f13.net

I'll get some impressions tonight but I'm wondering if I can make babies and then kill them. You know, taboo stuff.

I'm also wondering if there's an achievement to get every STD in the game.  :why_so_serious:

On a more serious note... looking forward to playing!

Been playing it. Dog eats my ass. I'm playing an evil little bitch who will go a-rampaging. After I buy a town that is.

I'll be playing it.  I suppose you all have YARRR copies or has the street date been broken some where?

I actually liked Fable 1 a lot. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the hype, so I wasn't overly disappointed in what I played.  Unless the reviews completely savage this, I'll pick it up.

All I can say about Fable 2 is that it feels way too unresponsive. I don't know how that was possible given how responsive the first one felt. Everything feels pretty fucking sluggish.

But I'm having fun, so whatever. Of course, I'm evil, so yea.

Oh, it released.  When is it coming out for PC?

Release date is 10/21 for 360. Not sure if you're expressing mild surprise or a fact.  PC version, didn't find anything really with a cursory glance at the intarwebs.

No PC version announced yet and no it isn't released yet.

If it's like Fable 1, the PC version will come out a year from now. If it's a LOT like Fable 1, it'll also have a bunch of extra content, but I wouldn't bet money on that.

I was tempted to "sign this out" from my GS tonght, but my Store Manager said no.

Also, does MS still nuke your XBL account if you break street dates?

They hate us, don't they? This is another example of a game coming out that I went "Hey, neat!" Then I immediately saw I couldn't play it on my computer.

Too unresponsive is right. Inventory system is dick. The "on rails" element of Fable I is present though not as insanely bad. It takes freaking forever to open chests and dig holes. Earning money in the game is tedious and dull. Combat as a ranged character is *easy*. AI is stupid if I hit them from range as they will stand there and take it.

It's a solid 8.

Unresponsive, dick inventory, shitty AI, on rails, one of the necessities for playing the game is tedious and it gets an 8?

Maybe I need to play it to understand.

but but but....The game has condoms in it.

Condoms! :awesome_for_real:

The only reason the game would get an 8 but be a shitty game at the same time is because a lot of the design is good, it's just an unpolished nightmare.

It's hard to explain. It's kind of like Diablo 2 on launch day. Good luck getting it to run, but if it ran right you know exactly how awesome it would be.

Fable II is the bare minimum of quality I expect from games, but their UI designers need to be taken out back and shot in the head. For example, to donate gold at a temple, you have to hit the up arrow until you get the right amount which could amount to 60 seconds spent just trying to make a five digit donation (slooooowly ramps up) instead of being able to enter the ten thousands, thousands, hundreds, etc.

I've had the game freeze on my several times as well, and the game is riddled with bugs.  So I'm going to get 1k achievement points then close the book on this one.

The solid 8 comes from the possibilities of fucking around with the game world.

Why would this game have condoms?  What do you people do with it?!?

I think I missed the day we rated games on possibilities. Probably why I ignore reviews.

It's not possibilities - flat out, the game is fun despite being a technically depressing piece of trash. It's fun IN SPITE OF ITSELF.

It's amazing really, that Molyneux can manage this. But then, Samwise (i think) loves Black and White for the same reasons. And Fable 1 was fun despite the fact the story was a piece of shit and it was basically an on-rails RPG with demon doors. I mean, the guy just can't make a good game in the traditional sense, the fun comes out of accidents.

Are you playing a retail copy of the game?

Balloons animals!

PM me.   :grin:

Yes.

There's a thread on gamefaqs about a guy who accidentally had sex with a Town Crier.

BTW, I'm liking this game.  I'm a real estate mogul and make tons of passive income.  This is even generated while the game is off.

And the dog doesn't bother me at all, it doesn't play nearly as big a role in the game as it was made out to.

So, if money is generated even when the game is off, can you just set the date to 2005, buy property, then set the date back to 2008?

Edit: And make lots of money?

Yes.

Even being a buggy aspires for greatness fable title, I'm looking forward to this like you wouldn't believe.

Hah, reading that was pretty funny. Tranny surprise!

I have to agree with you here there hasn't been a single Molyneux game worth finishing to my mind. I really wanted to finish Populous II but I would probably still be flattening land against Zeus to this day if I had tried.

I feel so ambivalent about this. Every Molyneux game I've ever bought has alternatively fascinated me for the features that really do stand apart from what other games offer and annoyed the fuck out of me for the unnecessary stupidity of other design decisions in the game. Fable I no less than others.

Honestly I have to wonder about the QA here. The most annoying part of the game are the experience orbs that fall through the ground and take forever to suck up into your hero because they have to travel from the dead space underneath the terrain.

However I am impressed with the concepts explored in each person having a unique version of Albion (at least as far as development goes) and being able to see other players in your game without them being able to affect each other. This is a concept that should be explored.

Excperience bubbles do tend to evaporate way too quickly in a fight, but I'm hardly complaining because I'm near the endgame and have all my Strength and Skill abilities maxed, as well as some of my Will powers even though I only use one of them.

I really wanted to finish Powermonger. Dammit if there wasn't some island that destroyed me every time until I gave up.

After the fable I hype bubble burst i am approaching Fable II with a grain of salt. It could be the same game as fable I but with the new live features and i would be happy.

After Fable 1, Molyneux is dead to me. Should've learned from B&W 1.

The reviews for this game are depressingly upbeat. Almost slobbering in their fanboism. Hardly any mention to the multiple issues that are so prominent in the game.

My review is gonna be something of a "Harsh Reality" to some.

 :popcorn:

Despite not having played it, or the demo, here's my ultra-fast review of Fable 2:

Peter Molyneaux.

