I followed Fable casually since it was first announced as an Xbox MMORPG called Project Ego. I say casually because some people followed this game rabidly. I’ve never seen a game with so many pre-release fans. A 5 minute scour of any gaming message board would reveal at least one message that said “just wait for Project Ego.” I’m rambling now but I really can’t overhype the overhypedness of this game.
Well, everyone knows by now it was a dud. I played it through the training levels and was utterly bored and haven’t touched it since then.
Was there anything special or unique or cool about this game? Did the story turn out good? Is there anything that sets it apart from early Xbox “rpg” duds like Azurik - Rise of Perathia, Nightcaster, and Enclave?
Anything special? No, not really. Some of the combat was fun, but other then that it always felt like a half finished game. The story was typical, and if you played to the end and watched all the credits (all 25 minutes of them!) then you got to continue playing with the best weapon in the game - except that there wasn’t anything else left to do. Whee. There were no end movies, or cinematics, just pans of still art with narration. The voice acting was pitiful especially compared to other RPGs. The whole idea of being able to have your character change depending on choices that you made really never reached its full potential - good or evil, that was about it - but hey, you could change your haircuts/tattoos. Another poorly executed idea was the aging system. No one else aged, but your character did every time he leveled up. Poor guy was 45 after 5 hours of game play - and using magic aged him even faster.
It was always hyped as a massive RPG with unlimited choices when in fact, it had very few side quests (most of which took too much effort for too little reward), the main story was quite linear, and the total game play was around 8 hours. Compare this to Morrowind - massive my ass (and it’s not).
It’s another Black and White - an interesting idea that was poorly executed. I did like the graphics and the music though.
I definetly wouldn’t say that! I loved the game, though it was too short. The change in look (and the reactions of the townspeople based on that) based on your actions was pretty special, IMO. The moral ambiguity was also pretty fun. I found it to be definetly an above average RPG. Much better than Diablo II, for instance.
