I wanted to love Fable. The things it did well, it did brilliantly. What I wanted in Fable was this: a sense of immidiate consequence for the choices I made in the game. My greatest frustration with Knights of the Old Republic is that, until you were 90% of the way through the game, no matter how evil you were people acted like you were good. In Fable, no one made that mistake.
What I didn't realize is that Fable would do nearly everything else wrong. I expect, in general, two things from an RPG: a good story and a sense of exploration, of discovery. From an action RPG, I expect good action. It delivered on the last count, but boy - it could not have failed any more on the first two.
It's one thing to have a well crafted plot twist. It's another to announce them without any buildup, or consequence. I never cared about anyone in Fable, except me.
Any sense of exploration was destroyed by: A) narrow roads you are confined to, B) absolutely epic loading times, and C) the ability to just teleport around. Not only did I not feel rewarded for exploring, it got to the point where I was asking myself, 'do I really want to wade through three loading screens to double check that corner of the map?' By the end of the game, I was saying, 'nah'.
Okay. You've read all that before. I only buy games once ever few months now (got that whole 'raising a family' thing going on) so indulge me. The bottom line is, it was a fun romp, but despite my really wanting to go through it again, I just couldn't. I didn't have the patience for the loading times, didn't want to 'explore' the world again, and wasn't fascinated by the nuances of the story. It was a great hack'n slash, but for that I've got the two XBox Baldur's Gate games.
Oh, and when I returned it for $26 store credit towards my Halo 2 Limited Edition, the Gamestop guy pulls out this massive wad of preorder receipts. I asked how many he had, and he said, "Over 500. But that's at the low end for the company; the mall stores have over 1,000 each on average." (This was a strip mall store.) Holy crap. And yes, there will be a midnight sale.
.....
The other game I returned was Gunvalkyrie. My fingers still hurt.
What I didn't realize is that Fable would do nearly everything else wrong. I expect, in general, two things from an RPG: a good story and a sense of exploration, of discovery. From an action RPG, I expect good action. It delivered on the last count, but boy - it could not have failed any more on the first two.
It's one thing to have a well crafted plot twist. It's another to announce them without any buildup, or consequence. I never cared about anyone in Fable, except me.
Any sense of exploration was destroyed by: A) narrow roads you are confined to, B) absolutely epic loading times, and C) the ability to just teleport around. Not only did I not feel rewarded for exploring, it got to the point where I was asking myself, 'do I really want to wade through three loading screens to double check that corner of the map?' By the end of the game, I was saying, 'nah'.
Okay. You've read all that before. I only buy games once ever few months now (got that whole 'raising a family' thing going on) so indulge me. The bottom line is, it was a fun romp, but despite my really wanting to go through it again, I just couldn't. I didn't have the patience for the loading times, didn't want to 'explore' the world again, and wasn't fascinated by the nuances of the story. It was a great hack'n slash, but for that I've got the two XBox Baldur's Gate games.
Oh, and when I returned it for $26 store credit towards my Halo 2 Limited Edition, the Gamestop guy pulls out this massive wad of preorder receipts. I asked how many he had, and he said, "Over 500. But that's at the low end for the company; the mall stores have over 1,000 each on average." (This was a strip mall store.) Holy crap. And yes, there will be a midnight sale.
.....
The other game I returned was Gunvalkyrie. My fingers still hurt.
