Fable is a good game. Good. Not great, nowhere near GOTY quality. There are way too many flaws that a lot of people simply overlook because of the "atmosphere" or because "it's all about you." It seems "all about you" means that ladies (and men) will fall in love with you and ask you for a wedding ring and you have not even flirted with them. "All about you" means that you can kill an entire village and then return to it no questions asked just a little while later. A game about consequences, Fable is not.
375,000 sales in a week for this game... that's a bit undeserved. But a lot of games get undeserved sales, it's a fact of life.
See it's time to tear the Xbox apart before Halo 2 gets here because every non Xbox owner wishes that game was coming to their system. Why? because they know the power this game has over the public. Game developers (other than Bungie and Rock Star this year) would kill to have a game with that power. This game at the end of it's life cycle will probably be the game that the public just had to have and this one game alone may extend the Xbox's life cycle.
Uhh?????? Really? Well this sucks more than anything in the game. I haven't played it yet but I took it for granted that if you screw up in the game then you have to pay for it like in Morrowind.
Uhh?????? Really? Well this sucks more than anything in the game. I haven't played it yet but I took it for granted that if you screw up in the game then you have to pay for it like in Morrowind.
If by "pay for it" you mean "kill a few guards for experience/evil points, then walk out of town, come back in five minutes, and everyone acts like nothing has happened," maybe so
Uhh?????? Really? Well this sucks more than anything in the game. I haven't played it yet but I took it for granted that if you screw up in the game then you have to pay for it like in Morrowind.
but he mentioned genocide in a village. You would atleast get arrested in Morrowind if you did that. I remember I killed a couple of people in a town and it lead to a massive chase to capture me or even kill me I think.
its more reactions than consequences, i never really understood why they went with that tag line, everything you do, from what you kill to your hair cut is assessed by the NPCs and they react accordingly, theres very few consequences as such (at least very few that you cant avoid).
and Odysseus "you can kill an entire village and then return to it no questions asked just a little while later" is not strictly true, yes the guards forget, otherwise the game would be totally unplayable for an evil player, the townspeople do remember though, the first NPC i attacked is still scared of me 50 or so game days after i attacked him, and im no longer evil.
For me Fable is the most engrossing experience ive had this year, i see the flaws in the main story, but for me the emergent experiences make up for it (i havent seen a cut-scene for 12 or 15 game hours), things like eating 80 pies to see how the wife reacts and finding that she "loves men with a bit of meat on their bones" and gives me a gift for my gluttony, and then hearing her moan when i come back a few days later having lost the weight, or sneaking through town at night to murder a home owner only to have him slip through and run out looking for guards, then slowly track him with my bow, in no rush to take him out as i know ive just bribed the guards to take an extra long break. The way the AI systems interact in fable really is 'as advertised' and i think its something special which definitely warrants these sales numbers.
but he mentioned genocide in a village. You would atleast get arrested in Morrowind if you did that. I remember I killed a couple of people in a town and it lead to a massive chase to capture me or even kill me I think.
No lasting consequences. At all. You gain some evil points, that's about it.
I slaughtered an entire village in one town and amassed a rather exorbitant fine. That's right, I killed an entire village and amassed a fine. I went to another village, I was still being cheered, I still was on good terms with the guards, I still got my swerve on with ye olde lady. It was as if I had not done anything at all. I then immediately went back to the first village, the fine was gone. Erased. Fantastic.
The game's much ballyhooed world is utterly ridiculous. Albion is an extremely small world. Everything that happens there is supposedly connected. Somehow the sum total of my renown carries over. Miraculously, however, nothing else matters. How in this small, connected world does word never travel of my brutal acts of tyranny? Why am I not hunted? Why can I freaking get married in more than one town, and no one is the wiser? Why, when I get married, do other ladies (and men) in town still ask me for wedding rings? What type of connected yet still completely unconnected world is this? It's dumb, it's senseless, and you would think that in 4-5 years they could have implemented something far better than this.
The funny thing is, it is that very same senseless world that people use as the reason why the game is "great" and not simply "above average" (because the rest of the game is not bad, by any stretch of the imagination). I'm amazed, actually.
Ghost said:
and Odysseus "you can kill an entire village and then return to it no questions asked just a little while later" is not strictly true, yes the guards forget, otherwise the game would be totally unplayable for an evil player, the townspeople do remember though, the first NPC i attacked is still scared of me 50 or so game days after i attacked him, and im no longer evil.
