Fable: The Lost Chapters, A Belated Review.

It's easy to hate Fable. Before it was released on Xbox The lead game designer, Peter Molenyeux, hyped it like mad, describing a whole load of awesome features that didn't make it into the game. Rather than the genre redefining masterpiece people were expecting Fable was simply a decent RPG. Not an amazing RPG, but not a terrible one either. Sadly that got overlooked in the outpouring of hate from our console playing cousins which inevitably carried over to the PC version. Still, that was in 2005 and by now much of that dust has settled, allowing Fable to stand on its own as the decent game that the reviewers said it was.

You start life in Fable as a small boy tasked with buying your incredibly annoying sister a present. To do this you must perform good deeds while ignoring the incredibly annoying children that try and tempt you to be naughty. I punched one of them in the face, which was nice, but then lost the deed I was supposed to be performing which prompted all the locals to condemn me in their West Country accents whenever I passed.

The game improves tenfold when (spoiler alert!) your village is ransacked by evil bandits. They kill most of the annoying residents which pleased me greatly and spurred me on through the typically tedious training missions which saw me competing against a fellow trainee at the impossibly generic Heroes Guild. For a game that sells itself on being able to be good or evil it certainly makes every effort to get you to be good. It is fortunate that I am, at heart, a good Javaguy because that was all that kept me from slaying the damn villagers as soon as I got free of the guild.

I'm glad that I didn't, however, because Fable really improves once you're out adventuring. The quests available are consistently entertaining, if not up to Oblivion standards of depth, and the locations are very nicely done. The story has plenty of twists and turns as well, to hold your interest. Presumably due to its console heritage the game isn't strictly open world- the play world consists of lots of small areas divided by doors- but this fits in well with the action oriented stance that fable takes. Every time you enter a new area you're faced with lots of bandits to kill, which kind of forces you down the action route but does at least mean that journeys are never boring. It's worth pointing out also that you can fast travel with teleporters, which speeds things up nicely.

The combat in Fable is definitely its strongest point. Sword blows feel weighty and satisfying while the combo feature discourages you from simply button mashing your way out of situations, as do the unsightly scars your hero picks up if you forget to defend. Like I did. Another feature that endears Fable's combat towards me is infinite arrows. It astonishes me that Fable is the only RPG I've seen to include this feature- having to spend all your money on arrows is one of my pet hates.

In conclusion then, Fable is a good RPG. It suffers from a few of the issues prevalent in most every RPG- the tedious training, the slightly superfluous attempt at moral ambiguity- but it contains a whole range of neat features that allow it to be great fun in short bursts, with plenty of pick-up-and-play appeal. Sure, it's no Baldur's Gate but it doesn't set out to be. It's simply a good RPG with a sweet sense of humour and surprisingly visceral combat. Recommended.

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