Fable III: The Chicken Rebellion

[ThunderPeel2001]

Huh. I saw this for sale, like actually for sale, last weekend at my local store. Is it out yet or not?

[Thrik]

The Chicken Rebellion? What's that? First I've ever heard of it and Google turns up nothing particularly insightful.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The Chicken Rebellion? What's that? First I've ever heard of it and Google turns up nothing particularly insightful.

It's just a silly subtitle, done in the time-honoured Idle Thumbs fashion. Apparently I failed.

uHB6P8IKi9Y

[Thrik]

Oh. Fable 3's been out since last Autumn — I finished it well before Christmas. Or are you on about the PC version which is meant to be out next week?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Oh. Fable 3's been out since last Autumn — I finished it well before Christmas. Or are you on about the PC version which is meant to be out next week?

That would explain it. I keep seeing pre-release stuff (like on Steam) and I don't recall chatter about it here, so I assumed it hadn't been released yet. I fail again!

[Denial]

The PC version is out tomorrow in the UK. I've been playing it for a couple of days... I put a lot of time into Fable 3 on XBox, and generally enjoyed it, but it's definitely a Fable game - the combat isn't hardcore at all, and even on the "challenging" mode on PC it only really gets dangerous when there are too many enemies on screen for you to be able to roll out of the way successfully.

In terms of which platform it's best on - well, it's prettier on the PC, at high detail settings, and keyboard shortcuts de-hassle some elements, but it's not a hugely different experience. The mouse feels oddly extraneous to most of the gameplay, and much of the time I found myself navigating the world using the Fahrenheit controls - WASD to move, arrow keys to rotate the camera. I played with the idea of remapping the mouse buttons to the keyboard also, which works basically for everything except targeted firearms combat (which uses right click to aim and left-click). That said, although it's fun to go for headshots and to knock weapons out of people's hands, that and shooting gallery sections are the only real applications for aiming, and I reckon you could get by without if you didn't occasionally have to sharpshoot a gnome or a button.

The other time the mouse really comes into its own is the map screen, which feels a lot smoother than the 360 version, and the shortcuts also really speed this along.

Generally, I actually like the way Fable games tend to let the combat get out of the way of the story - this isn't Battlefield, and it's never going to be - but it suffers from the same problem as Fable 2 - the narrative is stretched out by really, really long strings of enemies to be dispatched. Several times during the game moving to the next bit of the plot involves walking through tunnels interspersed with arenas, and although the combat is fun and nicely animated it's still Fable-style two-button combat (select melee/ranged/magic, attack with left mouse, block/aim/splash with right).

By the midgame I found myself often just holding down the magic splash button to charge up a damage/immobilise attack, releasing it and repeating until everyone around me was dead - which is slightly harder on hardcore mode, because you don't autoheal and have to take out ranged combatants to avoid being picked off, but is still not impossible. I'd like most of the combat to be optional the way that switching outfits or getting married is largely optional; there's a beautifully constructed world, with really good writing, voice acting and art direction (if you like that kind of thing) but between the scripted and the wandering-monster combat events sometimes it feels like you're wading through it a bit.

[elmuerte]

I bought this game last week when it was on sale, and have been playing it for quite a bit.

This game is actually quite terrible on a lot of levels. It's like The Sims meets RPG. A lot of things have been dumbed down a lot. It's nothing like Fable 1. One thing that really annoys me that almost every conversation is a joke (well, attempt to it). An other thing that is really terrible is the "quick travel" feature. It will usually drop you off at the other side of the map instead of close to it. The pathfind of the dog is also terrible, and considering you need him to dig makes it worse. Of course the dog doesn't even help you out in battles.

What happened that they changed the quite ok action/adventure like RPG called Fable 1 to this? Did they waste too much time on the house decorating minigame rather than the actual game?

[Thrik]

Fable 3 was considerably inferior to both Fable 1 and Fable 2, no doubt. It's particularly bad coming from Fable 2 because most of what's good in Fable 3 (including many of the reused locations) was already done better in Fable 2, and for whatever reason they decided to dumb down almost every single mechanic in the game — gone were all the various buffs/upgrades and shit you could get for combat/weapons, the ability to choose what emotes you did to villlagers, and countless other things that made Fable 2 much more in the vein of the original and in all honesty perhaps quite a bit better.

Big fail on Fable 3 IMO. I can't even say it's like an expansion pack for Fable 2 because it actually takes away a lot of its predecessors depth. It's like they essentially took Fable 2 and tried to make it more casual, an interesting omen of the looming Kinect Fable game.

[Sno]

FABLE 3! Fable 3 makes me angry! One of the biggest disappointments i've had in a long, long time. It seemed like they were hunting for ways to make it more accessible, and really just ended up with a usability nightmare. I mean, here's a game that has an actual functioning inventory system, but no way to directly interact with or manage it. I literally could not believe that when i started playing the game, i thought i must be missing something. Just overly contextualized madness, it's filled with incredibly bizarre game design.

I was really frustrated by a lot of the other changes too. The new magic and weapon upgrade systems in particular, but also the new system of NPC interactions that turned that whole process into incredible tedium, it made a once fun diversion something you went out of your way to avoid.

The world, just in general, also seemed so much smaller and less diverse than either of the earlier two games. I mean, and the execution of their big central idea for the game, that you'd have to make hard choices, seemed so completely half-assed. (In both the simplistic morality being pushed and the fact that you could completely break it if you understood how it was working.)

