Fable (Preview)

Star Dingo, GamePro

05/01/2004 09:00:00

There’s no doubt about it: the PS2 has a firm lock on surreal hyperfantasy role-playing in the form of the Final Fantasy series. But Microsoft has a role-playing leg up on them in a different department.

From Bethesda’s landmark Morrowind to Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic to Peter Molyneux’s Fable, the Xbox seems to be the place to be for more complex, character-driven, non-linear gameplay experiences.

Fable is a game that’s been in Microsoft’s pipeline as far back as any Xbox gamer can remember (it was once known as Project Ego, in another age long since forgotten). The heart of the game is in its groundbreaking character development: You play a persona from youth to maturity, and in that time, he (no she, unfortunately) falls in love, gains fame, loses credibility, and/or falls into a state of public mockery depending on your actions, and the game is designed so that one player’s experience will be wholly different than the next’s.

Your character evolves based on your actions, and not just in the usual stat-driven ways, but cosmetically too - using magic balds you, eating a lot makes you fat, using swords slowly bulks you up, getting smacked hard in battle can leave permanent scars.

You can be good, you can be evil, you can just be. Of course, everyone ages, and everyone dies .. but that’s not to say there aren’t ways to screw with the natural process. Most of the mystery behind Fable lies in the stuff outside the character development. The game’s story is shrouded in secret; all we really know so far is that there is one, but it’s probably not the super-epic kind of thing you’re used to in your Final Fantasy games.

The heart of Fable’s gameplay comes from taking on various missions for the people in your hometown. In Albion (the land where Fable takes place), heroes parade around like pop idols, standing on pedestals proclaiming their coolness and appeasing their fans. Taking on tough missions earns you more regard; become cool enough in the kids’ eyes, and they’ll start wearing your hairdo or copying your style of dress.

You can even intentionally make missions harder for yourself (“oh yeah, well I can slay that dragon in three strokes ... blindfolded!”) in order to earn more fame, fortune, and potential allies (or enemies, if there’s some jealousy involved). If it all sounds a little absurd, that’s intentional. The tone is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett or Piers Anthony - fantasy with a heavy dose of satire - a departure for almost any console RPG out there.

The game uses an exceptionally sturdy-looking third-person real-time battle system with lots of arcing swords and combos; when we saw the game last, there was a real sense of weight and balance to the combat, though we’ll have to wait ‘til we get to play to find out if it’s really as good as it look.

Even after several years of hearing about it, Fable still remains one of the most promising role-playing games we’ve ever seen. There’s always a chance that it could just turn out to be a big “features list” with no real gameplay in the center ... but based on what we’ve seen, the likelihood of that is really quite slim.

[ Other stories about Persona, Gameplay, Microsoft, Bioware ]

Publisher: Microsoft / Release date: 12/12/2003 / Genre: RPG / OFLC Rating: Not Yet Classified

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