Honest Opinion : Fable - The Lost Chapters (Xbox)
For a series that started a little over a decade ago, I came into the Fable hype a bit late. I personally haven't ever been a big fan of RPG's. I enjoy playing games for the stories, and a lot of RPG's are filled with side-quests that don't really pertain to the over-arching story. So no matter how much I am enjoying the gameplay, I end up bored from having to grind out side quests, only for the purpose of leveling up so I can continue with the main quests.
When I first fired up Fable I noticed very quickly that this game would be different.
The game begins with the main character as a young boy, retrieving a birthday present for your older sister. As you bring it to her, a group of bandits raids your village, burning everything down and killing nearly all the residents. A Hero by the name of Mage saves you and brings you back to the Heroes Guild after he sees something promising in you. You grow up honing your skills over the years at the Guild, before finally being sent out into the world.
The Guildmaster tells you of a seeress in a nearby village, urging you to seek her out.Which you do, and quickly discover that she's actually your older sister, having survived the attack as a child. She was taken by Twinblade, a former hero who is currently running a camp of bandits.
Eventually on your quest, you discover who was responsible for the attack on your village, and your name spreads throughout the land of Albion as your status as a Hero continues to grow.
Everything begins with you customizing your character. It isn't a great amount of detail that you get to explore with, but you do get to give your own flavor to things. What's most amusing though is the early portions of the game where you're still young. The body proportions are all wrong, and it essentially looks like you have your adult character's head on the child-size body.
The combat system is pretty simple in Fable. You have three ways of attacking, with a weapon up close (fists, sword, axe, mace), with a ranged weapon (bow and arrows), or with magic (a number of individual spells you can purchase and level up). With your close weapons, you can choose to either swing freely and hit whoever you can, or you can use the left trigger to lock on to one specific enemy and focus all your force at each person in turn. Magic attacks work the same, you can either send them on their own or target someone in particular. With your bow, you have the same two option for attacking, but you can also use a first person aiming mode, where an aiming reticle is brought up on the screen so you can shoot freely for shots that need more fine aiming.
As the game progresses you'll encounter these Demon Doors. Most are purely optional, but these doors require you to complete a task just for it, such as achieving a certain combat multiplier directly in front of the door, eliminating all enemies in the area, or performing tasks specific towards good or bad karma.
All your skills, and weapons can be upgraded constantly throughout the game. The weapons specifically will either need to be purchased or looted from a downed enemy. However, these can be further augmented with weapon augmentations, that will splice a new effect to your weapon. The aug's can either increase weapon damage, or add elemental damage to your attacks. Not all weapons can be augmented like this, and some have room for multiple augmentations. But when it can be done, it is super effective and helps greatly in combat.
Everything else must be upgraded at the Heroes Guild through power orbs. Every enemy you kill will drop different colored orbs that you can collect. The majority of these orbs are yellow, but they will also drop green, red, and blue ones. Yellow orbs can be used in any categoryfor upgrades, but the green, red, and blue are specific to their own. Green is for your strength, red is for skill, and blue is for will.
What I liked most about this game though, was how the quests are set up. Fable is an RPG for people like me who don't always enjoy the side quests. All quests are broken down into Gold, Silver, and Bronze, with Gold representing main quests while Silver and Bronze are side. When I streamed this game, I only ever did any of the Gold Quests, and I made it just fine through the entire game, including The Lost Chapters expansion. You earn plenty of gold to buy better weapons and armor, and encounter more than enough enemies to pick up a great amount of orbs for leveling up your skills.
One big feature of the game too is the Karma system. You can run around being the Hero that Albion deserves, or you can be a total greedy dick and think only of yourself. All your actions have consequences, and a good portion of the Gold Quests have forks in them, opening up both good and bad options. An early one in the game has you heading to a farm to either fend off some bandits (good karma) or assist them in their attack (bad karma.
Fable feels like it is built to be accessible to any and every kind of gamer out there. You can choose to be good or bad, you can focus only on story or attempt to do everything. I really didn't feel like there were any limitations to me, where I felt like I was being forced into doing something I didn't necessarily want to do, in relations to the story and the game mechanics.
There are some flaws through the game, mostly in the auto-lock feature in combat. You'd expect something like this to literally auto-lock on an enemy near you. However, what it actually does is lock in the direction your character is facing, and if there isn't an enemy there, you just lock onto nothing and can strafe around. This gets extremely frustrating at points in the game when you are faced with at least a dozen enemies around you. That one moment of locking onto nothing can cost you precious health points.
Another flaw is the fact that once you are in a Gold Quest, you are either forced to finish it or do the entire thing all over again. There's no checkpoints on the way, and you can't just save and come back another time. Now, it's worth nothing that none of the quests are tremendously long, so it's not like you'll randomly find yourself committed to an hours-long quest. But if something comes up and you need to step away from the game, or in my case when you stream on a time limit, it can be a bit irritating.
