Game Review: Fable 3

Oh look, another rant.

Warning: SPOILERS below! Do not read if you haven't played Fable 3 yet and don't want to hear the ending.



As you all know, I'm a gamer. And the game I was most looking forward to this month was Fable 3. I really enjoyed the first two, and I thought that THIS Fable was going to surpass them all.





















Boy was I wrong.

For those who have not played the game, Fable gives you the "moral choice" option of being a good, honorable hero, or an evil, selfish, power-hungry jerk. Your appearance will change depending on the choices you make, and I usually go for the "good" option the first time around. And for the first third of the game, everything was fine--barring a few annoying Fable idiosyncrasies (broken combat system, obnoxious identical NPCs, frustrating travel system). You were the younger brother of the king, who was a real tyrant, and eventually you had to flee the palace with your butler (voiced by John Cleese) and your mentor. You then traveled around Albion, gaining support, amassing followers, promising to clean up the land when you became king, and basically start a revolution.













Oh, and along the way, you discover an ancient evil is approaching Albion, and that the kingdom is in danger of being swallowed by darkness.

Well, then the big day comes. You storm the castle with your loyal followers, dethrone your brother, and become the king, as was your destiny. Turns out, your brother was being a jerkface tyrant because that was the only way to "get ready" for the army of evil that was approaching from across the sea. So, once you become king, you have one year to raise enough gold to combat the darkness, otherwise your people will all die.


















And from there, everything went to crap.

After you become king, the game gives you 5 days or "sessions" before the darkness arrives, forcing you to start each day in court, deciding the status of the country. You have to choose whether to keep your promises (i.e rebuilding the orphanage) or be a tyrannical jerk (i.e force all the children into child labor). Remember, up until this point, I was playing the good, just character. But all those good choices resulted in a massive loss of gold, sending your treasury into the negative and bumping the "projected civilian casualties" even higher. The game wouldn't give you a break, and the "choices" you had to make were all so black-and-white. Build a school or open a brothel. Construct a sanitation factory or dump all the waste into an eco community. Protect the lake and surrounding woodlands or destroy it for mining.

Each time, I would go with the "moral" choice. At the end of the "year," I was nearly 2 million gold in the hole, and you needed 6.5 million to protect your people from the darkness. Then the evil army came, and though you beat the final boss and drove it back yourself, your kingdom was empty of people because everyone was dead.

So, moral of Fable 3? Its better to be evil than good and just. Its better to break promises and send children into slave labor and be a selfish tyrant, because only by being evil can you save your kingdom. Yeah, that's nice. Great moral lesson there, Peter Molynuex. Try again.