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[Chony]

I was worried that when Fable came out I’d get sucked in and I wouldn’t have time to play Burnout 3 and Phantom Brave. So I’m actually kind of glad that Fable was a huge disappointment.

So in Fable you have a very small world divided up into dozens of tiny zones. Each of these zones sufferers from the “you can go anywhere you want…as long as you stay on the fucking path” school of game design. A winding path will take you through each one of these zones and you don’t need to worry about accidentally wandering off the path and getting lost. You’ll quickly notice that someone has placed sturdy impenetrable bushes, broken fences, rocks, and impassable pools of shallow water all along the road. The entire game may as well be played on rails as your options for exploration are essentially zilch. The really awesome thing about these tiny, linear zones is that they require an insane load time. Traveling from one side of the map to the other will require you to spend nearly as much time loading as playing. Thankfully at some point the designers realized that traversing their bullshit world was a real pain in the ass and so they decided to let you teleport wherever you want. I imagine this conversation went something like this:

Girl: “Wow, running around in our game fucking sucks.”

Guy: “What if you could just teleport wherever you wanted to go?”

Girl: “That doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Shouldn’t we instead address the fact that navigating our game world is a bitch?”

Guy: “We should have sex.”

Whoa, that certainly got hot! In my imagination all work place encounters between men and woman result in clandestine sex.

Not only do these tiny zones require loading but you also have to load every time you want to use a shovel or a fishing pole. The idea is that there is treasure buried all over the world just waiting to be dug up. However each time you want to dig you need to select the spade from your menu and then wait as the game loads the digging animation, at this point you will either get some treasure or you’ll see your character sigh. Then you get to wait again as it takes you back to the regular game. I dug twice before I was totally fucking sick of it.

So what’s going on in-between all this loading? Well you’re playing an extremely linear and limited hack and slash adventure game combined with a shitty version of the Sims mixed with animal crossing only minus all of animal crossings charm and inspiration. If you want to just play through Fable as fast as you can, it’s a boring but passable action RPG. The combat is awkward at first and the camera is frustrating but you can have some fun with it for a couple of hours. Thankfully that’s all the time you’ll need to invest if that’s how you decide to play the game. If you decide you want to buy a house or flirt with a girl you certainly can. You can also spend an insane amount of time dressing and building up your character. In fact a huge part of the game revolves around making your character look awesome. I can see how this might be cool in an MMO where you could show him off to other players but in Fable no one else will ever see your character. You can’t even take screen shots and upload them via live into some kind of online Fable hero’s picture album to share with your friends. You spend so much time in this game working on a character that you can never share with anyone else. I actually saw forum threads in which people were trying to describe how cool their characters looked to each other. They would try and explain how their particular hair cut really accentuated a certain tattoo. These people are so desperate to share their characters that they were trying to take photos of their TV screens.

In my opinion, none of Fable’s “open ended” game play works in the context of a single player game. Things like owning shops, becoming renowned and impressing people with your sharp dressing just aren’t cool when the world is populated by pre-programmed puppets rather than living people.

Also if you can’t understand why it looks like ass on your HD television here’s a little trick. Fable will sometimes refuse to run in 480p, but you can force it to by going into your dashboard. Open the tray with Fable in the drive and then go into your video settings in your dashboard. Turn off 480p and then turn in back on. Now hold both triggers and click both thumb sticks. This will force your Xbox into 480p mode and you can just close the drive and start Fable. Now if there was a series of buttons you could press in order to make it worth 50 bucks.

-Gabe out

6.8

 

[Odysseus]

Yeah, I read that earlier. Gabe was a bit harsh, but entertaining.

I have not played the game enough to comment further.

 

[Naked Snake]

Uh-oh

 

[seismologist]

That's kind of the impression I've got just from reading all of the reviews. 6.8 is pretty harsh though.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

so basically Fable is a single player MMORPG?

 

[Son of Godzilla]

But single player MMORPGs are FUN. Just look at Morrowind!

