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Fable 3 releases tomorrow. Figured I would get us started off here.

I wont lie, I'm pretty excited for it, anyone else?

I know Fable has been the franchise of under delivery and over hype-idness, but I have always found quite a bit of fun with the series. I am hoping that the multiplayer is better than last time.

You pretty much nailed it.

So much hype around them, but I always, always, find them fun.  They're at least the price of admission to me.

I will admit I didn't finish the last one, but I put probably 20-30 hours into it.  I didn't get to see the whole children thingy.

So what's 'new' in this one supposedly?

I haven't really been following this one to closely, as I knew I would buy it, so I didn't really need to. The one thing I did pick up is that in this one:

Very very mild spoilers below.


As to what has changed, from the wiki:

What I've seen of the Sanctuary is what I'd thought Windows would be like by now. 3D interfaces for everything with John Cleese as your personal advisor.

I'm going to wait until it's out on the PC.  :uhrr:

I've pretty much sworn off buying console games for a while.

I'm pretty much guaranteed to buy this when it comes out for PC in December. I enjoyed Fable 1 a lot despite its flaws and I was sorely disappointed that F2 never made it over the moat around 360-land.

I want to play it on PC, but I'd really, really like to continue off my existing save.

Already have my copy paid for at the local GS.  I'd love to finish my Fallout NV playthrough, but it's going to have to wait.

The "3D menu" shit has been done and it's always annoying as fuck after the first five minutes.  Sometimes you just want to hit a couple of buttons and have shit happen in one second rather than take fifteen seconds to walk around a fucking building and dig through a closet or whatever.

I totally agree with this. I mean, some times you just want to quickly change your pants, or sword.

Oh, I agree completely. I saw the walkthrough of that and thought it was a giant pain in the ass. Not sure Cleese can save it.

If it's a GFWL-exclusive, hopefully they learn from the school of Gabe and have it on the 2011 xmas sale. Otherwise it's GFWLfail.

I dunno, I seem to remember Fable II's menus taking some time to navigate whenever I'd want to do anything, maybe this will be an improvement.

But yeah, I enjoyed the first two games and am looking forward to the third.

Yep, this is what that sounds like to me.  It's like Fable's stupid 'emotes instead of talking' thing.  Some things don't need changing.  Good odds that this 3d interface crap is just an annoyance instead of something fun, and it probably makes performing simple tasks like changing your spell selection and changing your clothes take considerably longer.  Not that Fable II's menus were particularly well designed, but the answer is a better-designed menu interface, not eliminating it entirely in favor of some weird 3d thing.

But, I expect the overall game to still be fun and entertaining.  For me, Fable was ok, Fable II was very good, so I expect Fable 3 to be worth it.  I might even go out and buy it tomorrow.

I'll third it. I'm pretty sure this has been done before, at least in part, and the result, was, well, what Samwise describes.

You remember the Black & White UI, right? Seems like something similar, but applied to a 3D action/adventure instead of a god game.

Well, I have tomorrow booked off work so that I can play this one, so yea, I'm excited. Just finished up my Fable 2 run to have a save game to use. I wonder if the game will tell me which of my seven children I'm decended from?

From what I've found, new things include:
 - emotes actually fully interact with other actors, rather than you just dancing in front of them
 - all families can adopt children
 - players can marry one another in multiplayer
 - lead character is actually voiced this time

No, we don't. And let us never remember it in the hopes that it never comes back ever again. Ever. Stupid hands.  :ye_gods:

Wouldn't you know it. I haven't been excited for a console game for quite a while now, and of corse the day before it comes out the lamp in my TV dies.

Guess I won't be playing this until Thursday or Friday.

I'm in the middle of Fallout 3 but I guess I'll go pick this up today and give it a cursory whirl.

At least there's nothing else coming until Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood... right?

You know with these games I miss entire swaths of content because I don't want to do things like get married and have kids and don't want to run through with multiple characters.

