good/evil in Black & White 2 was probably the best balance I've seen, with no ostentatious tracking and more focus on the world and people changing around you. It felt more like something that was simply one part of the game rather than something they were saying "Look at this!" about.

[juv3nal]

Yo dawg, I heard you you like roleplaying games so we put a roleplaying game in your roleplaying game.

One of the elaborate side-quests in Fable III sucks your hero into a tabletop role-playing game. Shrunken into a new fantasy world your hero gets new, silly perks and upgrades. I earned my hero "+30% self-importance" as I ran around trying to rescue a damsel in distress. As you play "The Game" the Fable characters who invited you into it can be heard talking about the whole affair. They are the game masters, joking about the rules they've created, debating each other's design decisions, declaring at one moment that this is "the worst game ever," and, most ridiculous of all, doing the voice-acting for all of their characters.

[Roderick]

That sounds like pretty typical Lionhead fun. It's what they're pretty good at, so I expect this to be a good time

[Gwardinen]

I just finished Fable 3, and while I loved the game in general I feel like I need to vent about the issues I had at the end. You're probably better off not reading this if you're not already past the revolution stage of the game.

As a combination of the one track no control save system and a complete lack of warning that the game was now railroading me into the final confrontation, I was not able to put as much money into the treasury as I wanted.

I was playing it good and having a hard time keeping the coffers filled, but had bought a bunch of commercial properties in order to be able to generate so much income towards the end that I would be able to give of my own fortune to fill the treasury.

This plan was going fine until the last couple of king days didn't give me any warning that I wouldn't be able to get out of the sequence of events and finish generating and then depositing the gold. Since the save system doesn't allow you to save separately from the autosaves at any point, I had nowhere to fall back to because it had already autosaved more than once since the point at which I've now realised I would have had to stop. As a result, I went into the final confrontation with nothing in my treasury and if you're at the correct point in the story you should know roughly what that means.

Strangely, I'm actually even more annoyed by the fact that the ending made only bare mention of this fact (apart from a nasty dialog box at the end) and now I'm torn between annoyance at being a failure of a king and annoyance at having it not really explored that I'm a failure of a king. I understand that particular choice, at least, as it would hardly have been fun to end the game with "you suck" too much, but this whole problem could have been easily avoided anyway.

It's like Lionhead craves that imperfection inherent in every one of their games - I've pretty much loved them all and yet every one of them has really disappointed me in some way or another. It's just a shame that Fable 2 & 3 had to do it with generally unimportant crap like petty UI stuff or bugs or bad scripting or save functionality.

[toblix]

I've played this for about five hours now, and it was very familiar right away. It's clearly the same engine, with some minor tweaks like DOF (the terrible kind that everyone uses that only blurs inside the model). The new menu-less interface is just terrible, terrible shit. Someone obviously came up with the idea that, if they didn't have menus, the player would be more engrossed and things would feel more natural. The solution, they found, was to have the player walk around on top of the menu, as if that's better. That you have to press start, walk over to the map and click A twice just to see an awful, almost useless minimap is a horrible step backwards from Fable 2, and I don't even remember what they did in that, but it couldn't've been as terrible as this. Also, the sound delay when playing lute is just idiotic and breaks what could've been a fun little minigame.

Still, it's beatiful, all the locations beg to be explored, the combat is not bad, and the voices are as well done as always. I really like the competitive stuff and achievement progress popping up all the time (so much for no GUI...) Being regularly reminded that Marek's had 2 sexual encounters really makes me want to one-up him.

Also, a weird thing happened whilst I was making pies. A guy from my friend list popped up and started shooting lightning everywhere. There was this voice chat thing that transmitted all the dialogue from his game over to me, which created a weird echo, making me fail at pie-making.

I was happy to see there are no ridiculous achievements requiring me to do some lame job for hours on end.

[Garple]

Also, a weird thing happened whilst I was making pies.

This is a funny sentence.

[Roderick]

Gwardinen, I had exactly what you experienced just last night.

Extreme fucking rage during the credits. I had laid out my plans perfectly, built up a kingdom of pure virtue and being able to save everyone with enough time. Then they push you through WITHOUT WARNING past the point of no return. What a fucking joke. Fable, the game that's all about choices! Fable, whose second half is all about tactical planning! But we won't let you choose when to end it all, you'll just have to roll the dice.

