The very first major announcement I can remember hearing about Fable 2 was the inclusion of a dog. There may have been major announcements before that, but I have to confess, my brain works kinda like an etch-a-sketch - shake it up a little bit, and it gets wiped of all recently added information. When I heard about the dog, my reaction was sheer skepticism. I can’t name a single game off the top of my head where the main character had a pet I cared about. Before I get to the rest of this review, I want to take a minute and publicly eat some crow. Peter Molyneux promised that gamers everywhere would develop an emotional attachment to their dog, and he delivered. Pretty much right from the start of the game, I genuinely liked the dog - a lot. The dog behaves in a very organic manner. It runs around completely of it’s own volition, and always comes back to you. When you’re standing still, the dog will roll around on it’s back, or chase it’s tail, or any number of other things real dogs do. The dog will help out in combat, point you to treasures, and find spots in the ground where you can dig and uncover various items. It’s hard to explain exactly why the dog is so endearing - it’s really something you have to experience for yourself.

Peter Molyneux made good on his promise about the dog, but what about the rest of the game?

In the first Fable, I played a very evil character. At the time, I was SO excited to engage in the moral decisions in the game, until I found many of them amounted to something along the lines of “kill this innocent person or don’t”. At that point, I decided to be as rotten as possible rather than exercising any sort of moral judgment. Fable 2 has much the same sort of “really good” or “really bad” choices to make, but the difference this time around is that I felt compelled to be good. The plot, and the various characters in it left me feeling like I should do the right thing whenever I could. In addition to good and evil, this time around you’re also judged based on your purity or corruption. That sounds pretty interesting until you realize it pretty much just represents how greedy you are. The more you take actions that lead to profit, the more corrupt you become.

One of my personal complaints with the first Fable was that it felt small. The entire land of Albion felt like it could fit inside of half of Delaware. Fable 2 has a much larger world map. The towns are huge, and they feel very alive with villagers wandering here and there going about their daily business, and the space in between towns is full of side paths you can explore in search of treasure or a good fight. There’s a lot of places to go, and things to see.

Speaking of things to see, the visuals are superbly done. Vibrant colors, well executed bloom lighting, and solid art direction make the total package that is Fable 2 very easy on the eyes. At certain points in the game I enjoyed just watching my hero and his dog just run around in the grass. Yea, I know how stupid that sounds, and I don’t care.

There are a lot of places to see and buy in Fable 2. You heard me, I said buy. You can buy just about any building in the game, be it residence or shop. When you buy a shop, you can adjust the prices. As you raise prices, you become more corrupt, and the town’s economy suffers. Lower them, and you become more pure, and the town’s economy prospers. When you buy a residence, you can either move in, or rent it out. If you choose to rent the property out, you can then adjust the rent which, again, effects your corruption level, and the town’s economy. Every five minutes, whether you’re playing or not, you’ll earn money from all of your properties. Real estate can be a steep initial investment, but it pays itself off and then some in the end.

I was a bit disappointed by the AI. At first glance, you see a living, breathing world full of people going about their day to day business. Don’t look to close though, if you do, you’ll find those people are all complete and total idiots. All you have to do to get someone to like you is spam their favorite expression over and over again. Be careful - once they like you, they’ll be drawn to you like a moth to a light bulb. It doesn’t matter where you go, your adoring fans will follow you like a pack of brain-starved zombies begging for you affection. I went into one of my houses to make sweet sweet love to one of my many wives, and a pack of love struck villagers followed me into my house, and up to the bedroom. While I was busy knocking up my wife, I actually heard some of the villagers clapping. While this was amusing, and a pleasant ego boost, it did sort of break the illusion that these people did any sort of thinking.

Most of the villagers are dumb, but my wives are the dumbest of all. One of my wives wandered into the room in the pub where I just happened to be having unprotected sex with two strangers, and she just stood there. When she realized she should be upset, she ran out of the pub screaming “how could you cheat on me”. It’s okay though, she didn’t leave me or anything - in fact, when I caught up with her she gave me a present.

In another town, I married a hooker - don’t judge me, Pretty Woman was a great movie. I moved her into a caravan - which I believe was a step up for her as I’m pretty sure she was homeless before that. I gave her a $500 a day budget to take care of the tiny tiny caravan. We made sweet sweet love on our wedding night, and she didn’t even charge me! That beautiful evening yielded us a beautiful baby girl. My wife went straight back to hooking behind the local pub as soon as our daughter was born, leaving the infant alone in our wide open caravan the whole day long. That’s right, I’m Fable 2 trailer trash. Seriously though, it kind of surprises me that Lionhead bothered to include children, but didn’t bother to include any sort of nurturing mechanic in the mother. It’s another instance of the AI being so incredibly stupid. I mean, come on, even Britney Spears would’t treat her children like that…. or would she?

Right from the start, Peter Molyneux proudly spoke of the simplicity of the combat. Originally referred to as “one button combat”, the concept of such a simple fighting mechanic frightened the hell out of me. To my surprise, combat feels great. There are three ways to do damage in Fable 2 - melee (swords, axes, ect), ranged (guns and crossbows), and magic. Each is assigned it’s own button. Now, if you really wanted to just go through the world mashing the X button, and killing everything that moves with your sword, you could - it wouldn’t get you nearly as much experience though. The key to earning high amounts of experience is to vary your fighting style, and kill as quickly and efficiently as you possibly can. This makes the game accessible to just about anyone, but adds a solid reward for those that take the time to really master the three types of combat.

At the time of this writing, there are a couple of game breaking glitches that deserve mentioning. In the quest titled “Monk’s Quest” if you start a conversation with the abbot to initiate the quest, but you leave the area before the conversation is completed, the abbot will not respond to you ever again, rendering this quest, and the rest of the main plot unplayable. Also worth noting is a co-op glitch that can cost you all of your experience, gold, and abilities if you join another player’s game while they are still in the child stage of the game.

One of the biggest, most anticipated features of Fable 2 is the online co op, and it is here that the game both succeeds and fails miserably. When you join someone else’s game, you can choose from six henchman to play as. You can’t bring your character into their world - you can ONLY be a henchman. For a game that focuses so heavily on personal choice and character development to prevent you from bringing your special character to someone else’s world just seems silly. Nevertheless it is still a fun and interesting experience to go into another player’s world and join a friend on a quest to defeat some bandits, or save a missing child. The joy of that experience is somewhat lessened when you factor in the camera. The game forces both players to remain in a somewhat constrictive proximity to one another. If one of you attempts to wander too far in the wrong direction, the camera will punish you by hiding itself behind a rock, so that all you can see is that rock. Fortunately, you can always hit the back button to teleport yourself directly next to the other player. While the camera issues, and the inability to transport your own character into someone else’s world do provide significant amounts of frustration, the overall experience of online co op is still a mostly enjoyable one.

I’m not going to say Fable 2 is perfect - far from it in fact. As mentioned, there are some unforgivable, game breaking issues with it at this point. I’m also not going to hang Fable 2 out to dry for being a bad game either. If you can get past the flaws, there’s a lot to love here. If, after reading this, you’re apprehensive of the flaws I’ve mentioned, rent it. At least give it a chance to convince you that the flaws are outweighed by the finer points of the game. I can’t guarantee it’s a game for everyone, but I can say that in spite of it’s flaws (and I’m aware of how large some of them are) Fable 2 is still a game well worth playing.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Fable 2, Microsoft, Peter Molyneux, review, Xbox 360

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