Fable 2

I did not enjoy Fable 2. In fact, it's one of those games that I've given up on forever after playing less than 10 hours. So this is not a detailed analysis of the game, but rather an explanation of why I completely failed to connect with it on every level.

Fable 2, like the original, is the work of Lionhead Studios, which is headed up by ex-Bullfrog developer Peter Molyneux. This is the man responsible for Black & White, Syndicate, The Movies, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, Populous and Powermonger. Those are all games based around fantastic ideas which implemented revolutionary game mechanics, and which all laboured under crippling flaws relating to game balance, user interface, and complete absence of narrative and characterisation.

Fable 2 represents a step forward for Molyneux in as much as it makes a genuine attempt at storytelling. The game opens with the player in the role of a young urchin living wild on the streets with his or her sister. This portion of the game, which effectively functions as the tutorial, is excellent, and the sister is one of the most instantly engaging characters I've met in a game for quite some time.

At the end of the tutorial, your sister is shot dead, and having thus been taught an important lesson about emotional attachment you proceed to spend the rest of the game treating everyone you meet as a not-particularly-complex toy.

People in Fable 2 are idiots. They have a five second memory and are more gullible than some kind of animal which is renowned for being gullible. If the mood takes you you can invade the house of a small family and slaughter everyone present in an explosion of gore, with the exception of one traumatised survivor (probably one of the game's bizarrely indestructible children). Then you can dance a saucy jig in front of the survivor until she laughs delightedly and offers you gifts.

Fable 2 isn't the first game to have an exploitable social minigame. The Elder Scrolls is infamous for it, and you can go back further than that. But to some extent the exploits were the joy of those titles. In Fable 2 the game makes a point of attempting to acknowledge your moral choices, and encourages you to form attachments to the community by buying land, performing odd jobs, and getting married. So much development time has been spent on the social aspects of the game that their shallowness is hugely off-putting.

Take, for example, Fable's infamous titles. Your character doesn't really have a name, so you're just known by a "title" wherever you go, which can be something as simple as "Mayor" through to something like "The Fearbringer". Sometimes villagers will use your title appropriately - "Watch out! It's the Fearbringer!" - but then sometimes they won't: "How's it going, Fearbringer?"

Your character can't talk. Every other character in the game can talk. The lowliest peasant has spoken dialogue. Animals make sounds. Your character is mute, and can only express him or herself through the age old art of mime. It's very hard to take your character seriously as the Bringer of Fear when the only non-violent way to instill terror in villagers is by making scary faces.

In amongst all of the chatty salts-of-the-earth, there are really very few "anchor" characters. No-one feels unique, no-one feels special, no-one feels like someone you'd want to just hang out with. Any given NPC is only a couple of sword-swings away from becoming your next level-up.

Whether to murder these flesh-robots on sight is not a moral choice but rather a practical one. When you meet yet another superstitious villager with a West-country accent, you have to ask yourself, "Will disembowling this guy break a quest line?" If the answer is no then it's time to gain some XP. He'll respawn next time you load the zone anyway.

Combat is pretty good, I guess, even if it's not connected to the social part of the game in any way. It kind of feels like Fable 2 mashed an average hack-em-up dungeon crawler into the back end of The Sims. It doesn't excel in either area, although the dungeon crawling is reasonably unobjectionable.

Also, you get this dog that follows you around and helps you out. You can get kind of attached to the dog, I hear (I didn't), but that would be forgetting the important message taught to you in the tutorial. Treating the dog as a real character would just be setting it up to be horribly gunned down in the final act. I sure hope that doesn't happen!

So, anyway, Fable 2 really failed to grab me on any fundamental level. I understand that other people have had a blast with it, which is good for them even if they are clearly crazy. You should probably make up your own mind.

Currently Playing

Got a bunch of games in my queue right now, none of which I'm particularly near finishing, so I thought I'd do an "in-progress" kind of post.

