Fable

Since good third-person adventures are so few and far between nowadays, I find myself forced more and more often to go back to the roots; the golden days of adventure gaming and drag out some long forgotten game lurking in the darkness there. My latest find is Fable.

Story

In a faraway world, where traitors and cheaters were common, evil ruled. One day a beautiful and majestic race - the Mecubars - who appeared in the form of glowing orbs, descended unto the planet to bring peace.

Unfortunately, some of the natives didn't see the difference between peace and slavery so one night, four conspirators and a young Mecubar priest - Ismäel - who knew the secret of his race's power, tried to overthrow the Mecubar government and take over the world. They failed but their attempt started a chain reaction which could no longer be reversed or stopped.

The Mecubars were furious and left the planet. The four conspirators were damned for eternity by their actions. The power which they seeked corrupted their body and they became hideous beasts. Each of them possessed one of the Mecubars' powerful gem with which they were left to rule a certain region of their planet. This divided the world into four parts: The Frozen Lands, The Land of Mists, the underwater world of The Engulfed Fortress and a land ruled by fire: Hell. Ismäel disappeared without a trace, and has not been found to this day. He is said to have left the planet.

We play a young man named Quickthorpe, whose task is to find the four gems and unite them so that once again peace may rule the world.

Opinion

When I first started playing Fable, I thought that writing this section would be the easiest part of my job. The game, at first, seemed perfect. And then, after a while the problems that seemed small at first started bothering me more and more and I realized that I'm not liking this game as much as I thought I would.

After a quick glance at the screenshots, I think it's safe to say that they weren't the source of my disappointment. The backgrounds are gorgeous, all of them hand-drawn and the animations are fantastic. Somewhat simple at times, but still fantastic.

There's no real music in the game, but there are always background noises and effects which bring color to this (already pretty colorful) environment. The only music I remember is the one that plays in the main menu but that is a beautiful track. The voices of the characters are also very good.

The source of my problems, or at least one of them, is the story. It is simply too good to be ruined the way it's been ruined in this game. The setup is wonderful, full of great opportunities for puzzles (most of which are utilized well) but there's one thing a game like that doesn't need and that's humor. Especially not sexist, horribly placed and badly timed humor. The story in itself would've been simply beautiful had it not been destroyed by stupid, childish jokes.

Another problem (but a minor one compared to the above) is control. The game is fully mouse-controlled but different actions can only be executed by using different cursors. We can change between the mouse cursors using the right mouse button, which sounds simple enough but in some situations can really become a pain in the ... The floating popup inventory panel was another "great idea". Closing it while holding an inventory object is almost as difficult as finishing the game itself. (I'm guessing it was supposed to close automatically because sometimes it does, without any kind of warning.)

All in all, I was satisfied with the game even despite its shortness and the annoying control method but I could simply not forgive the writers for ruining such a beautiful story with senseless jokes. The ending will also probably go down as one of the most disappointing game endings in history.