Lots of stores were breaking streetdate. Grabbed one yesterday. From the beginning to middle, it's Fable 2 with enough fixes and tweaks to make it feel a bit fresh and more fun. Once you start the Kingdom running business, well, it falls flat on its face. I expected so much more when it came to taking over Albion and running the Kingdom. I didn't even have high expectations, just like a small kingdom running section, nothing hard. I'll try not to spoil anything, but the Kingdom section boils down to checklists of people asking you to do stuff with a Yes or No / Good or Bad answer for each. That's it.

I'll try to finish it to see if it gets any better, but it's not looking good.

I found this little tidbit at the bottom of the Kotaku review.

Regarding playing Co-op over Xbox Live:

mod edit: SPOILER TAG, GODDAMNIT.

Seriously? Spoilers? It's the first 10 minutes of gameplay. The worst part is that it's never referenced to again.

Hey, I'll let you know when you can ruin my first 10 minutes of game play.   :oh_i_see:

How the hell would I even know this?

Now you know and knowing is half the battle.

God, this game makes me sad and I have a hard time picking it up now unless I find out you can play past the end.

You can actually SAY things instead of just farting at people or something?  Do you actually have a choice in what to say or is it all automatic?  Or is it completely obtuse in informing you just what you're choosing?

That'll be less awesome when the other player starts taking gold for virtual child support.

Peter Molyneaux.  :heartbreak:

The game just FEELS womky. Control, animation, being in the world... there is this feeling I can't pinpoint, a nagging sensation about this thing I'm playing. I don't remember feeling it in Fable 2.

There are a multitude of immersion breaking elements and flow problems. Plot moving too fast and unnaturally, the pause menu teleporting me instantly to the Sanctuary and back to exactly where I was before. Chests in the middle of nowhere, dig spots slowing me down. I know it's classic Fable world design and game setting but after Dead Rising, Fallout, and Assassin's Creed, just feels bad.

The setting is strong, at least, and I may not have reached the main game proper (just made it to Brightwall).

The Save Menu also felt weird. "Game Management" struck me as a weird term. Seeing myself two clicks away from starting a new game felt weird as well.

How long does it take to get to the kingdom-running-letdown part?

A couple of the reviews I read mentioned that the kingdom running parts were some of the best bits in the game, but criticized for being over with too quickly.  Anybody who has reached this part of the game agree?

~5 hours.


I haven't finished them, but I wouldn't agree it's the best part. Not even close. I just can't see why it would entertain anyone as it's probably the crudest most simple way you could implement "running" a Kingdom. Might as well have been QTEs and some mini-games.

Alright, so I beat the game and here's my spoilertastic review of the second half of the game:


No spoiler version:

Probably 2-3 hours worth of "Kingdom" game play, which boils down to a bunch of morality questions and gold grinding. If you were expecting: SimCity, Sims, My Life as a King or anything that resembles running a Kingdom, you will be sorely disappointed.

Edited: Cleaned up spoilered review and added non spoiler version.

Yes, seriously, after reading this account of the ruling part here and in other reviews, the only thing I can say is that Molyneux is brilliant at finding new ways to fail badly in delivering what he's promising, and the thing that's so aggravating is that each time most of his players can see EXACTLY what should have been done instead, and that is frequently not requiring magic-nonexistent-tech or insane quadrillions of dollars in content development instead but quite plausible instead with the development resources used to make his game. Like, Black & White: you built a really amusing creature, a fun AI, an interesting environment: don't shoehorn in an absolutely shitastic 'game' as if that somehow makes it a complete product. Just make something more loose and sandboxy, the folks who like the creature part will be fine with that.

Yea, no. Pretty much, it means you have a voice in the cutscenes now. As far as the emotes go, you make a few generic noises when you dance, but you don't even say anything when you select "chat". It was a bit of a letdown.

I do appreciate the cut scenes not being one sided like they were in 2 though.

I'm enjoying the game right now, but there are certainly a number of little things that irk me - none enough to make me dislike the game, but enough to make me wish for better. Not a fan of some of the spots they "simplified" the game, but suprisingly some things like the "Sanctuary" menu system, actually work well. Not happy that they left in the exagerated character model changes based on which weapon you use. If you want to use a melee weapon in the game, be prepared to look like the Hulk (male or female).