Just beat the storyline an hour ago.  Plot = meh.  Exploration and purchasing of towns = tons of fun.

It's a shame the online co-op is coming in a launch-day patch since none of the reviews are going to be able to have any impressions of it.

Judging by the way the game played, it will be a technical mess.

That's what suckered me in to buying the first one on release. Never again!

I remember being really dissapointed with Powermonger after a few hours play, it never really got any different no sticky features, yet it got 10/10 in nearly every review which either meant Molyneux has the reviewers in his pocket or they only play a game for a few hours. Same story with Black and White that dissapointed me though it seemed to get rave reviews in theory it was an amazing game.

I learned my lesson with Black & White, pretty early on I think, when I wasn't able to keep my giant cow from shitting in the granary.  I don't know what his deal was.  He'd just eat villagers and shit them into the granary, like he was mad with recycling power.  The best part of B&W was how I got the villagers to worship a boulder, but most everything else was shitty.

Fable I wasn't that bad.  It had issues but overall wasn't terrible.  I'll be getting Fable II with the idea that it will be an improved Fable, which is OK with me.

Indeed.  We need a :lolpetermolyneuxlol: smiley.  I have no idea what it would look like, but it would involve something in which a good idea is totally fucked up, but remains decent in the end.

My review basically calls the game a comedy of errors, overworked design, and shit quality control.

But despite all of that - and all of Molyneux's previous games, Fable 2 is undeniably fun. This thing fucking exudes soul and all those intangibles that other titles falter on - it is, at it's core - just fucking fun.

I beat it last night. I want to kinda crack the nugget and find the rest of the secrets the world has to offer, buy up the most expensive property, and try and finish off the rest of the achievements before putting this down for good. Unfortunately due to its autosave system, it will require three playthroughs. Thankfully you can blow through the main storyline if you wanted.

Spoilerz: Oh and I'm hoping there's some way I can fix my character's appearance after refusing to sacrifice the girl for that dick Reaver. I mean, shit, seriously. He killed two people in cold blood and turned me into an old hag. I actually gave a shit about one of those guys (photographer). The red eyes and scar went away, but I still look ancient. So instead of being able to pull my gun on him in revenge / justice after the business of saving the world is done, he goes on holiday. Shit. I'm hoping the Temple of Light can undo it with a big enough donation.

With regards to your spoiler, I'm going to guess that the answer is no.  They've been pretty clear about there being sacrifices to be "good".

so one review (before the patch) said that split screen co-op did not let the extra player use "their" character, just the stats. Is this true with the online co-op? even after the patch?

i'd be very let down if it were true

Last I heard it's not split screen local co-op, bur rather you share the screen, and you can take experience, gold, and renown you earn back into your own game.

Reportedly anyway.

It's not an MMO implementation of Co-Op. More like 2D Brawler style implementation, from what I read.

yeah i used split screen as a general term for same consol co-op... i just remmber peter showing off that the xbox live co-op was set up so that your friend comes to your compaign in all of his gear and apearances and can even kill your wife or burn your house down or kill your dog... am i the victim of beleiving his lies again?

I bought all the real estate in my game.  The continuous income from it all is absolutely disgusting.  Can't afford that hot new sword?  Put the game down for 10 minutes, go make some lunch, come back and buy it.

Apparently if you turn the game off you get passive income every hour instead of every five minutes. Protip: If you want money, leave your game running.

Horrible protip. HORRIBLE.

You want your 360 to die?

I wouldn't recommend this if you're making less money per 5 minutes than you could questing. But for me who needs 2.5 million in cash, SPOILERS: didn't select the ending that makes tons of cash, and have to buy up all the real estate, leaving it up for an hour or two would be a good way to make income.

Oh, and you had to do this anyway for Dead Rising's 7 day Survivor achievement. u_u

If you got the achievement, sure.

so i got the game at lunch and played the childhood part before heading back here to work...

how often to quests fail to activate because some stupid ai companion didn't follow you down an alley?

Heh. Not TOO often.

So am I right in guessing that the 10k I made in the pub games so far isn't going to be much of a drop in the bucket for my character's plans to take over the world?

Pretty much, no.  But if you invest it wisely in real estate early on it goes a loooooong way.  I ground out about 40k chopping wood early on and bought out Oakvale and Old Bowerstone.  After that I was able to afford everything I wanted as it came up.

Warning: Phil likes grinding.

It seems like every 100 gold invested in a property gets you ~1 gold every 5 minutes. So 10k will likely get you 100 income on a property every 5 game minutes.

Phil, let me show you to the Warhammer Online forum.

So is this another 8 hour main quest piece of shit game, that lets you back-track (GET IT? RAILROAD TRACK?) through the few zones to do cutesy things to keep you occupied, like a 2 year old, for another 4-6 hours?

In other words is this the sequel to Fable 1?

Pretty much.  They introduce new areas at a snail's pace and pretty much overutilize those areas.

Ah hahaha. All the reviews of Fable II hit on the same day, and all of them are below 9. Only the ones above 9 were posted before 10/21.  :drill:

(http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2008/10/fableIIfrankenchart.jpg)

Let's be fair.  No one LIKES grinding.  I just like the result of it.  And I hated every mind-numbing minute of it.

Also, I played WAR.  Oh god were the rewards for playing it horrible.

The whole "leave your Xbox running" doesn't seem to work. Seems time spent in the pause menu counts towards "not playing" and you'll only get a credit every hour. I don't know. I have to get 1,000,000 and I have to wait for the game to give it to me.

Edit: I may say some harsh things about Fable II but what they did with Co-Op and how Xbox Live Friends interact with your games is rather fascinating. No sarcasm there.

WARNING!!!!

