Screenshots :.
Fable 2
360
Jay
29-10-2008
"A Molyneux masterpiece?"
"Friday night in Bicester."
"Ah, the boathouse. My third wife loved the boat house."
"Blimey, that's a biggun!"
"Evil evil nasty woman."
"Use the force, Lu... oh, wrong game."
"Inferno is a superbly useful spell."
Matt:
As I sit here typing this, my 20+ hour Fable 2 quest lies broken and inactive due to an insanely annoying glitch that will hopefully be getting patched soon. Thus, with my restarted effort not quite up to the same level I have enlisted the help of Jay to review the game as the boy’s pretty much completed it 1.5 times – add that to my 0.5 and methinks we have two complete playthroughs between us. The fact that we’ve played it so much collectively since Friday should act as a pointer to how enjoyable the game is while it’s working.
Set a couple of hundred years after the events of the first Fable, the second kicks off with a beautiful introduction which ends rather abruptly with a bird taking a dump on someone’s head, thus setting the rather offbeat tone that will play out through your time with the game. The someone who has had the aforementioned bird’s load plopped unceremoniously on their head turns out to be your character, be it boy or girl depending on choice. After a good deal of waffling with your curiously cockney sister you head off on a little adventure to see why crowds are cheering, and from there the game takes off.
Jay:
Well actually I managed to complete the game twice over the weekend - once through being all nice and such, having the girls fall at your feet in admiration, and the other being some oversized, demon-looking, black garb wearing bastard that wouldn't know what a girl was even if she was running around town with her boobs on fire. All because, like the original Fable and something that's close to Lionhead Studio's heart, you get a choice of how you want to play the game and interact with all the citizens of the Fable 2 universe.
Fable 2 is a 3rd-person roll-playing adventure where the decisions you make alter the course of the game, your appearance and the environment around you. The game starts with you and your sis trying to buy a music box, believing it to be magical. Upon obtaining said box and making a wish to no effect, you go for an early night. In the middle of the night a guard calls you to the castle where you meet Lucian who states that you're Heroes and must be killed. Flung through a window by the blast of a bullet you fall to the cobbles below, only to be rescued by a Judy Dench sounding Gypsy who whisks you off to her camp for a few years. So, with that bad start to life you can understand why you can generally take one of 2 paths, good or evil. Slay the barkeep because you feel like it and not only will you start to literally grow horns and have throbbing black veins as your primary feature, but you'll also affect the economy of the town, scare the locals, get chased by the law enforcement, and worse – called names! However, shower the barkeep with gifts, pay the bard for a song and pull a few pints behind the bar and the locals will love you, shops will be cheaper, the economy will fluorish and you'll get to sign autographs – if that's your kind of thing.
Matt:
See, that choice effectively means you can pretty much tailor Fable 2 to your own personal liking, with your actions having consequences as mentioned above. It also means that instead of ploughing through the main campaign you can end up merely wandering around towns doing little job mini games such as hammering iron into swords and the like merely to get cash and buy houses. Whereas the first game hinted at the idea by allowing you to buy a few selected homes in each major area, the second allows you to buy a whole selection to rent out or settle down in, as well as local business to buy and feed off the profits of.
When you do put down the civil hat and quest into the wild to seek vengeance and answers for your inflicted wrongs, it pretty much plays out like the first in terms of the combat being mapped to a single button. It might sound a bit basic, but it soon makes sense as you slash and hack your way through countless enemies. To help along the way you can still unleash magic spells from a distance should you be the unsociable type, and new this time around are guns and crossbows, each offering another avenue of ranged combat. All you attributes, whether it be strength or damage, magic or accuracy, are levelled up by collecting orbs from downed enemies, and to be fair to Lionhead they seem to have gotten the level curve just about right so that the game remains just the right side of difficult throughout.
Jay:
Yeah that's true to a point, but then the death system's an unusual one, perhaps easier going when you're playing as a bad guy. If you die (get knocked out) you'll lose any experience you haven't gathered and gain a permanent scar. Bad guys don't care about scars of course. Hell, you can customise yourself that much with tattoos, outfits and make-up (if you're that way inclined) that it just generally doesn't matter – if not a nice little feature as far as gameplay goes.