Found two bugged quests so far, one of which required a reload. Most annoyingly though, is that my wife died in a freak "now that your wife has died" pop-up accident. Apparently moving your family in to the castle immediately after taking it is a bad idea. One second my wife is amongst the crowd in a cut scene, next moment I'm being told I can pick up my kid at the orphanage.

I'm seriously considering restarting and playing an over the top evil character, just because the "good" choices in kingdom running appear to be all along the lines of "doing something to make people like you - and doom the kingdom to ruin". If I'm going to doom the kingdom, I might as well have fun doing it.

I would be on a Dead Rising/Fable mashup like stink on a zombie.

That's when you get to the next stage of the game - you'll be 1.2 million babies in debt and with a couple of weeks to shore up the numbers. Molyneux sees it as the final, ultimate fan service.

The game seems too transparent now. My physical appearance is a result of five stars in Strength, Stature, and Magical Aura.

Lots of grinding. Lots. x_x Winning over villagers for Guild Seals is so mind-numbingly one-track and bad.

I had this exact same though half-way through the decisions.

So is this thing even worth buying once it hits the bargain bin? - My eventual plan was to buy 2 copies frm the bargain bin for co-op once it drops to about 27% of launch price/hits GOTY.

Haven't played co-op, but I imagine bargain bin would be worth it. At least with someone else you can go through the quest content and then do some city running and group sex!

Someone be my friend and help me do some Co-Op achievements? I'd like to unlock that Demon Door in Mistpeak Valley, for starters.

So I was pretty busy earlier and didn't get around to getting this until today, and the first comment that's bugging me after a couple hours is that any reasonably quick movement seems very, very blurry.  I'm not sure if my TV and this game don't get along well or something, but all things considered the graphics look worse in this game than Fable 2 because of the blurriness.

Other than that I'm liking it okay.  The weird 'menu' system is mildly annoying, but it's less bad than I expected.  Some things are actually quite nice this way, others are just a pain, like the map being apparently the only quest list that I can find thus far.  The minigame jobs that I have played so far are more enjoyable than Fable 2's, though that's not saying much.  They'll get old quick if you have to grind them for several hours for 'seed money' like you did in Fable 2.

Jasper bugged out in my game and stopped providing all VO. It has done a good job in tarnishing the game experience.

Hm. Bargain Bin/Gold/Goty version then, hopefully with bugs worked out as much as possible.

Can't wait to hear from his Molyneauxness about what will be in Fable 4.  :why_so_serious:

Something about Fable has always had that comfort-food style addictive quality and so far this game is the same for me. The overall atmosphere and feel is still very much Fable and it feels like an old friend. I don't mind the new sanctuary menu, all things considered it improves on the old menu system. Little things annoy, like the quick screen fade-ins when you enter and exit every single interaction with NPCs (did the previous games do this? I don't remember) - but so far the annoyances are minor and easily overlooked. I like the new map that shows much more detail when you zoom in. Combat is still satisfying if simple - I like the new ability to combine two different spell schools.

I've found that the progression of the Day / Night cycle detached from the  to be jarring.

Also, the single save system bugs the hell out of me because some achievements are detached from my current morality play. I may play Good and then have to start all over to play Evil, but if Fable 4 comes along and if it pulls from Fable III save data like Fable III does for II, I will have the "wrong" character data being imported.

Can you transfer your "proper" save to a USB for safekeepng or something like that? Not an ideal outcome, but a workaround, perhaps.

I did some looking and it sounds like you can start a new game without losing your current one.  If you save manually, then start a new game, you can go to Game Management and your old Hero will still be available by using Load.  Just tried it out since I felt like I might start over anyway, and it's correct, at least as far as being able to save multiple heroes - looks like you can have a total of five different hero saves.

Found a somewhat frustrating moment here, so figured I'd warn everyone who has not reached that point about it.

There's a quest where you have to chase a white balverine.  Turning in that quest is a point of no return, make sure to finish up anything you need to do (and I don't mean just quests, but bookkeeping/running the kingdom matters too) before you turn that in, because you don't seem to get a chance afterward.