If you decide you want to play a character of a different alignment, it will overwrite your saved game. DO NOT MAKE A NEW CHARACTER IF YOU STILL WANT TO PLAY YOUR FIRST ONE.

This is fucking bullshit. The game doesn't warn you ether. I found this out the hard way. Oh yeah, and the reward unlocks from www.fable2.com webgame are a one time use also.

Very angry.

That's odd. When I was doing Co-Op it seemed to indicate it was possible to have multiple saves.

I should have known though. You can gift other players cash, and running multiple characters would turn them into gold mines.

No it doesn't.  I did this last night and have two saves.

We have 3 characters, it's not a problem.

Co-op sucks because - even over Live, when you join a friends game you have to play as a generic henchman, not your character. And you are still limited to staying on the same screen as your friend, just like offline coop, which can be very awkward at times. Both of these choices seem entirely pointless and are disappointing.

On the single player game, I played about 3 hours last night and am getting into it. It starts out kinda slow, and it took a bit to get used to the Fable quirks like no jumping, and the fact your character doesn't really speak - the emotes are cool of course but otherwise you stand there staring like a deaf mute, it feels really backwards after the games I've played lately where your character has extensive voice and even options like Mass Effect.

Anyway, I enjoyed the first Fable so I knew what to expect, it's fun. The online coop limitations are just lame.

Granted, the actual Co-Op experience is meh. But every other aspect of it I find interesting. Seeing your friends in your game world, trading items between friends. Doing stuff on the website that translates to in-game benefits was also interesting. Imagine if you could do things through the game's website while you're not playing it to help your character out or unlock stuff. I'm a big fan of website stat information for in-game characters. Granting those items from the Fable II website seems to be scratching the surface of something that could be much larger that could tie in with this.

Hahahahahahah lol coop. Tacked on, as I guessed.

If you want dickloads of money, buy a few income generating locations, then fast travel from two very distant locations rapidly.

Sure, it's a lot of load screens, but you get income based on in game time passed, which means you show up to a spam of funds changing.

I'm strange. I dislike the game's plot (really, guys?), and the moral choices are obnoxiously silly most of the time.

But I adore the combat, and the no death system. Because it focuses you more on enjoying the game and less on worrying about never taking damage and shit.

I'm having issues getting the sword fighting to work reliably (I can't figure out what causes the time slow big hits versus the normal big hits for the life of me), but it's downright artistic at times.

Agreed.  The moral system is particularly laugh-worthy.  The AI/reaction from villagers is hilariously bad.  I made the most evil character I could think of, yet I can get almost any woman in the world to want to marry me by rapidly pressing RIGHT on my d-pad.
HAH.

In other news: Morfiend feels like a jackoff.

/facepalm

Treated.

It was funny last night seeing morfiend's floating orb chopping wood and scrambling up and down the pathways. As for the online co-op i still have some questions before i invite someone int my "good" campaign. In the same video where PM was talkign about how you bring your full character, gear, stats and everything into your friends campaign, he said you could kill thier wife or dog and they would not be able to get them back... is this also a lie?

Hey, Cheney's married I believe.

I did find it funny that the extended poses gave you a risk factor of messing them up, but you did fine with them if you just used the non extended form. Same with the dog ball. Just tapping throw is perfect. Hold and try to play the minigame, and you throw the ball strange distances.

I don't believe this to be true. I've slept for 7 days in an inn and didn't get any income. It's time spent not in a menu.

This is still true. So watch out who you let in.

First off, you don't have to leave your 360 on to get money. It just checks the system clock. And yes, I think if you change the clock time you could exploit money.

I'm at a game breaking bug myself. I can't finish the part of the main quest I'm on. (The one in Oakvale. A certain NPC just hangs in this cave I have to go into.) And I can't finish the archeologist quest because my game hangs on the loading screen when I try to go to where the first relic is.

The game is fun despite the bugs though.

I am enjoying the game a lot despite my multiple restarts (Playing while sleep deprived from insomnia can lead to awesome freak out posts).

I am playing as Strength and Will, using the spell Blades, which fucking rocks so far. I am going good right now, because I feel all the evil choices are so obviously EVAL!!!!11!!!1!!!11!, that its hard for me to choose them.

When playing a game like this I usually end up in the middle of alignment.

I am going to make my second (first) character pure evil magic user I think.

Note. I love that there is no mana, and I can cast any spell I want. Note 2. I hate how annoying it is to change selected spells.

My first wife inexplicably left me one day when I went to sex her up.  The marriage screen showed that our relationship was fine and that she wanted sex, but when I showed up she was a queen bitch and took my child with her.

Oh well, no more daily payments.  I am so going to enjoy murdering her on my evil playthrough.

Sounds amazingly true to life.

I think I handled this case this morning in my office. 

P.S. I work in child support.  :ye_gods:

Yeah I'm not even that far in the game and some of the choices are already so contrived. The very first bandit fight you get into - this shouldn't be a spoiler, it's like 30 minutes into the game if that - and the dude offers you gold for the key, or you use the key to free some slaves. Obviously the choice is to kill the fucker and take his gold, and then either let them out or leave them to rot just for the hell of it. But of course you can't do that.

/glare at morfiend... don't even think about it

p.s. nice avatar nix, that show is much better now that the writers are back and the nerdy references are more accurate

I told them him I'd take the gold to not free them, then killed him, got the key, freed them and then killed them. You just have to think what the most evil thing you can do is.

Okay that is good. Hmmm, maybe I'm just not being creative enough with what you can really do.

If you killed him and he didn't have the 50g though, that is sort of annoying.