Talking about customisation, it's very well put together. You not only have all the options of clothes - whether you look stately, rogueish or a woolly woofter cross dresser. You can then get yourself some tattooes, dye your hair, get a haircut or some beardy bravado to tailor the character even further. Even then you can go grab yourself a title from a town crier for your own amusement or ego massage, depending on your mood.
This sets your character up to be placed nicely into an environment they've really gone to town on.
Matt:
It’s that environment, how you interact with it and how it changes as a result that really sells Fable 2 to me. I was always a bit of a fan of the fairytale quality the first game carried and the sequel takes this and runs with it, with weird and wonderful cities packed with amusing characters to interact with, and all kinds of strange nasties knocking about, be they hulking great trolls or strange little wooden men. Oh, and watch out for the banshees – they are actually pretty bloody unnerving, let me tell you.
The general interaction has been given a boost from the first, with the right bumper bringing up a wheel of potential types of response or comment and then each selection offering a number of choices within. How you react to people in the world is entirely down to you, but I found particular childish amusement in farting in front of a massed crowd and asking people to follow me to the end of the pier in Bowerstone, whereupon I extorted money out of them and then crossbowed them off the end into the water. Evil git, aren’t I?
The interaction does have its problems, mind. I once took my in-game wife out for a little date and spent a good deal of time seducing her as I decided it was time for an in-game kid (silly move), but each time I tried to whisper sweet nothings into her ear the gathered crowd took it as intended for them and pretty much all fell in love with me. I then decided to try to escape to my marital home to get away, only for upward of five people to pile into my house and block me from exiting. Sometimes, being popular hurts.
Jay:
Haha, yeah I came home to my kid all shacked up with the Mrs behind a Demon Door (one of the many unlockables in the game), I'd only been away for around 60 in game hours to find her a toddler and stating that I must be her dad but she didn't really remember me. What a welcome home!
Generally speaking, the ability to call up the emote menu on the fly isn't as clunky as I thought it would be. Most of the game has been geared towards letting people simply hack-'n'-slash their way through the game without ever really upgrading or seeking out points of interests. The game would only clock in at around 12-15 hours gameplay if you did that mind, so it's well worth taking the time to explore this not-too-linear world that Lionhead have provided. Particularly as you'll usually get rewarded for such efforts.
One thing that keeps cropping up is renown, a system that's put in place to let you know how well known you are around Fable 2, being that for the good, the bad or the ugly!
Matt:
Yes – walking around town getting called ‘the mighty nobhead’ was hugely pleasing to me. Guess I had better summarise my thoughts on Fable 2 before shuffling over to allow Jay his final (possibly more considered) piece; it’s great, but it could have been better.
Why do I say this? Well, first off is that it is jam-packed with bugs of varying degrees of annoyance. Losing the ability to talk to your wife is one thing, but losing the ability to complete the game full stop due to an event not cancelling is really, really annoying. I’m also not entirely sure the whole actions/consequences thing has been properly nailed yet either – having killed the entire gypsy village I started in, the kids left there then went on to dance and be happy when I did a little jig on the scattered corpses. Hum.
But, but… see, I know I have not completed it yet, but the rest of the game is lovely, and I really enjoy it. The dog, which I was rather sceptical about, is a useful little treasure finding/fighting buddy, and the whole setting, story and progression is great fun. It was headed toward being dangerously close to my favourite game of the year so far, but with the bugs taken into account it’s slipped a little. What I will say in conclusion, though, is that the world of Albion is superbly realised for the most part, the game itself is something you can easily lose countless hours in doing little side quests and such, and generally it’s highly recommended if they sort the crippling problems out. Here’s hoping, eh Jay?
Jay:
Yeah would have to agree, I did run into a couple of things including a troll pushing me through the environment and a weird graphic glitch that stayed until I re-logged. However, I can't say this has even touched on what the game offers up. For me to complete a game twice is really saying something, my attention span is so small these days that goldfish continually get one up on me. Even the online co-op mode means you can do both routes with a friend.