If they cannot implement a quality way for being evil to have consequences, then the game should not let you be evil. I have no problems with the game saying that you attack somebody and you will be fined and/or lose some possessions, or you will be attacked right back and you cannot defend yourself (you might even *gasp* die as a result). You kill someone that is not necessary, you basically make enemies of every living person in the game. Good luck surviving. Some will hunt you down, others will run away in terror, you will not be offered any quests (at least not from good and noble people), you will not be allowed into the Heroes Guild, and you will not be able to trade with anyone except the most cheatful swindlers. I mean, you would think that at least some hero would be given a quest of trying to kill you. Make me face a parade of heroes over the course of the game, give some real meaning to the actions.
No, in this poorly constructed universe, you kill someone and you get fined, but you do not have to actually pay anything. You attack someone and they remain afraid of you later. Yee ha!
I slaughtered an entire village in one town and amassed a rather exorbitant fine. That's right, I killed an entire village and amassed a fine. I went to another village, I was still being cheered, I still was on good terms with the guards, I still got my swerve on with ye olde lady. It was as if I had not done anything at all. I then immediately went back to the first village, the fine was gone. Erased. Fantastic.
Lol. That is craptastic. I took out some people in one town just to see what would happen. I noticed I amassed a fine. I haven't gone back yet and now I see it'll all be forgotten.
Hopefully Fable 2 will encompass all the promise of the original premise for Fable.
Has anyone noticed that the forums for the developers (Big Blue Box) seems to have stopped working completely, although the rest of the site is fine? Makes ya wanna say "hmmmmm"
Can't kill kids, can't kill people in Bowerstone because of the former (unless you lead them out of town and execute them, or bring in a mercenary.) Hooray for freedom to do anything!
And even if you do waste everyone you come across, they'll regenerate and after a few days the worst that'll happen is they'll cower for a bit when they see you.
The game never would have got a rating if you could hurt kids, let alone impale them with pointy objects, thats most likely why you cant have them either (i guess they could have made bowerstone the only place to legally breed or something).
Not so much that I want to waste little kids, but I was curious to see how the other villages would react to a known mass-murderer waltzing into town. I'll give it a rent, I guess.
I liked Fable, I thought the majority of it was quite good. The scenery in some scenes was fantastic (I loved how the skies looked). The music was awesome, and a feature I thought had been left out (gradual aging) was still in the game, so that was a plus. Another thing was that I never really let myself get caught up in the hype, so I wasn't disappointed by anything in the game. I thought it was cool that your character could get fat or strong looking, become scarred up, etc...
The combat, I felt was empty at first. Push X, push X, push X. Push Y, push X, push X. Then we got a bow and arrow/crossbow for long distance battling... then magic- which is what I felt really made the combat more exciting. I found myself slowing down time, or using lightning to hurt enemies and slow them down when I was surrounded (like in the arena). I still haven't touched the other types of magic besides a healing one, slow time, and the offensive magic ones.
However, the gameplay can only go so far. 13 hours into the game, and I felt like it was ready to end. The voice acting was well done for the most part, and I liked the little cutscenes with the paintings and narrator voice to help with the mood of everything. There just wasn't too much motivation to continue onward. Mostly all the missions were an escort service of some kind, and there were only a couple of bosses in the entire game (which were interesting to fight
even though Twinblade is a moron and shoves his swords into the ground when I'm 15 feet away from him
. It was really hard to care for any of the characters
except for Jack of Blades- who I thought was pretty cool despite him being a cliche villain (and to tell the truth, I think it might've helped the whole "story-book" feel of the game)
.
So far being evil has no lasting consequences except for outward appearance, and I never really cared if I was being evil since the people in the game lacked any "heart." I enjoyed KotOR partially because it made the player feel bad for being bad. KotOR was also a game I felt was similar to Fable, but it had a good story and great supporting characters.
Overall I think the game has a lot of really cool details, but lacks polish. If it had another year or two more in development, it might've turned out to be something truly excellent.
I liked Fable, I thought the majority of it was quite good. The scenery in some scenes was fantastic (I loved how the skies looked). The music was awesome, and a feature I thought had been left out (gradual aging) was still in the game, so that was a plus. Another thing was that I never really let myself get caught up in the hype, so I wasn't disappointed by anything in the game. I thought it was cool that your character could get fat or strong looking, become scarred up, etc...
The combat, I felt was empty at first. Push X, push X, push X. Push Y, push X, push X. Then we got a bow and arrow/crossbow for long distance battling... then magic- which is what I felt really made the combat more exciting. I found myself slowing down time, or using lightning to hurt enemies and slow them down when I was surrounded (like in the arena). I still haven't touched the other types of magic besides a healing one, slow time, and the offensive magic ones.