I am also somewhat annoyed at one thing in this game. If you commit murder in town and get caught, the guards rush up and give you 3 options. 1) Pay a fine, 2) Do community service, 3) resist arrest. If you choose 3 you can just kill them and they are not anywhere close to difficult enough, certainly not 1v1. If you choose 2 it gives you a mission to do to clear your name and they place you on probation. If you are on probation and kill someone, the guards come up and give you 3 options... choose community service again, rinse repeat. Pretty absurd I'd say.

If you're a newbie the guards are pretty hard to kill. If you are uber mengsk hero then yeah, you can drop them pretty fast. They are probably the second or third highest HP guys in the game.

I did find it fascinating that the Skill thing made you taller. You gain about a foot and a half in height which is a huge difference for the female character.

That was true in Fable 1, however, I am killing guards pretty easily in Fable 2, and this is in the first town. I can melee them and roll around, and kill them in a minute or so, and I can quite easily take on more than one at a time. If they are the highest HP in the game, I've basically already won. If I reach any tough guards, I can always tell them I'll do community service and then mosey on my merry way.

There are mobs later on that might mess you up depending how you tackle them, but for the most part the combat in this game isn't very challenging if you are doing Ranged or Magic. Melee requires slightly more thought in how you approach it.

this is sort of out of ignorance.. i never played evil on fable 1, but whats so evil about always apeasing the guards?

if i'm evil and i kill some guards the town should go into lock down and become an event where i have to kill all the guards and then claim the town, then it becomes a bandit town. an evil town

am i off base? or are you suposed to feel like an outsider when you go evil? and this is just a way to keep you from losing access to shops and towns?

You can basically start shit and guards will infinitely respawn to get you. The world isn't that dynamic.

I'm so nervous to invite anyone to my game. Is this unfounded? How bad can someone fuck it up? if they come in and start slaying townsfolk will it hurt my reputation?

I think this is only a problem if you, as the hero, switch off Safety mode. They can't just log in and start slaughtering.

If they slaughter everyone, housing will be cheaper. Win-win, imo.

Played some co-op last night. The game takes on this weird brawler feel. I kinda like it. Wish the person joining you kept their appearance though. I ran a side quest with my buddy, because we didn't want to spoil the main quest for him. I wish there were repeatable co-op dungeons or something because after the side quests there was nothing but the main quest for us to do so we were left standing around saying "now what?".

I really like the game though, the floating friend orbs are funny especially when you can hear them talking to their other friends.

If the game was actually designed with this in mind (more open areas, way more mobs to fight), then it'd be good. It's a claustrophobic camera clusterfuck otherwise.

I can't decide whether or not I want to go seduce villiagers and take them to the wheel of doom. I'm trying to kind of ride the line of being somewhat evil without being crazy evil, but I really do want to see what the wheel does.

The wheel isn't too impressive, and I'm playing hell getting to 2000 loyalty points for my reward.  So far I've sacrificed a husband, every Priest of Light, and damn near emptied out the gypsy camp and I'm only a little bit over 600 points.  Anyone have any tips for quick loyalty points? 

The first fable was pretty enjoyable if played with an open mind. I hope all the bugs/junk will be gone when PC version of Fable II rolls around.

Well, the problems with Fable 2 may not all be bugs. At least the freezing, non-loading levels, and such. It looks like some of their discs were very shoddily made. For instance, when I look at the bottom of my disc it looks almost greasy, with a sort of rainbow sheen on it. I cleaned the hell out of it and suddenly, no more problems. I was totally unable to enter Oldtown, now I can. Things like this.

I have to wonder what the hell this game is doing. From the burned copy to the real one its gone from unnoticeable to making the 360 drive spin so much the case is vibrating.

So, I seduced one lady, and married her, and got her pregnant. Then seduced another woman and moved her in to the house next door. All was going good, and then they ran in to each other and started freaking out that I was married to both of them.

Not being attached to my second wife, I took her and sacrificed her on the Wheel. The evil guy who ran the wheel was like "Your own wife, you are a cold hearted bastard aren't you".

Look at your CD and see if you have that sort of rainbow sheen on it that I had. This is what mine was doing. After a very thorough cleaning I have much less noise and no hangs/pauses.

sounds like my 360 before it red ringed

What did you clean it with? I've never actually had to clean a disc outside of brushing dust off.

A kleenex first then a little wipecloth I have for my glasses. It's like a whole new game performance-wise now.

Heh, could always use my never fail Netflix cleaning technique.  Water on a paper towel.

wtb Gargoyle/Silver Key locations plz

I'm at 7 gargoyles and 14 keys right now I think...

I'm curious to hear that others are having the drive sounds like a jet engine issue. I assumed it was an issue with my drive, but I havent tried out any other disks since I got Fable. I'll try another game when I get home and see what it does. Right now, it sounds like the machine is going to rip itself apart when I'm playing.

Ironically, seems to be a retail release problem. Heh.

What about that Microsoft's plan of having games burned onto the harddrive while only requiring the disc for start-up?
When's that rolling around?

I'd assume after the new dashboard is rolled out early next month.

I'm hoping its soon, because I've confirmed, the jet engine noise is unique to that disc. Pisses me off.

The rip to drive business is with the new UI. So, expect it no sooner than Nov. 19th.

Hopefully Microsoft won't fuck that up. and their plan will work out smooth as butter.    :oh_i_see:

I can't imagine how they could fuck up a ~10mb UI update :why_so_serious:

nov 19th... should help with load times too

Dunno, shit happens.

i take that back, simply running between bowerstone and westfield is pretty much a repeatable "dungeon". not to mention the slave rescuing and the bounty hunting that can be repeated every other in-game week.

The further i go into this game the more i like it... a lot.