 

[MetatronM]

This kind of review, while not inaccurate, really over-emphasizes the short-comings of the game. WAY overdoes it. Yes, this stuff does happen (smallish zones, load times for zoning and shovelling, etc.), but these are only minor nagging design flaws in an otherwise very good and very well-designed game. The only MAJOR flaw only hurts you right in the beginning of the game where you can't save your progress through the tutorial/aging process. They just shouldn't have made it count as a "quest" which blocks you from world saving.

It's a solid 9.0+ game, imperfect though it may be. And really, that seems to be what people are bashing it for. Not being perfect.

 

[Kobun Heat]

But single player MMORPGs are FUN. Just look at Morrowind!

Spoiler

Or FFXII!

 

[MetatronM]

so basically Fable is a single player MMORPG?

Eh, it's somewhere between that and Zelda. Think of a kind of weird Morrowind-Zelda hybrid, and that's sort of what Fable comes across as.

 

[AniHawk]

This kind of review, while not inaccurate, really over-emphasizes the short-comings of the game. WAY overdoes it. Yes, this stuff does happen (smallish zones, load times for zoning and shovelling, etc.), but these are only minor nagging design flaws in an otherwise very good and very well-designed game. The only MAJOR flaw only hurts you right in the beginning of the game where you can't save your progress through the tutorial/aging process. They just shouldn't have made it count as a "quest" which blocks you from world saving.

It's a solid 9.0+ game, imperfect though it may be. And really, that seems to be what people are bashing it for. Not being perfect.

Metatron, did you like Jak II over Going Commando?

 

[Mama Smurf]

This kind of review, while not inaccurate, really over-emphasizes the short-comings of the game. WAY overdoes it. Yes, this stuff does happen (smallish zones, load times for zoning and shovelling, etc.), but these are only minor nagging design flaws in an otherwise very good and very well-designed game. The only MAJOR flaw only hurts you right in the beginning of the game where you can't save your progress through the tutorial/aging process. They just shouldn't have made it count as a "quest" which blocks you from world saving.

It's a solid 9.0+ game, imperfect though it may be. And really, that seems to be what people are bashing it for. Not being perfect.

It's not a review. Just an opinion. And clearly, for Gabe, the shortcomings are bad enough to ruin the game for him.

Generally I prefer opinions like this to reviews (whether positive or negative). I can get most of the info in reviews from previews.

 

[Soul4ger]

I'm enjoying myself.

 

[Mrbob]

Hmm, the load time issues worry me. Oh well, guess I find out Monday.

 

[Kobun Heat]

I'm enjoying myself.

In the game or in this thread?

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Eh, it's somewhere between that and Zelda. Think of a kind of weird Morrowind-Zelda hybrid, and that's sort of what Fable comes across as.

as much as i hated Morrowind though, the world was HUGE. If the worlds in Fable are really as small as this (and egm's, for example) review suggest, it kind of defeats the purpose. I'll still have to play it though.

 

[Rhindle]

so basically Fable is a single player MMORPG?

Actually, other than the character building aspect, it's the complete opposite of an MMORPG, and that seems to be what Gabe is griping about. Fable is not an open-ended go-anywhere do-anything freeform experience. It does offer choices, but they are mostly pre-defined choices.

As I said in another thread, the design seems to be intended to make it a friendly and accessible experience for people who not hardcore RPG players. I think it succeeds pretty well in doing that. But I can understand that people who were expecting a unrestricted sandbox experience would be disappointed.

 

[IJoel]

This kind of review, while not inaccurate, really over-emphasizes the short-comings of the game. WAY overdoes it. Yes, this stuff does happen (smallish zones, load times for zoning and shovelling, etc.), but these are only minor nagging design flaws in an otherwise very good and very well-designed game. The only MAJOR flaw only hurts you right in the beginning of the game where you can't save your progress through the tutorial/aging process. They just shouldn't have made it count as a "quest" which blocks you from world saving.

It's a solid 9.0+ game, imperfect though it may be. And really, that seems to be what people are bashing it for. Not being perfect.

Precisely.

Having played 11 to 12 hours of the game, and still probably at the beginning of the main quest, I am having a lot of fun with it. The game has some flaws, mostly technical (loading, etc.), but it's still an outstanding game. I guess all fucking RPGs have to feature a free roaming world to be great.