Edit: There IS a chance to do things after turning in the aforementioned quest, as long as you do not complete the next two items on your agenda afterward.

That's fucking stupid. I was wondering why a review mentioned to transfer the funds on Day 168.

I own all of Albion and get about 100k gold every 5 minutes. I find that you can just let that role over for as long as you want if you don't proceed through your royal checklist since time is inconsistent with the kingdom's demise.

Sooooo, anyone had a game-killing bug yet?

Couple crashes, one during loading and another when I was fighting in Mostpeak Valley and had the camera facing the distance. Game has had a couple chugworthy moments.

So the first play through, I married my pre-order create a villager. And then she died of random bug disease.

Second play through, she has decided to become a transvestite, and has no interest in marrying me at all - only being my best friend. Appraently this is a rather widespread bug. More funny than anything, but of course there are people on Lionhead's forums demanding class action lawsuits over it.

Pen is Mighter Than... I'm trying to get the book from Chillbreath Caverns but I can't seem to get to where it is. There's two cavern entrances and I'm looking for a third I just can't find.

I am really disappointed in this game.

A few non spoilerish thing.

1) The glowing trail. This glowing trail really makes the game feel on rails. I dont recall if they had it previously, I think they did, but not to the extent it is in this one. It basically holds your hands through everything. Yes, you can turn it off, which I did. But then the game removes all quest and hud info. ALL. I would like to know what a quest giver wants me to do, even if I dont want the glowing trail to take me by the hand right there. This really pissed me off.

2) The game feels dumbed down from Fable 2, which is hard to imagine. But it is. Everything slaps you in the face. Even the morality choices are colored Blue sparkles or red flame.

3) Kingdom ruling. Crap. Straight up crap.
I think Nix said it perfectly, so instead of just writing it all out again Ill quote him:

I will echo whoever said why couldnt he give us Fable 2 with more content. I think this is the first time in the series that I am genuinely disappointed in the game. Its just bland gameplay stacked on top of fail mechanics.

This was in Fable 2, and was one of my biggest complaints against it.

Doesn't even work right in this one. It bugs out all the time and is very unresponsive except in extreme circumstances.

I tried to mention this, but didn't know how to explain it. Most of it is the same as Fable 2, but every tweak they've made really dumbed it down. Sometimes it's subtle, but enough to give you this nagging "Why does it feel so simple?" feeling.

One of my main complaints is the interaction.  I never liked the fable interaction system anyway, where you get to do seemingly random and bizarre actions for people, but here we don't even get to choose which interaction to do.  Just a general theme 'friendly, funny, or nasty' and the specific interactions are either randomly selected or go in order.  Due to this, of course, NPC's no longer have favorite expressions and such as they did in Fable 2.

The menu system or mostly lack thereof I've gotten over, it's actually pretty nice for many things.  Except weapons.  In order to switch weapons I have to pop back to my sanctuary (2 seconds of black screen) then switch to the armory (another 2 seconds of black screen) then run to the type of weapon I want, scroll through the displays, and select which weapon I want.  On the other hand, the way it works for clothing I quite like, especially with the mannequins and such, and double plus especially with the three saved appearance slots.

Overall, there are a number of things I like about this one better than Fable 2 (being able to manage property entirely from the map screen is nice)...and yet there's so much that Fable 2 does better, also.

Map screen needs a Repair All function. Going to each property was annoying. Cash becomes irrelevant before this gets super annoying though.

Comments having finished including some ending spoilers:

On general commentary, while the game was pretty good, I've got to say...I think Fable 2 was the better game in most respects.  Fable 3 improved a few features, but set a lot of stuff way back as compared to Fable 2.  To be specific: a menu for switching weapons would have been very nice.  The lack of maps really irked me, since the map table's 'map' is so inaccurate, and also doesn't show your precise location.  Lack of ability to choose your own expressions was annoying.  Weapon morphing system seems like it was a lot of work for no benefit, because the legendaries were almost universally superior to the hero weapons that morph, so why would you ever use your hero weapons?