However, the gameplay can only go so far. 13 hours into the game, and I felt like it was ready to end. The voice acting was well done for the most part, and I liked the little cutscenes with the paintings and narrator voice to help with the mood of everything. There just wasn't too much motivation to continue onward. Mostly all the missions were an escort service of some kind, and there were only a couple of bosses in the entire game (which were interesting to fight
even though Twinblade is a moron and shoves his swords into the ground when I'm 15 feet away from him
. It was really hard to care for any of the characters
except for Jack of Blades- who I thought was pretty cool despite him being a cliche villain (and to tell the truth, I think it might've helped the whole "story-book" feel of the game)
.
So far being evil has no lasting consequences except for outward appearance, and I never really cared if I was being evil since the people in the game lacked any "heart." I enjoyed KotOR partially because it made the player feel bad for being bad. KotOR was also a game I felt was similar to Fable, but it had a good story and great supporting characters.
Overall I think the game has a lot of really cool details, but lacks polish. If it had another year or two more in development, it might've turned out to be something truly excellent.
I had a great time with Fable. Not perfect, but very fun.
Didn't have much of a difficulty issue. Barring the first few, typical mission difficulty was pretty RPG average. Seeing it lambasted like so was odd, especially when Xbox owners ate up KoTOR which was absolutely childish even with the battle modifier cranked to Difficult.
The boasting was great fun though, and really added some intense slants to things. Although some were silly, and I can see people shunning them, most missions seemed to have a few honest, specific boasts which added a lot, IMO.
The length was fine for me. 20ish hours, explored the world, did a bunch of side quests, beat the main quest, played a bunch of the parlor games many times, and was really able to sculpt my character into a class well beyond my expectations. Seeing the game categorize you based on your stats and combat style in the menu was cool as shit. My FFXI-style Ranger, or according to Fable (scout) was uber in my eyes.
The sandbox elements were solid, more so than I expected, even to the end. People can whine about how novel they were, and ultimately shallow. But have you played the actual simmish type games? The Sims, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and the like all suffer the same lack of detail, meaning and ultimately felt pretty fluffy. For simply being part of the woodwork in Fable, I thought it was pretty entertaining and well done.
The obvious focuses of Fable were it's best elements. Solid hero creation and customization, fun missions with lots of modifiers, and a cool world to explore, with lots of rewards.
Plus, IMO. The game was flat out fucking gorgeous with an EXCELLENT score, and although the story was very shallow. It was completely free of stupidity, and disgustingly convoluted twists that ruin many games. Fairly charming and full of whimsy to my tastes.
Fable wasn't revolutionary, or really that evolutionary either. But it was polished, fun, and left a good mark in my mind. It wasn't the be all, end all it was hyped to be, but none of this shit ever is, to me at least.
On the flip side, as for the people acting like Fable is some kind of reigning King. Fable to me, is simply a marriage of a Japanese adventure game, and a western RPG. I really dug it, but not seeing it as some genre destroyer. And as far as JRPG's go, the ones that float amoung the highly rated are typically the bane of the genre, as far as I am concerned.
Pokemon better watch it's back, but I still think FiLe will come pretty ahead of Fable, by a couple hundred thousand I'd say...
either way, I called, this, considering the big push retailers were giving it (ebgames and gamestop in particular probably pushed this game more than any other except Halo 2).
Fable was touted as XBox's 2nd most important game back in 2001, so this isn't surprising...
other than Halo, I don't see which game was going to be as big...
BTW, looks like I called this after sonycowboy predicted 200,000:
Fable had more hype 3 years ago than KOTOR did even at release, I say Fable should do a good 400,000 at least. If KOTOR could do 400,000, so can Fable. The only thing that can possibly hurt it is the reviews from non-XBox sites, since Fable was supposed to be GOTY material, now it's a step below that supposedly.
other than Halo 2, there's really nothing blockbuster for XBox this fall though...
This was supposed to challenge Halo 2 for GOTY, and is basically Microsoft's 2nd most important game for XBox for '04.
Either way, Microsoft will push this.
Also, retailers were pushing pre-orders for this way more than for Ninja Gaiden or KOTOR. If you go to ebgames.com and gamestop.com, they've had Fable as the main product on the front page for a few weeks now.
I'm not the biggest XBox fan, but if this and Burnout 3 XBOX (combined with Nintendo's Big 3 -> Pikmin 2, Pokemon FiLe, and Donkey Konga) are going to get the headlines for September instead of some PS2-driven sports title, that's good step IMO.
Well when I read it after you have explained yah I guess it wasn't really trolling. But then his reply with the picture wasn't really there to insult/offend you I don't think. He probably posted it to make a "funny". Btw you are pocketfudge right?
I wasn't really offended by that pic or by being called a troll, but I was kind of frustrated that it doesn't seem like there's a big difference whether you call a game a piece of crap or list what you feel to be legitimate shortcomings. To some people any criticism is trolling.
And no I'm not pocketfudge. I used to go under the handle The Snake, though.
