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29 March 2024

Fable III: Oh, it’s good to be king

Published
By Nitin Mathew

No article about Microsoft's newly launched Fable III can be written without reference and homage to its lead designer, Peter Molyneux, an icon and one of the most ambitious game designers ever.

After selling Bullfrog Studios, the development house he founded, to Electronic Arts, he went on to start Lionhead Studios, which became a part of the greater Microsoft Game Studios family. Molyneux is now creative director of MGS.

Lionhead was the breeding ground for Fable, Molyneux's first foray into the action role-playing genre. Most of Molyneux's games have dealt with questions of morality and ethics, leaving the player to define the line between good and evil.

I have been following his work since the late nineties when he produced such classics such as Populous, Dungeon Keeper and followed them up in the twenty first century with Theme Park World and Black & White.

Black & White's premise and concept was perhaps one of his most ambitious projects. Although it never officially reached these shores, the game was a masterpiece of artificial intelligence in computer games.

Still based in Albion, but set fifty years since Fable II, the story itself is in two parts and the gameplay experience is split as such, the first part being the quest to become king and the second part devoted to the player’s experience as king.

The beauty of this is that decisions made in the first part come into play as deciding factors in the second. The player is presented with some tough choices as a result.

In the story department, Fable III shines, with good doses of humour adding to the game’s overall experience. Players kick off the story as a prince in Albion, a place that has suffered at the hands of the king, who happens to be the prince’s brother.

Very early in the game, the player is presented with some very tough choices and at this outset one is already thinking about how the whole story will unfold.

For the hard core story fans, there’s plenty to do in this game with your standard fare RPG characteristics like character customisation and world exploration. However, these things have little impact on the combat aspect of the game. Combat controls are quite simply matched to the buttons on your Xbox controller the effect of each button on your combat action depends on how you use them.

One area to highlight within the combat system is the range of finishing moves your character has and they depend on the type of attack you deploy. There’s a touch of Hollywood finesse in these moves bordering on some very stylish action movies.

Graphically, Fable III is not the most beautiful game, but it seems almost deliberate in the sense that the art seems to be directed at providing a sense of realism of the condition of the people of Albion, who are living in a state of degradation.

One of Fable III’s best accomplishments is in the area of music and voice overs. The music composition fits perfectly with the style of the land of Albion. The real stand out job is that done by the voice over artists.

This is not surprising considering that the list of artists who have contributed to this adventure reads like a veritable who’s who of the British film industry including John Cleese, Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Fable III deserves a Bafta just for the work these gentlemen have put into it.

Overall, Fable III is a significant improvement over Fable II and improves in a lot of areas where its predecessor fell short.

The game is jam packed with playability, script, humour, great art and sound direction and is definitely worth the time and money.

Those who are daunted by the thought of picking up an RPG, should definitely give this one a spin. Once you have finished the main story, there’s plenty to go back to in the form of side quests and an expansive world to explore which should keep RPG fans happy.

Players of the first two games in the series will feel right at home in Albion.