Left 4 Dead (XBox 360): Awesome. Just... awesome. It makes my jaw drop roughly once a minute and I'm starting to get muscle fatigue around my mouth as a result. Some observations though: as you start to learn the levels the game becomes about speed-running, and I'm not yet sure whether that's an evolutionary step in the gameplay or the point at which ennui sets in. Also it's obviously focused solely on multi-player, and I can't say I've ever gotten more than ten hours out of a multi-player first person shooter before. This may be a first, I guess.

Rock Band (XBox 360): Finally out in Australia. Drumming is excellent and the handling of the vocals is several iterations better than the horrible Singstar franchise. Guitar is a bit lame though, due to an unappealing on-screen interface, a peripheral that pinches my fingers, and punishingly short timing windows. Playing with four friends is great, but the game feels poorly structured as far as progress and incentives are concerned. Luckily it's fun just playing, incentives or no incentives. Also it's clear the developers loved what they were making, which is something it shares with Harmonix's previous efforts Guitar Hero 1 and 2. Neversoft-developed GH3 didn't have that and it's that faceless-corporation direction the Guitar Hero franchise is going in that's really turning me off that brand.

Fable 2 (XBox 360): Not a fan. I can't get attached to the main character, who wanders mutely around the countryside expressing himself solely with corny poses while every NPC has rather excellent voice acting. I can't get attached to the NPCs, who will watch you kill their entire family in horror but then offer you gifts once you dance a saucy jig for a few minutes. The customisation system is shallow, and you end up picking clothes based on their stats rather than what they say about your character. The much-vaunted moral choices are poorly handled, especially compared to something like Mass Effect, and often boil down to "do what you're told, or be a petty jerk". Despite a lot of really well-implemented features, the whole package feels deeply artificial and I have serious doubts I can be bothered playing to the end.

Final Fantasy III (DS): I started this six months ago, I'm about three quarters of the way through and I can't bring myself to pick it up again. The graphical updates are nice, but the "job system" has been poorly grafted onto the original game, giving you little real incentive to play with the different jobs and in fact actively punishing you for changing class. The late game suddenly opens up the map but offers poor direction about where to go next and again can punish you for exploring with the sudden introduction of crushingly difficult encounters. The combat is painfully dull and considering that's most of the gameplay that dullness is a real problem. Despite my gripes it's still a great remake, especially considering the age of its roots, but not a real contender compared to some of the excellent modern RPGs on the market.

Age of Booty (XBox Live Arcade): Yar, me hearties! Age of Booty is real-time strategy dumbed down to its lowest level, where you control one ship and attempt to capture enemy ports with or without allies. It's effectively one-button control, ideal for casual players. It should be awful but it's a heap of fun and pretty much exactly right for the low, low asking price. Local multiplayer for up to four players, or you can take it online to battle the intertubes.

Overlord (XBox 360): Played the first level of this, loved it, borrowed it from a friend, and now it's just waiting until I'm done with Fable 2 or something so I can give it the time it deserves.

Travian (PC / Browser): Actually I've been playing this for a few months. A very hardcore real-time wargame that advertises itself as a casual-friendly city builder. One campaign lasts roughly a year of real-time. An excellent game providing you know what to expect; a very frustrating game for those looking for a casual experience who get eliminated by the cutthroat tactics of the real players. I'm loving it.

Non-Molyneux Syndicate

Ask and ye shall receive. Barely had I uttered my desire for a new Syndicate game free of the taint of Peter Molyneux when the news came through that the thing was in development.

And who's making it? Starbreeze, the fellows who crafted Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay and The Darkness, two of the most criminally underappreciated games of recent years.

This is Very Good News (TM). Starbreeze have a track record of stylish atmosphere, tight narrative, and amazing attention to detail (albeit a fairly short track record). These are absolutely the people we want working on a project like this.

If the world keeps fulfilling my ridiculous franchise resurrection demands, I'm clearly going to have to make my wishlist more extreme. Where's my Blizzard-developed Alex Kidd real-time strategy, damn it?