It's incredibly treacherous too: the first few kingly days are only 30 days apart, making you believe in the last day (which is about 135 days away from the year's end) that you'll have plenty of time. Really, I just can't imagine how Lionhead could have made such an amateur mistake. It really, really spoils so much of the game. Unfathomably stupid and unnecessary

The ending itself was a typically weak Fable affair as well. The final level was fun enough and the encounter at the end wasn't bad at all. But the cutscene afterwards was gratuitous and boring (everyone thanking you and recounting your good deeds instead of showing you). It could have been real emotional. It could have been epic, if they had showed you what was happening in the kingdom during and after the attack. But it feels rushed and cut short. I'm always so surprised at how bad endings can be in games, as it's usually rather easy to point out how it could have been much, much better, even using assets that are already there.

I also feel that the stories of Logan and Reaver, the two bad guys, didn't have a satisfying ending either. As it is, the Reaver character could have been a lot more interesting, if, perhaps, they would have showed him fighting alongside everyone to fend off the invading enemy. Reaver's an evil dude, but there was a sense (especially in Fable 2) that he'd come through at the end, if only out of purest self-preservation against a greater threat.

All in all, I liked playing the game though. Most of the times it felt like a rehash of Fable 2, perhaps a little less 'epic'. But there were moments of beauty in this game to parallel the best of the rest, and I really liked the king mechanic. And as I've stated before, the comedy is really something else.

[Nachimir]

The new menu-less interface is just terrible, terrible shit. Someone obviously came up with the idea that, if they didn't have menus, the player would be more engrossed and things would feel more natural. The solution, they found, was to have the player walk around on top of the menu, as if that's better. That you have to press start, walk over to the map and click A twice just to see an awful, almost useless minimap

This is the first I've heard of this. It sounds like 90s multimedia CD ROM, hypertext fiction levels of awfulness.

[toblix]

This is the first I've heard of this. It sounds like 90s multimedia CD ROM, hypertext fiction levels of awfulness.

Don't get me wrong, they've dressed it all up to be consistent with the fiction. The menu is the sanctuary, and the submenus (weapon, clothing, money, etc.) are connected rooms. Instead of selecting things you walk up to the mannequin or weapons rack and use it. I'm sure it sounded like a great idea.

[Nachimir]

Sounds awful.

dFUlAQZB9Ng

[toblix]

Fun fact: that is a real thing.

[Thrik]

I've been playing it and really enjoying it so far. I'm just about to win the Bowerstone resistance's support, however far in that is.

It's definitely only an iterative improvement over Fable 3 in most respects, being extremely familiar but new in a similar way to how things like the Call of Duty games evolve (ie: not that much). However what refinements are there are generally positive. Not having to constantly mash a button to collect orbs is very much appreciated, and the new way of upgrading weapons is good.

I do think some things were unnecessarily simplified, which is a criticism I've seen widely. For example there's absolutely no reason to take away the ability to choose specific expressions towards villagers. Also the inability to switch spells on the fly is irritating, as is the apparent removal of advanced weapon techniques (eg: timing your hits perfectly to produce a combo) — unless I've just not gotten to that stage yet.

But it is mostly good, and to be honest getting to have an entire new adventure in the Fable universe is in itself massively enjoyable for me because it is truly unique. I love how old locations from the preceding games continue to reappear, (d)evolved appropriately. Also the story so far has been most engrossing.

I like the new 'menu' and map incidentally, especially after realising you can use the d-pad to shortcut into the various rooms. The map is a huge improvement over Fable 3's (which wasn't a map at all, just a list of quests), making many things like finding shops, buying places, etc a lot easier.

[toblix]

This is really fun but holy shit the minimap is terrible. As a shortcut for buying an repairing buildings it's all right, but have you tried using it... as an actual map? You know, for navigation? It's useless, it's shit. This is the worst thing!! The map doesn't look like the actual place! It's like they made the mini-maps really early on and didn't update then when they changed the actual locations. The terrain, roads and landmarks are incorrect. Imagine a map of Paris that has just some random lines and a cartoony Eiffel Tower model in the upper right corner. That's how terrible it is! And just when you thought I couldn't possibly come up with more shit about the mini-map, I'll leave you with this fucking gem of multimillion dollar game design: it doesn't even show where you are on the map.

Anyway, I'm buying property like nobody's business, and the cash comes rolling on back.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The new menu-less interface is just terrible, terrible shit. Someone obviously came up with the idea that, if they didn't have menus, the player would be more engrossed and things would feel more natural.

And that's also why The Movies sucked so hard. God, I hated that interface!

[Roderick]

I get the overall impression that Fable 3 got a lot less love and care than Fable 2. The development time seems to mirror this: 2 years versus a multitude of that. As a result, it feels a little less meaty and well thought-out.

For instance

the Chesty sidequests. In part 2 there was a whole area involved and more side story. In part 3 it's a lot less, just a chess battle. Gnome placement seems a lot more lacklustre and less inventive than gargoyle placement. I could go on.