 

[belgurdo]

Can't make funny comics, don't know what a decent game is...

 

[Soul4ger]

In the game or in this thread?

I'LL LEAVE THAT UP TO YOU TO DECIDE! THIS WOULDN'T BE AN APPROPRIATE FABLE THREAD WITHOUT CHOICES, RIGHT?!

 

[AniHawk]

Can't make funny comics, don't know what a decent game is...

But enough about you.

 

[Littleberu]

But enough about you.

AniHawk, I like you.

 

[crawlingpeter]

The only MAJOR flaw only hurts you right in the beginning of the game where you can't save your progress through the tutorial/aging process. They just shouldn't have made it count as a "quest" which blocks you from world saving.

Yep. Last nite I went to bed halfway through that 'quest,' only to wake up to a gamesave that required me to completely restart my quest through training. A minor setback, but it's the most annoying thing I've seen yet.

 

[GhaleonEB]

My copy from eb.com just arrived. I've disgreed with Gabe before (Halo pops to mind), but I'm still a little disheartened.

 

[Alex]

The loading and smaller zones wasn't a huge deal for me. The world is fairly open at the start, and exploration is quite excellent, one of Fables stronger points.

Fable is quite flawed, but it's very fun, and very rewarding to play, IMO.

The ups would be:

~slick visuals, slick music, loads of polish,

~Great sense of humor. Solid voice acting, although lacking varitey in the voices.

~an inspiried, although sectioned, and very explorable/rewarding world. The non-linearity present in Fable is handled much better than most titles. Towns, at least the ones I've been too, have been excellent for a game of this type.

~Solid character development, plenty of cool weapons/clothing/tatoos/hairstyles, etc.

The EXP tree broken into three main groups, and various subsystems is simple, and works quite well. And lacks the off-putting feel, that IMO, most of the Western D&D based RPG's have.

~Very entertaining side bits, ultimately novel, but polished up and not quite as shallow as I had expected, the stat tracking compliments it all quite well.

The downs:

~Piss poor sense of challenge, for the most part, even without spending almost any EXP to combat focused stats, the game is far easier than even the much slammed Wind Waker thus far. What the fuck...?

~Poor (earlier game at least) mission structure. The side missions are quite fine, and feel like just that, side missions. The story ones like flair, inspiration and seem poorly scripted given how much detail is paid to less important sections of the game.

~The good/evil system has some inherit flaws. For one, lack of varitey within the alignment bar, no impact on any real portion of the game.

I've really enjoyed Fable thus far, but although I have fewer gripes than praises. The gripes weigh far, far heavier.

On one side, the character development and world has impressed me far more than I had expected, on the other, the severe lack of any challenge and intensity really, really knocks it down.

Same goes for the mostly blandish missions, still fun, but not nearly what I had expected.

If I was forced to grade Fable, an 8ish score would seem quite fitting.

 

[dog$]

Things like owning shops, becoming renowned and impressing people with your sharp dressing just aren’t cool when the world is populated by pre-programmed puppets rather than living people.

The thing I fear the most is that sentiments like these will become increasingly commonplace.

 

[MarkMacD]

 

[Sysgen]

Imagine if he played 2+ hours, used hero save and turned off his Xbox before he got his character to adulthood....... LIKE ME!

 

[Alex]

The save system is ridiculously poorly explained. Although, barring the intro is hardly any kind of a burden. It's basicly the same shit as GTA, is it not?

The game seems to take pride in leaving massive chunks out of both the manual and the tutorial. Not as bad as something like, oh, I dunno, SaGa Frontier II and FFXI, but still pretty fuckin' ridiculous.

 

[Gantz]

Gotta love the limitations of console game design. I bet that's why a lot of stuff got cut out of the game.

 

[Sysgen]

Gotta love the limitations of console game design. I bet that's why a lot of stuff got cut out of the game.

I think the game cut back because they didn't want it coming out in 2009.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

Imagine if he played 2+ hours, used hero save and turned off his Xbox before he got his character to adulthood....... LIKE ME!

