The combat itself plays out as a third-person action game rather than the turn-based combat common to console RPGs. Melee combat gives you attack and defend buttons that can be combined with the stick to perform different attacks, parries, and dodges. Ranged combat is accomplished with a shoot button that can be held down longer for a more powerful shot. Spells are cast by holding down the right trigger and then selecting the spell with the face buttons. In all cases the left trigger can be used to lock onto a target. The combat works well and the controls are smooth and responsive. The archery is not as effective as the other attacks as you start with a pretty slow rate of fire that doesn’t let you get off many shots before enemies close the distance to you. You’ll also take a few hits as you try to switch to your sword when surrounded by several enemies at close range. As a result the path of the true archer is more difficult than the other disciplines. The enemy AI is pretty good – melee attackers know how to block, ranged attackers switch to melee weapons when you get too close, and work to surround you. While the fights can be tough you never really seem to lose thanks to the preponderance of food, health potions, and resurrection potions available. If you’re not well-stocked with food and potions after picking up the items from defeated foes, you’ll almost always have plenty of gold to use to load yourself up before taking on a quest. Unfortunately this allows you to be a little more reckless in battle than you’d otherwise be and reduces your need to use blocks and dodges.

This hero has chosen the dark path.

The game itself is structured along a main storyline that begins with the destruction of your village as a child and evolves into a life quest of yours to find out who was behind the attack and why they did it. The story is advanced by taking on quests at the game’s Heroes’ Guild. There are occasionally optional quests as well, but overall there are not that many quests in total, compared to most other RPGs that is. In fact, if you concentrated on the main quests alone you’re looking at a ten to twelve hour game. Luckily there are hidden spots to find, challenges provided by talking doors guarding valuable prizes, gambling games in the taverns, and hidden keys to collect to use on treasure chests to extend the play, in addition to any other goals you may set for yourself such as marrying someone in every town or trying to kill everyone in the game. Once you complete the game you can keep playing if you didn’t get to explore everything during the course of the story. Many of the areas that you pass through regenerate monsters and other enemies so you’ll still have plenty to fight if you want.

Playing through the game once as good and once as evil provides for a bit of a different experience. Instead of visiting towns during the day to do shopping and flirt with the locals you can slip in at night break into shops to rob them and snarl or kill at any villagers unfortunate enough to cross paths with you. However, oddly enough the main storyline stays pretty much the same whether you follow the path of good or evil. The endings are slightly different, but there’s not much of a bigger difference than that - apparently the Heroes’ Guild is happy to take heroes of evil as well. In fact, there are temples of good and evil in the game that let you switch your alignment, so you can play the entire game as one or the other, save near the end, watch one ending, reload, change your alignment, and see another ending. With such a focus on moral choice it is strange that in the end the path you take does not matter that much in the end.

Fable is definitely an achievement and should be experienced by all RPG fans. It introduces some innovative concepts to the genre that hopefully will have an effect on future games. Its world is not as wide-open and free as it would have you believe and you can still see repetition and patterns in its AI, but the game is enjoyable nonetheless and well worth your time to play.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 90%.  An innovative game that should be on the must play lists of Xbox gamers.

« Page 1 of 2