I think my evil character is too evil. I cant hardly get anything done in tow, as every single person just runs from me. Its pretty annoying. In fact its even more annoying than the huge pack of towns folk that follow around my good character trying to marry him.

Late as always but I find the best Netflix and used disc cleaner is white toothpaste, not gel.  The mild abrasives do wonders though I wouldn't' use it on a new disc.  It also works for cleaning scuffs off of watches and such.

Picked this up Friday and spent way too much (or not enough depending on PoV) time playing this weekend.

Really enjoying this game atm.

Anyone know if there is a way to change your face?

The "Good" face + level 3 physique makes me hate my character.

Heh.  I got my dude setup in a full on Noble suit (complete with jaunty hat and buckled shoes), and now he looks like a complete douche.  I swear that he even looks tanner.  All the ladies fell instantly in love with him upon getting setup in this outfit.  They actually come into his house and proposition him with sex or marriage, all while his wife looks on in admiration of his wonderfulness.  Some crusty old man is even hitting on him.

This game is waaaay fun, btw.  I guess I'm not quite broken enough to see the flaws that many talk about, I'm only seeing the awesome.  Shit, even the basic, watered down combat is fun.

I have a beard, scruffy hair (dyed grey) and some scars, hardly notice the doofy look on his face anymore.

While I never understood the freak-outs over hot coffee, this game makes me wonder if sexual content makes games worse.

Fable II has a mission that requires you to travel to the city to proposition a lover on behalf a gay NPC farmer, and the mission ends with the NPC coming out of the closet to his father.

There is also a quest chain in the cemetery in which your character steals body parts for a necrophiliac.

Do we really need this?

While that may look like a sentence and act like a sentence, it is not a sentence.

These aren't worth it unless you're just really into getting that achievement.

You might want to think about rephrasing this post lest you drag this thread down to politics.

I am loving this post implicitly equating homosexuality with necrophilia.

i can't remember the last time i played a game where i was looking forward to trying different things while i'm at work. GTA 4, did'nt give me the same feeling for some reason. It's like i have my own personal missions apart from the side quests and acheivements in the game. I have heard of the bugs a xploits (which i am staying away from this playthrough) and even experienced some glitches myself, but nothing gamebreaking. I feel like this is the game fable 1 was supposed to be.

It turns out this game violates Microsoft's policy on Achievmeents. In order to get one of the Achievements, you've had to have bought and played the Fable II Pub Games Arcade title.

Pretty fucked up. People are setting up games where you can login and get the achievement granted without having to go through that crap.

Not really.  The pub games were offered for free with pre-orders, and only people with OCD are going to be bothered by the fact that they might miss out on one achievement.

the acheivement is worth 0 points

No, the Completionist Achievement in Fable II is the one I'm talking about. You need two expressions from the Pub Games to get it.

My dude finally looks like a badass. He's got the dreads and a highwayman outfit dyed mostly black that makes him look like a pirate. Finally purchased a house to live in instead of just rent out, a modest little cottage in Oakfield, currently updating the furniture. No wife yet - though I have my eye on that whore Leah  - I wonder if whores make decent wives...

Game is crazy addicting, I'm getting in trouble with the wife for playing so much.

Wait...you can RENT housing?  I haven't noticed that.  It would sure make it easier to have more sex with someone other than my wife.

I mean I had bought houses and just rented them out to npcs.

Ah, okay, uh....wait!  You can rent them out to NPCs ?!!  Fuck, I need to find more time for this game.

Most houses you buy already have a tenant. You can adjust the rent. I wonder if they move out if you set it too high...

The house I purchased to live in, when I took it over for myself, the chick just calmly walked out. I followed her across Oakfield trying to get her attention but she totally ignored everything I did. I wonder if she moved to another town or what, she just walked straight out of the Oakfield area ... I should have followed her across the zone line to see what happened.

Hmm, that probably explains the strange lady (who is in love with me) always hanging around while I'm trying to sex the wife.

Yeah you set rent/or move in yourself at the same paper outside the house you use to buy it.

Though strange people will still walk into your house.

raising your rent above average rate makes you evil

I thought it just raised your corruption level? And you get purity if you lower it?

Yar, it doesn't make you evil. It just makes you more or less liked depending on which way you go.

evil was a blanket term

Corruption for higher rent. What that translates to is extremely ugly teeth, yellowed eyes with green irises, a constant expression of constipation, and flies flying around you. Of course, if you're good, these flies glow.

Also required to open one of the demon doors.

Yeah it's a little confusing since corruption is a separate rating than evil. Strange that you can be corrupt/good.

Anyone know what your character would look like if he/she was Pure/Evil?

I don't think purity would change or effect evil much. I am what one would call totally corrupt evil, and I look uhmmm evil - but still wall-eyed. :oh_i_see:

Apparently you get pale and vampire-y.

Is celery the only thing that reduces fat?  My character isn't chubby but I'd like the option of eating a larger variety of things without having to do some weird forced consumption of celery to maintain a look.

Celery is all you get, and each merchant only stocks one of each star rating, if that, at a time. You have to fast travel between areas to get it to restock.

On that note, how do I thin out? I ate too many pies fighting a boss and now I'll chubs no loves.

Or sleep in a bed for 7 days.

Celery is the only thing that gives you a -fat modifier.  However, it is not the only thing that does not give you a +fat modifier.  Anything from the produce vendor except cheese has no +fat, water and juices from the drinks vendor generally have no +fat or very small +fat.  Also, the fish tend to not have +fat, but will have a -purity.  Purity can be restored by drinking spring water or eating tofu, neither of which contain fat. 

