I’m not disappointed in Fable. I’m actually quite pleased. I think I had a slight let-down during the training phase, and ever since I’ve noticed this crack in the wall, I’ve been able to do nothing but stare at it since I’ve started playing.
Fable is a very pretty game. At first, I thought that it was a little chunky graphically. But I think that the style I’m noticing is an artistic quality. It’s not that the graphics are blocky, it’s that the art is blocky. It became apparent to me through play that the style of the art is as a story book - a fable. To this end, they were quite successful. I don’t find the raw look of the graphics (setting aside style) as appealing as Prince of Persia, but the polygons packed on the screen are quite impressive. Sometimes distracting.
One of the worst parts of the game is the lousy magic graphics. Yay, lightning. I guess you don’t see it in games that often, so it’s unique, but maybe there’s a reason for that. It just looks… I don’t know. Aesthetically, I’m not impressed with it.
But who cares about looks when you have the much-touted good/evil engine in the background? Unfortunately…
There are holes. I’ll tell you where I noticed it first. I met a man who had some crated inventory he wanted me to protect because he had to run to the bathroom. (Yeah, really.) So I had to stand in a spot for 30 seconds and protect his stuff until he got back. In the meantime, this kid comes up to me and starts taunting me.
“You should just look through and see what he has,” he says to me. “Unless you’re just a scared little girl.” Well, I’m not going to look through his stuff. But I’m going to keep this little miscreant away.
So I hit him.
“What’d you do that for?” Is his only respose. So I hit him again. And again. Same response.
Eventually, the dude comes back and I get a little “good” point for watching the stuff and not taking anything. But then the town guard comes along and warns me for beating up the little brat who was telling me to steal.
So it’s good enough for me just to stand there and take it, but it’s not good for me to keep others from doing the same? This is where I noticed the crack in the good/bad algorithm.
It seems like everything is hardwired into the system. It’s always very clear which way is good and which is bad, and under no circumstances is it ok to do a thing that’s usually bad for good reasons.
I’m going to guess that the game is very long and deep otherwise, because it seems a grand oversight to attach so much to this good vs. evil aspect of the game, then have it be so lackluster. It’s like I had said about Black and White; It looks so promising, but in the end there are only a small number of final creature forms you can evolve into. I imagine the same thing in Fable, but with the addition of tattoos and clothes to make costume changes.
But that’s it. That’s all I have bad to say about Fable. And since I’ve barely played through the intro, which was rathe long and involved, I’m sure I have a lot more to discover that could change my mind about my initial impressions.
Here’s a good point, and perhaps the best you’ll hear from me: I want to play the game some more.