None of Fable III's unique features had the level of depth and polish needed to make them good. By that standard, Fable II is a more complete game because all components in that game were implemented better.

The dog, for example. In Fable III it's fluff. In II it was new and more a part of the core experience. The dog in 3 was like a Zelda game with a boomerang that never matters in core gameplay; a useless holdover. Just a lot of reused, sloppily inserted tech.

The "holding hands" feature was a joke compared to the prerelease importance played on it as an emotional device.

Well holding hands I liked, and I never actually listened to any of the prerelease stuff.  I liked holding hands because I always found NPC's following me tended to get stuck all over the place, and at least grabbing them I have some direct control of where they're going.

On the other hand, I hate that you can only interact with one person at a time.  You can't even show off your trophies to a crowd.  Renown was completely removed and basically integrated into the guild seals system when it was used at all (as a gating mechanism for certain quests).  They really simplified a lot of stuff too - I fired up Fable 2 and got reminded of how much more complex a lot of things are there, and not the annoying things that should be simplified.  Things that add depth to the NPC's, like having three separate meters for how NPC's feel about you, the love/hate, the fear/funny, and ugly/pretty.  How they have particular expressions and gifts they like best, and some that they dislike.  And the removal of titles.

Wow. So no more Chicken Chaser? Bleh.

Yeah, I am enjoying the game, but I really agree with most of the complaints about game systems that were eliminated or marginalized. It could have been a better game, oh well.

Exactly my feelings as well. Since I'm playing it on my daughter's XBox, I'm hoping that the PC version will have some more depth. I was going to buy it for PC guaranteed but I may change my mind unless there are some improvements in the PC version (highly unlikely I'm sure)

The first quest you get involves you dressing up as a chicken and you receive that title for completing it.

I'm doing some wandering around after the whole kingship/invasion ordeal and thinking that the sense of progression and flow of the game is just totally incoherent. After all that nonsense, there still seems to be a lot of quests and exploration available - but no real motivation to do so. There is no big bad to gear up to face .. money is already meaningless and I'm not even that rich. Albion is a nice atmospheric world to just tool around in, and I'm sure I will spend some time doing so ... but it's all just so incredibly anticlimactic.

I've already forgotten about this game with all the other powerful releases surrounding it. If they do another one after this, I hope it isn't a similarly weak entry into the series.

They have a patch and some DLC due to hit in a week or so, so I'm holding off finishing my first playthrough until then. It's not a "bad" game, it's just disappointing compared to Fable 2.

I never played 2, but I put about 10 hours into Fable 1 recently. I didn't really care for it as it just didn't seem very sticky to me. How did 2 and 3 compare to 1 as a frame of reference?

I never felt compelled to finish 1, Fable 2 I almost finished twice. I really felt Fable 2 did a great job of getting the player to connect with the story and some of the support cast, such as the dog. For me, 3 is a bit of a disappointment compared to 2 (I won't do a three page rant on why right now).

Why not? Go for it.

What disappointed me was that almost everything they changed from Fable 2, they changed for the worse. Several gameplay elements were dumbed down, and none of them needed it at all. It's like what happened with Mass Effect 2, only 100 times worse.

Ah. That's a good analogy.

Please do.

Ok, so here is what I posted on the "Constructive Criticism" thread on Lionhead's forums. Note, I do actually like the game, and there are lots of good aspects to it, but here is what I didn't like:

May as well chip my two cents in to this thread.

I like the game - so long as you get lucky and avoid any of the really bad bugs - it's a fun game. Currently I've restarted and I'm enjoying an "evil" playthrough - though I will be putting it on hold before reaching the castle to wait for the patch, as I really don't want the game to eat my spouse again.

I'll ignore the bugs for now, and offer my criticism on design decisions that I think hurt the game:

Loot:

 - The game just doesn't offer the same level of excitment to finding treasure that Fable 2 did. What is there to find? Three types of potions. Tatoos that you can only see if you run around naked. Gifts that sit in the black hole of your inventory, because there is almost no point to them (this bugs me too - let me give away gifts). Weapons, sure - it's cool to find a new weapon, but lets be honest, once you are half way through and have maxed out the bonuses on one weapon, why would you switch? Fable 2 had far more variety in *how* the weapons worked - speed, reload, damage, augments, augment slots. You actually had a reason to change to a new weapon later in the game. Clothing? There are a few bits of clothing, makeup, and hair you can get from chests, but most of them also appear to be in stores. Just not enough intersting loot.

