Fable 3 Post Mortem

Having only a mildly enjoyable time with Fable 2 (even though I did 2 playthroughs of it) I wasn't all that interested last fall with the release of Fable 3. So come Fall 2011, and a Steam sale, I finally decided to go back into Albion and see if all the terrible things I heard about the end game are really true. And they are.

Mostly.

I'll admit that my motivations for playing Fable 3 the way that I did were largely achievement related, and honestly far too much of my 2011 gaming time has been spent in such ways. Thus the only real problem I had, was that I was trying to play a game in a way that I wasn't even all that interested in. I just wanted the points. What this meant was that on the few (and by that I mean very few, as in 3) times when I got reckless and fell in combat, I quit out of the game. And worst of all, I allowed my game to sit idly while I was accruing the necessary money that would ensure that I could save everyone in Albion. But really, that's irrelevant. I chose to play the game in a way that made it unfun. Anyone who complains about the way the ending works, chose to play it in such a way and has no right to complain. Really this isn't where my problems with Fable 3 arise.

The real reason I played Fable 2 for a second time was the Spire sequence. I really enjoyed where they took that story, and the section that required you to play through a very narrative driven section that was free from the free-roaming, quest accepting style that the rest of the game employs. The same thing holds true in the follow up. The only section of the game that seemed to have any sense of unique style, or directed story advancement, was the middle section where you are taken away from Albion and first encounter the horribly non-descriptive Darkness. The rest of the game feels like and endless series of fetch quests which are completely unrelated to anything else that is happening in the game. In this section we got story advancement, and drastic change in scenery, and most importantly, a reason to care about one of the supporting characters. In other words it was the only thing that differentiated this game from the other two Fable games.

All this really told me is that I would like for Lionhead to actually make a more linear, story driven game. I'm a person that appreciates being taken on a ride, and what Fable offers (assuming that that Kinect game really isn't on rails as it appears) doesn't do that. A greater focus on story, narrative and character development would be great, and they have shown the flashes of creativity that could really make it something special