Fable: The Lost Chapters Review

Fable: The Lost Chapters is not a sequel to Fable or even an expansion pack. It is an Xbox version of the PC version of the original Xbox game. Got all that? Basically when the game made its move to the PC from the Xbox some new content was added in the form of additional quests. This extended version of the game was then brought back to the Xbox as The Lost Chapters and added to the system’s Platinum Hits lineup of discounted games. So what does this all mean to you? Well if you’ve played the original Fable then there’s not enough new here to justify the purchase of the game, especially since you can’t import your prior character and will have to start the game over again from scratch. If you missed Fable the first time around, though, this is a great opportunity for you to pick up a great game at a good price with the added bonus of more play time then you get with the original game.

Fable is essentially an action-RPG, but it is not typical of games of this genre. Central to the game is the philosophy that you as a person are defined by your actions. Throughout the game you’ll be faced with moral decisions – do you protect some merchants from attack as they move through some dangerous woods or do you slay then and steal their goods? do you take a bribe to keep a cheating husband’s secret or do you tell his spouse about his transgressions? – and the choice you make has a lasting effect on your character. Follow the path of evil and you’ll grow sinister in appearance and people will shy away from you or outright cower in fear. Choose the high road and you’ll eventually have a glow about you, butterflies will flutter after you, and villagers will call out your name and cheer you as you walk by. Picking a path and sticking with it is not very difficult to do as the consequence of each decision is pretty obvious (when is killing a merchant and stealing his gold ever the “good” choice?), but it’s a very cool feature that allows you to see the consequences of your actions and how they affect the way in which the world perceives you.

Fable eschews the traditional class-based RPG model and instead lets you pursue the skills that you find the most useful. Settle most of your battles with the sword and you’ll naturally become an adept fighter. Rely on magic instead and you’ll grow into a powerful sorcerer. The real beauty in the classless system lies in the fact that you can blend and tailor your skills to become any type of character that you want. Spend most of your time with a sword in hand but dabble in magic and you can become a spell-casting fighter. Or concentrate on your archery skills while avoiding other types of contact and you make yourself into a ninja-like assassin. It’s all up to you. And just as your moral choices affect your appearance so do your skill choices. Fighters will become stronger and reflect this in their bulging muscles. Magic users’ fingers will crackle with electricity and the magic will take its toll by making them look old beyond their years.

Your appearance can also be changed by the armor and clothing that you wear, but in addition you can choose and change your hairstyle, facial hair, and even add some tattoos. Each hairstyle or article of clothing has an effect on your overall attractiveness and this can affect how certain NPCs in the game react to you. Overall these appearance changes don’t have a great impact on gameplay, but it can be fun to try out some different looks and see how the locals react.

Unfortunately, your choice of alignment does not have much effect on the game’s overall storyline other than changing the ending that you get to see. In fact, you can easily check out the different endings without replaying the game as there are temples in the game that will allow you to change your alignment for a donation of some gold. You can save the game as a good guy and watch that ending, and then return to the save and change your alignment to then see the evil ending. It all makes the moral choices that you made throughout the game moot, which is a shame for a game that apparently tries to place such a premium on these choices.

The game is played as a series of quests which you take on from the Heroes’ Guild. There are a few optional quests but overall the quests form a pretty linear progression through the storyline. In an interesting touch, you can bet on your performance in a quest while making it more challenging for yourself. For example, you can pledge to complete a quest without wearing any armor and if you succeed you’ll receive some bonus coin. The consequences for failing your challenge are not significant and gold is plentiful in the game, so taking on the challenges is not really all that necessary to your success in the game. As you make your way through a quest you’ll earn experience points that will be assigned to various categories depending on how you earned them. When you return to the Heroes’ Guild after a quest, you’ll be able to spend that experience to improve your abilities. The catch is that you are given a limited number of general experience points that can be spent on anything while the rest are dependent on how they were earned. Slay your foes with your sword and you’ll earn experience that can only be spent on fighting skills, for example.

It is easy to control your character in a fight, and you can quickly lock onto enemies and unleash attacks from the three forms available to you: melee, magic, and archery. Magic is the strongest form of attack in the game and is almost too powerful. Archery is not that useful as your enemies almost always close to within melee range quickly after the start of a fight. Melee attacks form the middle ground, but are certainly powerful enough to allow you to finish the game as a pure fighter.

The game’s campaign is not very long, even when you count the extra quests that were added in The Lost Chapters. The game does extend gameplay by allowing you to continue playing once you’ve completed the game. There’s a lot to do in Fable outside of the storyline so you’ll have plenty to do once you reach this point in the game. The world is filled with hidden keys to unlock magic chests, secret treasures, and talking demon doors that challenge you to solve the mystery of what will unlock them to reveal the treasure hidden behind. You can also integrate yourself with the local population, wooing a lass, marrying her, and buying a home. Or you can take the role of an outlaw loner, robbing stores and terrorizing the locals.

Fable is not an overly challenging game and if you’ve played action games before you’ll have no trouble making your way to the end of the game. This does not mean that the game is not worth your time if you’re good at these types of games. The Lost Chapters is a novel game and will draw you in in ways other games can’t. It’s an interesting experience and well worth your time. However you can’t help but be left with the feeling that it could have been even more – that it is the sum of a number of great concepts in search of a deeper and more intriguing world. Hopefully there will be a Fable 2 – or hopefully another developer will pick up on the game’s interesting concepts – and it will have a deeper story and richer world to fully realize its potential.