Note that as you add to the strength modifiers, your character bulks up.  As you add to the skill modifiers, he gets taller, which somewhat reduces the bulkiness from the muscles. If you are doing swords and magic and not using ranged a lot, your guy is going to wind up looking pretty stout, though.

That sounds much easier.

Wait a second. It just dawned on me. Your playing games.

 :grin:

I do fucking love pie.

wow.  This game sounds more complex then I thought an action rpg would be O.o

I love the game, warts and all, but I wish they'd included an option to turn off the 'obvious' feedback (+4 Love, 'You gained 300 good points', 'Dig Spot', etc.).  The game would probably be more interesting/fun (though I'd still want to murder my toon's fan club) without it.

Just got divorced from Lady Grey, according to the game the relationship was going fine, I visited her every week or so, but when I met her the last time she just left me. Wtf?

I'm gonna go get blasted. IRL.

Lady Grey is back in Fable II?

I'm taking a short break playing Fallout, so I figure I'll be rich when I play again. :)

Without being spoilery, I'm at a point in the main quest where the next step is to catch a boat at the docks. Will I be cutting off side quest options if I do that quest now, or am I not as far in to the main quest as I think I am?

If you were going to finish the Temple of Light stuff, do it now.  Everything else is pretty much the same afterwards.

It should be very clear from the events leading to that point that getting on the boat starts a major plot event.  It will trigger some changes to the world.  Some sidequests may still be around when you finish that, but I would clear anything you don't want to miss.

You should absolutely do as many side quests as you can.

I don't like the way the side quest system is set up though.

"Help BanditX raid the Farm"

OR

"Help the Farm defend against BanditX"

Binary decisions!  I'm too morally grey! 

This is my exact major gameplay complaint in my review over at GR. Scratch that, it was a complaint, it seems I might've taken it out.

Also, Fallout 3 does this.

but don't stress about saving slaves and bounty hunter quests cause they are the ones that are repeatable, very handy for co-op.

Ok, that helps, as those are the main ones I haven't done. I've just encountered a lot of locked off areas that seem like they might have quests, and was trying to figure out if I needed to advance the main plot to get to some of them.

When you roll into a zone, the available quests will show up in your quest log, and you can set the quest to active, and it will turn your trail of breadcrumbs toward the quest giver.  As far as I know, quests are not hidden. 

but he does need to get on that boat to advance the world story and move on to the other content... trying to be vague and spoiler free

Morally grey only works if your character has an alignment system that's more complex than just good and evil.  Besides that, what would be a compelling morally grey alternative to saving or destroying a village?

Not getting directly involved, just watching the events unfold, even though you're perfectly capable of preventing the village from being destroyed, simply because they refused to pay you for your job.

Or saving with the sole intent of exploiting the village financially, or even saving to enslave the population.

Gah.  Do nothing?  There is an excellent game mechanic for you.

"Why are you just sitting and staring at the screen?"
"I'm being morally ambiguous."

I'm sure it will sell like hotcakes.  As far as the game determining your intent?  Well, probably not.

I agree with that new kid. I'd like to be able to play these types of games with a more sutble approach. Fine, I won't do the bad thing that kills off you town - but now you owe me bitches.

Just save ze women!  :drillf:

It's not a wild and crazy concept. The options tree would be as follows:
1. Save them out of the good of your heart.
2. Save them, but all their houses will belong to you.
3. Save and enslave everyone.
4. Kill all the men and bandits, harvest the women and children, build a harem.
5. Kill everyone and join the bandits.
6. Kill everyone, including bandits.
7. Not my problem, i'll just go somewhere else, do a different sidequest, and come back later to see what's left of the town.

Doing nothing is the same as doing something else, time limit.

Fallout allowed most of these choices, usually.

Beats having to do 1 good, 1 bad, 1 good, 1 bad, to remain neutral.
----
And yes, it is completely unreasonable to expect such a degree of choice in all quests in a game. 2-3 quests would be fine, though.

Yes, I think you can allow for morally ambiguous but "active" solutions, but think about it this way. If you make a charcoal drawing with just two tones in it--black and white--you can create some grey where they overlap or intercept. Fable II strikes me as already having a bit of that going on. I kill bandits? I am reminded that bandits have families. If that reminder was a bit more game-mechanically "real" (e.g., maybe killing bandits gives you +1 on the 'good' scale, but to really get a 'good' bonus, I have to go donate some money to the orphans of bandits, or raise a bandit's child, or carefully bury a bandit's corpse and say prayers over it, or donate all the bandit's money to a good cause), that 'grey' from the overlap of black and white would register more.

When you make a drawing with three or more tones in it, then all the tones are changed. So if you actually added a "neutral" or "ambiguous" rating as a *separate measure* from good/evil, corrupt/pure, and you tried to create game-mechanical reactions that were distinct for the ambiguous character, then that changes the meaning of good and evil pretty radically in turn.

Think of it in terms of fantasy archetypes. Elric, for example, is a "morally ambiguous" character but his ambiguousness is created: 1) by a simple mixture of black and white overlapping, e.g., he does some really evil things and he does some relatively selfless or good things; and 2) by the fact that the backdrop of his adventures is largely 'black', e.g., evil. So Elric looks a lot better than Theleb Ka'arna even though both of them do some fairly nasty stuff.

Conan, on the other hand, is morally ambiguous because he's basically looking out for #1. But that's also because the RAH setting is more or less set to the same default, e.g., there really is a third setting of "grey" that governs most of Conan's world. There's a few really evil characters who are motivated to do awful things for the sheer evil of them, and a few relatively 'good' characters who are much more selfless than Conan. But most other people are also out for #1, and the drama comes from where their self-centeredness overlaps and where it diverges. The "greyness" of RAH's world makes the few genuinely evil characters look kind of weird in the purity of their evil, and the few relatively good characters tend to look like freakish eunuchs.