While the second, in the no-doubt series of Fable games that we'll see, was somewhat cut down in collectables than it's predecessor, I still found plenty to go back and play for. Definitely gets my vote for RPG of the year, well worth adding to the ninja gaming stack!
As I sit here typing this, my 20+ hour Fable 2 quest lies broken and inactive due to an insanely annoying glitch that will hopefully be getting patched soon. Thus, with my restarted effort not quite up to the same level I have enlisted the help of Jay to review the game as the boy’s pretty much completed it 1.5 times – add that to my 0.5 and methinks we have two complete playthroughs between us. The fact that we’ve played it so much collectively since Friday should act as a pointer to how enjoyable the game is while it’s working.
Set a couple of hundred years after the events of the first Fable, the second kicks off with a beautiful introduction which ends rather abruptly with a bird taking a dump on someone’s head, thus setting the rather offbeat tone that will play out through your time with the game. The someone who has had the aforementioned bird’s load plopped unceremoniously on their head turns out to be your character, be it boy or girl depending on choice. After a good deal of waffling with your curiously cockney sister you head off on a little adventure to see why crowds are cheering, and from there the game takes off.
Jay:
Well actually I managed to complete the game twice over the weekend - once through being all nice and such, having the girls fall at your feet in admiration, and the other being some oversized, demon-looking, black garb wearing bastard that wouldn't know what a girl was even if she was running around town with her boobs on fire. All because, like the original Fable and something that's close to Lionhead Studio's heart, you get a choice of how you want to play the game and interact with all the citizens of the Fable 2 universe.
Fable 2 is a 3rd-person roll-playing adventure where the decisions you make alter the course of the game, your appearance and the environment around you. The game starts with you and your sis trying to buy a music box, believing it to be magical. Upon obtaining said box and making a wish to no effect, you go for an early night. In the middle of the night a guard calls you to the castle where you meet Lucian who states that you're Heroes and must be killed. Flung through a window by the blast of a bullet you fall to the cobbles below, only to be rescued by a Judy Dench sounding Gypsy who whisks you off to her camp for a few years. So, with that bad start to life you can understand why you can generally take one of 2 paths, good or evil. Slay the barkeep because you feel like it and not only will you start to literally grow horns and have throbbing black veins as your primary feature, but you'll also affect the economy of the town, scare the locals, get chased by the law enforcement, and worse – called names! However, shower the barkeep with gifts, pay the bard for a song and pull a few pints behind the bar and the locals will love you, shops will be cheaper, the economy will fluorish and you'll get to sign autographs – if that's your kind of thing.
Matt:
See, that choice effectively means you can pretty much tailor Fable 2 to your own personal liking, with your actions having consequences as mentioned above. It also means that instead of ploughing through the main campaign you can end up merely wandering around towns doing little job mini games such as hammering iron into swords and the like merely to get cash and buy houses. Whereas the first game hinted at the idea by allowing you to buy a few selected homes in each major area, the second allows you to buy a whole selection to rent out or settle down in, as well as local business to buy and feed off the profits of.
When you do put down the civil hat and quest into the wild to seek vengeance and answers for your inflicted wrongs, it pretty much plays out like the first in terms of the combat being mapped to a single button. It might sound a bit basic, but it soon makes sense as you slash and hack your way through countless enemies. To help along the way you can still unleash magic spells from a distance should you be the unsociable type, and new this time around are guns and crossbows, each offering another avenue of ranged combat. All you attributes, whether it be strength or damage, magic or accuracy, are levelled up by collecting orbs from downed enemies, and to be fair to Lionhead they seem to have gotten the level curve just about right so that the game remains just the right side of difficult throughout.
Jay:
Yeah that's true to a point, but then the death system's an unusual one, perhaps easier going when you're playing as a bad guy. If you die (get knocked out) you'll lose any experience you haven't gathered and gain a permanent scar. Bad guys don't care about scars of course. Hell, you can customise yourself that much with tattoos, outfits and make-up (if you're that way inclined) that it just generally doesn't matter – if not a nice little feature as far as gameplay goes.