Tell me this bug before I somehow do it in my game and I kill my TV.

 

[Mejilan]

So, is there any more on this Fable 1.5 rumor from a few weeks ago?

 

[Duckhuntdog]

Peter Molysndsuhoweveryouspellhisname, never fails to disappoint.

 

[Vark]

"Tell me this bug before I somehow do it in my game and I kill my TV."

Its not a bug so much as developer retardation. The game is set up so that you can't save while you're in a quest. There's 'world saves' which you can save when you're not on a quest, save all your data but will place you in a place in the town, not exactly where you were.

When you're on a quest you can 'hero save' which saves what you have, but not what you're doing or where you are, so you keep your xp but you lose your progress.

Well at some point some retarded decided it was a good idea for the entire first hour of the game to be a quest. So if you do a 'save' and turn off the system, when you turn it back on you're back to the beginning of 2nd part of the game and you have to do the tutorial shit over again.

You can't actually save until you've reached adulthood.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

"Tell me this bug before I somehow do it in my game and I kill my TV."

Its not a bug so much as developer retardation. The game is set up so that you can't save while you're in a quest. There's 'world saves' which you can save when you're not on a quest, save all your data but will place you in a place in the town, not exactly where you were.

When you're on a quest you can 'hero save' which saves what you have, but not what you're doing or where you are, so you keep your xp but you lose your progress.

Well at some point some retarded decided it was a good idea for the entire first hour of the game to be a quest. So if you do a 'save' and turn off the system, when you turn it back on you're back to the beginning of 2nd part of the game and you have to do the tutorial shit over again.

You can't actually save until you've reached adulthood.

Well, thanks for the heads up. This brings up another question, do game companies test casual gamers who have other things to do, or just hardcore "I am gonna play for 20 hours" type gamers?

 

[GashPrex]

Peter Molysndsuhoweveryouspellhisname, never fails to disappoint.

based on gabe's impressions lol

go read the official thread - oh right, you only post when it comes to negative xbox news, I forgot

 

[shuri]

Well, thanks for the heads up. This brings up another question, do game companies test casual gamers who have other things to do, or just hardcore "I am gonna play for 20 hours" type gamers?

it's exactly like in the GTA games..

 

[StoOgE]

Straw man, meet your fallacy. His name is Gabe.

 

[MetatronM]

~Piss poor sense of challenge, for the most part, even without spending almost any EXP to combat focused stats, the game is far easier than even the much slammed Wind Waker thus far. What the fuck...?

Really? I got killed once or twice pretty early on after the tutorial segment ended (though I did have Resurrection Phials), and while I wouldn't say it's particularly hard, by sort of dying once I've already came MUCH closer to a game over screen in Fable than I ever did in the entirety of Wind Waker.

 

[Great Wasabi Man]

Doesn't Gabe have some "I hate the X-box but bought one anyway cause I hate it so much" way of thinking?

 

[RevenantKioku]

Doesn't Gabe have some "I hate the X-box but bought one anyway cause I hate it so much" way of thinking?

 

[Late Stage Marxist]

The shovelling did make me want to punch someone, I'll give him that, but it seems like he expected something vastly different from what the game clearly is. Did he not read any previews whatsoever? The game far exceeded my expectations. I've finished the main quest and I'm just having fun trying to buy up all the buildings in different towns.

My only complaint is that levelling up and acquiring gold take forever. Hopefully once I own a few more buildings that will all change. Anyone know of some good spots for fighting/gold?

 

[Truelize]

Well, thanks for the heads up. This brings up another question, do game companies test casual gamers who have other things to do, or just hardcore "I am gonna play for 20 hours" type gamers?

The tutorial really isn't that long. It's about an hour of gameplay. It's only a negative because unless you've actually done it (saved during the tutorial and turned the game off) or read about it online, you would have no clue that that is how the saving is treated. So it's not a big deal at all if you know going in. It would suck if you spent 50 minutes doing the majority of the tutorial and then had to start all over again.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Okay, I've had some play time and gotten through killing the Wasp Queen. So far, I see many flaws but overall it's pretty great.