Achieving moral ambiguity in a game just with the two tones of good and evil isn't that hard--you just need to add a bit about the potentially evil consequences of good acts, or even the oddly good consequences of evil acts. Achieving it by adding a genuine "game mechanical" setting for "grey" or ambiguity is actually harder because it tends to make the entire world into a grey one. Imagine what happens to Lord of the Rings if for even one minute Aragorn stops to have a heart-to-heart with an orc and hears that he has a little orc baby and that he has orc feelings of doubt about whether what he's doing is right and that he's been raised with orcish values, etc.  *Everything* changes the moment that happens, the moment that an orc isn't just an object but a morally aware agent. The whole story becomes way more "grey" even if that's the only moment where that kind of ambiguity happens.

I said nothing about not having moral ambiguity.  I said specifically that doing nothing is a bad design.

Great.  I said you shouldn't have ambiguity through inaction.  Glad to we are on the same page.

The first one is possible in Fable II (for that matter you can kill all the people in a village and they'll respawn eventually anyway) in that you can buy their property and then jack up the prices.  Enslaving the population isn't morally grey.  It's just a different option for evil.

The problem with that kind of morally grey area is that now you are taking the same actions that a good character would, with the only difference being that you're rewarded more (in which case you have to figure out an alternate means of rewarding good characters, otherwise the grey option becomes the best one in all situations).  "I'll save the village" and "I'll save the village for 250 gold" aren't going to be any different as far as the gameplay goes.

That's the point. Being good is often it's own reward. And usually in games, you can charge 250gp for your assistance, but if you just help out, an npc will find 250gp under his mattress to give you for being so selfless. The evil paths should always have the better short-term rewards, but then end up with long-term consequences, to follow the formula. But that is a difficult thing to put into a quest-based game, I imagine.

You saved the population, i'd say that slavery is a viable, neither good or evil choice, at the very least. It's not like I'm saying that their offspring will also be slaves or something.

But hey, fine, and what if I save the population, but have them work the fields for me for little money, also forcing them to buy things at my store, which just so happens to have ludicrous prices like all the other stores in town, since they all belong to me, thus making them incur huge debts with the local loan shark (me) to be able to afford buying shit at my stores, and I also stop them from leaving the fields before clearing any debt they incurred?

They're free to go, provided they worked their 6 month period at the fields and have no debts left.

I'd say that my conditions are better than death, even if the townsfolk are reduced to a condition analogous to slavery. Would that be morally gray enough?

There's actually a bit of a rumorous anecdote about fallout and interplay, you had a town with a casino owner and a sheriff, and you could choose which side you'd support. The casino owner was shown as a greedy prick, and the sheriff as a law abiding man. If you supported the casino, after the game ended, it would show the town as a prosperous trading hub, and if you supported the sheriff, grats, the town is now under a totalitarian regime.
The rumor ends with Interplay changing the quest because it was too morally ambiguous. Kinda hard to believe, since that game allowed you to murder children.

Any kind of morally gray area can be seen a sort of evil. Even the absence of action.

Exactly.  Being good is supposed to be its own reward, but in games with a heavy focus on optionial sub-quests, you take on these quests with being rewarded in some way in mind.  People playing good characters wouldn't have incentive to go out of their way to do quests if their only reward was being good.

Also, going back to Fable 2 (and other similar games), you can still be morally grey even if individual quests don't have a morally grey option.  I can go around stealing stuff from peoples' houses, have a wife and kids in every town, and buy up all the property to price gouge, but also avoid being a cold blooded murderer.  Hell, I could then take my ill-gotten money and donate it to the Temple of Light.  I think this kind of flexibility should be a lot more appealing to people who want to rp a morally ambiguous character than just giving them another option to click on when doing quests.

I find your sense of morality somewhat worrisome.

I was thinking the same thing. As much as I like more choices then "Bad or Good?", cause I'm usually VERY conflicted, but I could see anything more being a terrible mess and not to mention every time you had to make a decision it would be bogged down by 6-10 of them. How droll.

I would argue the difference between RAH's Conan "grey" and Moorcock's Elric "grey" is actually just more that RAH was a much better writer. Moorcock is kind of a hack.

I do quests more for the story, rewards are nice but not necessary. If I have the option of breaking character and being evil just to get a nice piece of loot, I don't do it. Actually I think it's better that way, it tests whether your character is really good at heart or a moral relativist just waiting for good loot.

Let's just say RAH is clearer about what it is that he's doing. But it's also that Elric and Conan get points on the emo/non-emo scale. Elric was like a JRPG character before his time.  The main thing is that there is a big difference between purely good/evil worlds in which there is occasional ambiguity where those stark opposites overlap, and worlds that are designed to have many shades of grey. If you're doing the second, you have to pretty much go all the way.

(This by the way is one of many reasons I thought the fellatio that people were giving Age of Conan's first 20 levels was just fucking wrong, because even in the first 20 levels, only the destiny quest and a few side quests actually seem to understand that RAH made a morally grey world. The rest of the fucking side quests were your usual pussy-o-matic "My cat is stuck in a tree, or I need some fish from the harbor" kind of thing, which Conan or almost any other moral actor in the Conan world would have grinned at like a wolf before backhanding the dumb cunt who asked him to fetch him some ordinary bullshit for virtually no reward.

Frankly I think KoTOR II, despite being a horribly unfinished game they should have been ashamed to actually release, had the greatest approach to RPG morality of any game I've played. Kreia did a perfect job of highlighting shades of grey in your actions. Help a beggar by giving him 100 credits when he asked for 10? Poor guy gets killed for his money by the next thug to walk along.