I was left with the impression that Fable 3 was a game that must have had several really hard swings in design direction during development, because it just feels like such a disjointed mess. (I remember hearing that it was supposed to be a kinect-integrated game, and it felt like there was some conceptual DNA of that left in the shipped product.)

[Gwardinen]

I was left with the impression that Fable 3 was a game that must have had several really hard swings in design direction during development, because it just feels like such a disjointed mess. (I remember hearing that it was supposed to be a kinect-integrated game, and it felt like there was some conceptual DNA of that left in the shipped product.)

I had completely forgotten about the Kinect rumours before the game's release. That would actually explain a lot about how those interface systems worked in the Sanctum if that was the case. I didn't think they were awful, but they were a little oddly designed at times and I can see why they might have been now.

[JonCole]

I actually just started playing this without even seeing this thread, which is kinda odd. This game is really beginning to annoy me, mostly because of the totally bullshit inventory/pause menu system. Anyone who thought that a simple menu would be better expressed as a series of rooms with load times between them and using an interface that makes you visually scroll through every single item you have before you can access something.

I feel like I'm going to really critical path this game because of this UI madness. It's really sad, considering the fact that Fable II is one of the most memorable and enjoyable games I've played this console generation. I literally bought every property in that game and burned tens of hours despite not nearly that much story content.

[Thrik]

Yeah, what makes it so sad is Fable 1 was (IMO) excellent. Very atmospheric and immersive game, and Fable 2 pretty much picked up where it left off and added the whole 'this is a shitload of years in the future so everything you knew has changed or disintegrated into ruins'. Felt epic, felt great. Brilliant sequel.

Fable 3 just doesn't come close to hitting that. Not only is the amount of time between Fable 2 and Fable 3 rather short which in itself takes away from the grand scale of things, but also the world itself feels smaller and although areas from Fable 2 (and technically 1) reappear they're not that much different from their Fable 2 incarnations and it just feels kind of hollow.

It sounds stupid but the first two games had a general feel that the third lacks. I can't quite put my finger on why but the original two had a dark and unique atmosphere that I couldn't get enough of, whereas I pretty much couldn't wait to get Fable 3 over and done with.

Big shame. If you never played Fable 2 (very likely for those taking the PC route as it never came out for that platform) I recommend you fuck Fable 3 off and wait until you can play Fable 2 on the 360 instead. Hopefully Fable 3 hasn't tainted your perception too much.

[Murdoc]

It sounds stupid but the first two games had a general feel that the third lacks. I can't quite put my finger on why but the original two had a dark and unique atmosphere that I couldn't get enough of, whereas I pretty much couldn't wait to get Fable 3 over and done with.

Big shame. If you never played Fable 2 (very likely for those taking the PC route as it never came out for that platform) I recommend you fuck Fable 3 off and wait until you can play Fable 2 on the 360 instead. Hopefully Fable 3 hasn't tainted your perception too much.

It's called ambition. I am a huge fan of Fable 1 and 2, the series itself felt like a giant iterative game design experiment... which made me happy.

There were a lot of differences between the first two, both having it's own positive and negatives, but three breaks off the series in a very specific way. The focus of what the game is about changes, they used the framework of two(obviously) and built a different game in to, it wasn't about heroes, archetypes, or quests.... which is really the core of what Fable was about.

A sequel that abandons the core mechanics and values of it's franchise is just bizarre and a clearly crapped out money grab.

I'd love to get into and really layout well written post on how crappy Fable 3 is;I was about to a few months ago while playing it, but I've come to the conclusion that it's such a fluff game I won't even waste time doing that.

It's crap, its crap for very specific reasons, go play the first two, they are wonderful. Fable is the type of game I'd like to make one day, its sad to see them do so well with the franchise and just shit out spinoffs and crappy sequels because I figured by the time Fable 5 came out it'd be pretty damn perfect.

[miffy495]

I played a bit of Fable 2, up to a little bit past meeting what's his face, the outlaw king. Liked what I played, but also found the combat to be really tedious, so when life got in the way and I couldn't play for about a month, I just never went back. Bought Fable 3 on Steam because I wanted to see what they'd done with it but still have yet to fire it up. I'm wondering now if it's even worth ever starting it now, after reading these comments. Bummer.

[Sno]

Did Fable 2 really never come out on the PC? That's really unfortunate, it's easily the best in the series.

Miffy - If you didn't like the combat in 2, you're not going to like 3. It's pretty much the same system, but even more brain dead and effortless.

[JonCole]

Did Fable 2 really never come out on the PC? That's really unfortunate, it's easily the best in the series.

Miffy - If you didn't like the combat in 2, you're not going to like 3. It's pretty much the same system, but even more brain dead and effortless.

Ugh, yeah. Battles consist of tapping Y at long range, B at short range, then X to clean up in melee. A few hours into the game, I still haven't seen any more reason to use "strategy" or "tactics".

[JonCole]

This just gets more painful the farther I get into it. They introduce this cool new thing called spellweaving, which basically just lets you combine two elemental spells into one attack. So if you use Ice Storm and Shock, you get both the AOE of Ice Storm and stunning effect of Shock.

Except that some of the weapons you can get encourage you to use an unweaved spell 200 times in order to "level up" the weapon. Why introduce a cool new game mechanic then incentivize using the shittier version of it?