All flaws aside though, this game is truly amazing, one that I wish I'd experienced for myself sooner. I will most definitely be advancing through the rest of the series as soon as possible. I streamed this one, I can guarantee streaming Fable 2 and 3....Fable Journey might be best saved for off stream though.
When I first fired up Fable I noticed very quickly that this game would be different.
The game begins with the main character as a young boy, retrieving a birthday present for your older sister. As you bring it to her, a group of bandits raids your village, burning everything down and killing nearly all the residents. A Hero by the name of Mage saves you and brings you back to the Heroes Guild after he sees something promising in you. You grow up honing your skills over the years at the Guild, before finally being sent out into the world.
The Guildmaster tells you of a seeress in a nearby village, urging you to seek her out.Which you do, and quickly discover that she's actually your older sister, having survived the attack as a child. She was taken by Twinblade, a former hero who is currently running a camp of bandits.
Eventually on your quest, you discover who was responsible for the attack on your village, and your name spreads throughout the land of Albion as your status as a Hero continues to grow.
Everything begins with you customizing your character. It isn't a great amount of detail that you get to explore with, but you do get to give your own flavor to things. What's most amusing though is the early portions of the game where you're still young. The body proportions are all wrong, and it essentially looks like you have your adult character's head on the child-size body.
The combat system is pretty simple in Fable. You have three ways of attacking, with a weapon up close (fists, sword, axe, mace), with a ranged weapon (bow and arrows), or with magic (a number of individual spells you can purchase and level up). With your close weapons, you can choose to either swing freely and hit whoever you can, or you can use the left trigger to lock on to one specific enemy and focus all your force at each person in turn. Magic attacks work the same, you can either send them on their own or target someone in particular. With your bow, you have the same two option for attacking, but you can also use a first person aiming mode, where an aiming reticle is brought up on the screen so you can shoot freely for shots that need more fine aiming.
As the game progresses you'll encounter these Demon Doors. Most are purely optional, but these doors require you to complete a task just for it, such as achieving a certain combat multiplier directly in front of the door, eliminating all enemies in the area, or performing tasks specific towards good or bad karma.
All your skills, and weapons can be upgraded constantly throughout the game. The weapons specifically will either need to be purchased or looted from a downed enemy. However, these can be further augmented with weapon augmentations, that will splice a new effect to your weapon. The aug's can either increase weapon damage, or add elemental damage to your attacks. Not all weapons can be augmented like this, and some have room for multiple augmentations. But when it can be done, it is super effective and helps greatly in combat.
Everything else must be upgraded at the Heroes Guild through power orbs. Every enemy you kill will drop different colored orbs that you can collect. The majority of these orbs are yellow, but they will also drop green, red, and blue ones. Yellow orbs can be used in any categoryfor upgrades, but the green, red, and blue are specific to their own. Green is for your strength, red is for skill, and blue is for will.
What I liked most about this game though, was how the quests are set up. Fable is an RPG for people like me who don't always enjoy the side quests. All quests are broken down into Gold, Silver, and Bronze, with Gold representing main quests while Silver and Bronze are side. When I streamed this game, I only ever did any of the Gold Quests, and I made it just fine through the entire game, including The Lost Chapters expansion. You earn plenty of gold to buy better weapons and armor, and encounter more than enough enemies to pick up a great amount of orbs for leveling up your skills.
One big feature of the game too is the Karma system. You can run around being the Hero that Albion deserves, or you can be a total greedy dick and think only of yourself. All your actions have consequences, and a good portion of the Gold Quests have forks in them, opening up both good and bad options. An early one in the game has you heading to a farm to either fend off some bandits (good karma) or assist them in their attack (bad karma.
Fable feels like it is built to be accessible to any and every kind of gamer out there. You can choose to be good or bad, you can focus only on story or attempt to do everything. I really didn't feel like there were any limitations to me, where I felt like I was being forced into doing something I didn't necessarily want to do, in relations to the story and the game mechanics.
There are some flaws through the game, mostly in the auto-lock feature in combat. You'd expect something like this to literally auto-lock on an enemy near you. However, what it actually does is lock in the direction your character is facing, and if there isn't an enemy there, you just lock onto nothing and can strafe around. This gets extremely frustrating at points in the game when you are faced with at least a dozen enemies around you. That one moment of locking onto nothing can cost you precious health points.
Another flaw is the fact that once you are in a Gold Quest, you are either forced to finish it or do the entire thing all over again. There's no checkpoints on the way, and you can't just save and come back another time. Now, it's worth nothing that none of the quests are tremendously long, so it's not like you'll randomly find yourself committed to an hours-long quest. But if something comes up and you need to step away from the game, or in my case when you stream on a time limit, it can be a bit irritating.
All flaws aside though, this game is truly amazing, one that I wish I'd experienced for myself sooner. I will most definitely be advancing through the rest of the series as soon as possible. I streamed this one, I can guarantee streaming Fable 2 and 3....Fable Journey might be best saved for off stream though.