Morally ambiguous is possible, what I'd like to see more of is requiring a player to actually consider his choices with vaguely believable consequences. Laying it out with: Do you a) Give this man money
b) Say no
c) Kill him and take his woman as your trophy!
Does not make for morally interesting choices, it gives me the opportunity to choose one of probably two endings and does not make for immersive storytelling (except with KoTOR, I'll let them off with that just for actually giving you some repercussions for going evil that you probably cared about).

Again, that's not an example of shades of grey.  It's a nice twist, no doubt, but there's nothing morally ambiguous about it.  One character is being really good and some NPC is being really evil.

Okay, not, perhaps, shades of grey. But that was one of the bits that explored unintended consequences. None of the choices in the game were -really- morally ambiguous, but a few of them set you up.

I'm trying to think of a game not made with the Infinity Engine back in the day (BG1, 2, IW 1, 2, and Planescape) that has actual shades of grey and isn't really just binary choices. As in, More Evil and Less Evil are still Evil, and more good and less good are still good - but some grey ok, this could be good or evil inbetween, maybe even bordering neutral but not quite.

I can't.

Games these days are pretty unimaginative.

Deus Ex?  :awesome_for_real:

Deus Ex was pretty binary also. I don't think I've ever praised it for walking any sort of moral line. In fact, arguably, you could say there were no real good guys in Deus Ex and it was all just shades of black (or red, whatever). There were, obviously MORE evil than regular evil, but for the most part it was a world with a whole mess of groups looking out mostly for how they felt things should play out. Selflessness being largely nonexistant. Man, I want to play through Deus Ex again.

Just to clear things up, here are some examples of what I personally think of as shades of grey:

1)  The "victimless crime".  Think of the crew from Firefly as an example.  They break the law, but not in ways that one would consider evil.

2)  Doing evil for the greater good.  Political assassinations with the intention of removing someone evil from power, sacrificing an innocent in some ritual to gain enough power to defeat an even greater evil, etc...

3) The "would you murder a child if you knew he was going to grow up to be the next Hitler" question.  Murder a child, or thousands of people die due to your inaction?

4) The "save Rachael or save Harvey Dent" question (or alternately save the person you love, or save multiple other people).  Do you commit the good act that helps the most people or do you commit the "lesser" good but extremely selfish act?

5) Vigilante justice.  Harder to make work in an RPG since you can generally go around murdering bad guys, completely bypassing any sort of judicial system, and not get in any trouble for it.

6) Letting someone die because you'd put yourself at too much risk trying to save them (for instance, if you're undercover).

There is seriously no fucking excuse for the item management to be as poor as it is.
You can't even map items to the D-pad anymore, for rapid crunchy chick/celery consumption. Le sigh.

One thing Jade Empire touched on (and then ignored for most of the game) was that the reason for an action is key, not just the action itself.  Unfortunately, the only way I can see to take the reasons for actions into account in a game is to constantly pester the player with 'why did you do that?' questions.  I don't see this as a popular game mechanic.

The reward system is also a problem when going at this.  As noted, doing good is supposed to be its own reward, but most games try to reward good and evil equally, and many give more of a reward for being good than for being evil.  Alternately, evil often gains the greater monetary reward, while gaining a proportionately lesser exp/skill/whatever reward...in games where exp and abilities tend to be vastly more important than money. 

One thing I'm glad I see far less often these days is the idea that wanting to be paid for your services equals evil.  It may not be selflessly good to demand payment from the village that's about to be massacred or what have you, but it's not evil either (unless you're also causing the problem you're offering to save people from).

I see the good/evil system in Fable 2 as very simplistic, but for now it's still fun.

if a required descision is too much in the grey i freeze up and pause the game to check what the outcomes of such a descision have on the remainder of the game. I had this hang up with mass effect. I don't want to get stuck in one version of a 10 hour play through that is not my intended "moral choice" because i fucked up a descision early on... i like fable because it has mechanics in place that can correct what you have done, so you can mold your character to the experience you enjoy most.

I finished it.

I feel pretty let down by the ending.

Much like Fallout 3, Fable II isn't about the main story, the main story is just put into these titles so casual gamers will buy a sequel when it inevitably arrives.

i had this revelation last night when i realized that i would only come back to the main quest to advance the world. The other 90% of my time in game is spent doing countless other fun things. I don't dislike the main quest, I just don't put too much weight on it. It more aof a frame or skeleton for the rest of the game to flesh out.

Finished this on Saturday.  Well, the main quest anyway.  Did almost all of the side quests as well.

Certainly one of the better CRPG's I've played in a while, as far as XBOX 360 RPGs are concerned it's tied with Mass Effect for #1 (For me, YMMV).

Now onto Fallout 3!!!

Due to lack of time, I haven't turned Fable 2 on in about 10 days.  I'm going to be a trillionaire next time I play, so I am going to see how much shit I can buy up.  Has anyone unlocked the "king" achievement?

Yes.  I bought everything.

The maximum offline money gain is capped at what seems to be 100 or 1000 (I forget exactly) times the '5 minute' rate.  This is observable by incrementing time on the 360 system clock forward by various amounts.  1 year and 20 (I think it was 20, the 360 calendar going from 2005 to 2025) provide the same income when you log back on.

...and so I learned.  Oh well.  Finished the game now, and have about 200k to my name (prior to selling off anything).  Not sure if I will be motivated enough to save up and do much more.  Though I do think I'll try another run through of the game, this time with some hot female, possibly of the lesbian persuasion.  And evil/naughty.

necro!
did they ever patch the co-op stuff in properly, or does the other player still play as a generic henchman?