I'll save further comments for later, but I will say that for someone who loved KotOR, Gabe sure was harsh. The areas in Knights were smaller, less detailed and had longer loading. Knights had paths just like Fable - I don't see the issue at all.

So far the game is exaclty what I wanted - a realtime KotOR where your good vs bad choices actually had an impact in the game, not just on specific quests.

Oh, and having six guards from town chasing me as I robbed and smashed everything in sight was a hoot. As was killing some poor soul in the woods.

 

[Ghost]

However each time you want to dig you need to select the spade from your menu

Er, no you dont, if you actually stand over a spot where you are gonna find something, the spade shows up on the context sensitive menu (d-pad menu). By the way, that menu is fucking awesome, when you lose health a piece of food or a potion comes up in the menu (depending on what you have and how much health you've lost), same when you use up your 'will', when you walk up to a woman the flirting emotes appear, and for the non-gay men, a selection of emotes depending on your allignment.

The whole interface is awesome infact, really works to keep you in the game and out of the menus.

Shame about the loading i agree that does suck (you get used to it though, when i first started playing it really pissed me off, now 20 or so hours in i dont mind, its worth it to see whats going on in the world, if you teleport everywhere you will miss out)

I didnt think the game was easy at all, maybe you aren't far enough through it yet to find out, it does get hard though, only problem is health potions and resurection vials are so easy to come by id say it would be pretty hard to die out right (probably designed that way though).

 

[Minotauro]

What really sucks about this is that there are a lot of people who take PA's opinion as gospel. I swear, I have this friend, who also happens to be about the most anti-Microsoft guy you can imagine. Everytime an XBox game comes up in discussion, he regurgitates whatever complaints PA had until I want to strangle him. He'll do this whether he's played the game or not. I'm already dreading the Fable discussion that I know is going to start when I see him next.

 

[border]

I'll give him that, but it seems like he expected something vastly different from what the game clearly is. Did he not read any previews whatsoever?

I don't really remember the previews saying that the game has no exploration opportunities and is bogged down with lengthy load times.....which seem to be his main complaints.

 

[Ghost]

No you wouldnt have read that because the game has plenty of exploration opportunities (id say you would see about 50% of the game world if you did nothing but the main quest) and the loading times aren't lengthy at all (3-5 seconds max).

 

[MightyHedgehog]

I don't really remember the previews saying that the game has no exploration opportunities and is bogged down with lengthy load times.....which seem to be his main complaints.

The load times aren't that bad, but they do get in the way a little...especially at first. Still, they aren't excessive to the point of breaking the game in any major way, IMO.

And, there's plenty of exploration in Fable. Unless exploration strictly means that you must have endless stretches of boring geography to cover to get to the next cool thing or find the next cool thing, there is plenty to discover in the world that BBB has made for you. I prefer more densely packed environments to pore over, rather than trudge along for miles and miles finding nothing interesting for spaces of 10 minutes or more. I do like huge environments, but only if they are justified with a fairly proportionate amount of interest and enjoyability. Albion is not small by any stretch and only teleporting around all the time means you miss plenty of opportunities...

Like ghost said, the dig (and fish) commands are context-based in the game's quick D-pad action menu...as are many things you find yourself doing a lot of. Gabe's rant is a bit exaggerated and sounds like he's trying to rush through and not enjoy the game.

 

[border]

So we are agreed that reading the previews wouldn't have helped?

The "You Should Have Read the Previews!" argument annoys me sometimes, because the press has this semi-annoying policy of never really mentioning anything negative about a game.....so it's not like following their coverage will ever give you a decent picture. Oftentimes it's just a cop-out to try and discredit vocal critics.

Other times people do complain about elements that are the very essence of a game that they should have avoided in the first place. Someone might say "Stealth sucks" about Splinter Cell or "Why can't I directly control the soldiers?!" about Full Spectrum Warrior -- that guy probably should have read the previews.

If Ghost is correct, then the problem here seems to simply be that they haven't played Fable enough and/or have very high standards as far as loading times go (or maybe it's that the load times are too frequent rather than too long?). Either way, I'm not sure if doing the research would have helped.