Talking about customisation, it's very well put together. You not only have all the options of clothes - whether you look stately, rogueish or a woolly woofter cross dresser. You can then get yourself some tattooes, dye your hair, get a haircut or some beardy bravado to tailor the character even further. Even then you can go grab yourself a title from a town crier for your own amusement or ego massage, depending on your mood.
This sets your character up to be placed nicely into an environment they've really gone to town on.
Matt:
It’s that environment, how you interact with it and how it changes as a result that really sells Fable 2 to me. I was always a bit of a fan of the fairytale quality the first game carried and the sequel takes this and runs with it, with weird and wonderful cities packed with amusing characters to interact with, and all kinds of strange nasties knocking about, be they hulking great trolls or strange little wooden men. Oh, and watch out for the banshees – they are actually pretty bloody unnerving, let me tell you.
The general interaction has been given a boost from the first, with the right bumper bringing up a wheel of potential types of response or comment and then each selection offering a number of choices within. How you react to people in the world is entirely down to you, but I found particular childish amusement in farting in front of a massed crowd and asking people to follow me to the end of the pier in Bowerstone, whereupon I extorted money out of them and then crossbowed them off the end into the water. Evil git, aren’t I?
The interaction does have its problems, mind. I once took my in-game wife out for a little date and spent a good deal of time seducing her as I decided it was time for an in-game kid (silly move), but each time I tried to whisper sweet nothings into her ear the gathered crowd took it as intended for them and pretty much all fell in love with me. I then decided to try to escape to my marital home to get away, only for upward of five people to pile into my house and block me from exiting. Sometimes, being popular hurts.
Jay:
Haha, yeah I came home to my kid all shacked up with the Mrs behind a Demon Door (one of the many unlockables in the game), I'd only been away for around 60 in game hours to find her a toddler and stating that I must be her dad but she didn't really remember me. What a welcome home!
Generally speaking, the ability to call up the emote menu on the fly isn't as clunky as I thought it would be. Most of the game has been geared towards letting people simply hack-'n'-slash their way through the game without ever really upgrading or seeking out points of interests. The game would only clock in at around 12-15 hours gameplay if you did that mind, so it's well worth taking the time to explore this not-too-linear world that Lionhead have provided. Particularly as you'll usually get rewarded for such efforts.
One thing that keeps cropping up is renown, a system that's put in place to let you know how well known you are around Fable 2, being that for the good, the bad or the ugly!
Matt:
Yes – walking around town getting called ‘the mighty nobhead’ was hugely pleasing to me. Guess I had better summarise my thoughts on Fable 2 before shuffling over to allow Jay his final (possibly more considered) piece; it’s great, but it could have been better.
Why do I say this? Well, first off is that it is jam-packed with bugs of varying degrees of annoyance. Losing the ability to talk to your wife is one thing, but losing the ability to complete the game full stop due to an event not cancelling is really, really annoying. I’m also not entirely sure the whole actions/consequences thing has been properly nailed yet either – having killed the entire gypsy village I started in, the kids left there then went on to dance and be happy when I did a little jig on the scattered corpses. Hum.
But, but… see, I know I have not completed it yet, but the rest of the game is lovely, and I really enjoy it. The dog, which I was rather sceptical about, is a useful little treasure finding/fighting buddy, and the whole setting, story and progression is great fun. It was headed toward being dangerously close to my favourite game of the year so far, but with the bugs taken into account it’s slipped a little. What I will say in conclusion, though, is that the world of Albion is superbly realised for the most part, the game itself is something you can easily lose countless hours in doing little side quests and such, and generally it’s highly recommended if they sort the crippling problems out. Here’s hoping, eh Jay?
Jay:
Yeah would have to agree, I did run into a couple of things including a troll pushing me through the environment and a weird graphic glitch that stayed until I re-logged. However, I can't say this has even touched on what the game offers up. For me to complete a game twice is really saying something, my attention span is so small these days that goldfish continually get one up on me. Even the online co-op mode means you can do both routes with a friend.
While the second, in the no-doubt series of Fable games that we'll see, was somewhat cut down in collectables than it's predecessor, I still found plenty to go back and play for. Definitely gets my vote for RPG of the year, well worth adding to the ninja gaming stack!
9/10