Touch System:

- arrgh! this was such a step backwards. My "evil" character decided to make a villager fear me. I walked up, clicked A. Then held down X while I farted on him until the controller buzzed. Then I threatened him, then laughed at him, then I farted on him again... I really thought the fart emote was stupid, but if I wanted to make him fear me, I had no choice but to keep doing it. After about seven emotes, he feared me. Yay! All the other villagers walking by watching me fart on him could not give a rats ass. I would now have to repeat the same procedure with each of them...

The whole removal of choice in which expressions we do reaaallly takes you out of the experience. At one point I talked to a villager while in a doorway. The camera angle meant I couldn't see what was happening. Didn't matter, I simply did seven X button emotes in a row, just letting go when the controller buzzed. Wow, that was emersive. The old emote system was repetative, but at least it affected multiple people at once, and different villagers reacted differently to some emotes. Which leads to...

Dumbed down villagers and Hero Personalities:

- so we gained the ability to dance with a shopkeeper, and lost: all the various likes and dislikes unique to each villager. We also traded having three distinct personality ratings with each villager, for one generic meter. In Fable 2 I disliked how similar all the villagers looked, but at least they had distinct personalities. Fable 3 even took that away.

- two unique people in the whole game that you can marry? Elise/Eli didn't even count for me on this playthrough, since they don't work for same sex marriages.

Guild Seals:

 - I don't care that you decided to put all the XP in to one pool, that's fine, it works - the issue is that you combined XP and Renown in to the same pool as well. It's quite obvious that that is the reason we can no longer affect multiple villagers with expressions - because you tied XP gain directly in to using expressions. Bad trade off! If you thought it was important to make using expressions "important" by tying them to XP - you got it wrong. The XP gain isn't enough to make someone who doesn't care about the expressions ever use them (it's way too repetetive) - and instead you've just penalized those of us that liked to use the expressions purely for the immersion factor in the game (which no longer exists).

Ruling the Kingdom:

 - great idea in theory. Would have been better if the decisions were a little less white/black and if the whole thing wasn't made pointless by just having 10 million gold, but it was still a good idea. My disappointment is that essentially your rule is ended as soon as you defeat the big baddie. Fable 2 was great for giving you reason to keep playing after the main plot. Would it have been that hard to throw some random court issues in after the main plot to at least remind you that you are still King?

Couple other nitpicks in point form:

- road to rule was annoying, took you out of the moment when the portals appeared, and took too long to load
- liked the shop system for displaying clothes - was just annoying for everything else.
- shops should get new inventory
- I missed the gambling games
- I despise the sanctuary map - no way to tell where you are, complete randomness as to where you appear, map barely resembles the actual zones
- the map also really makes the zones feel like "zones". Could have been more immersively designed.
- Cleese begging us to buy the retarted dog suit *every* time we go to the sanctuary is just bad. No, I'm not blowing points just make him shut up.
- more clothes please. Normal Clothes - not dog suits and robot suits and chicken suits.
- more weapon models please - The morphing idea is neat, but I really prefered the variety and difference in play of the weapons in 2.
- if you are going to let us choose to be good or evil, let that have *some* effect on the primary plot cutscenes. At least put a few Good/Evil selection options in to let us decide how we act in those scenes.

Necro: This is on Midweek madness sale for 75% off on Steam, anyone have any recent experience with patches/DLC?

I have the DLC, most of it's pointless.  I haven't been able to find how to get the new quests (haven't looked that hard honestly) so maybe they're awesome, I don't know.  The other stuff is all kind of mediocre, though, unless you really want a dog costume for some reason or something.

Why is this game still not under $10?

Only Molyneux.  :rimshot:

I'm ok with them not taking my money.