Can Peter Molyneux and Lionhead redeem themselves after the utter disappointment that was the original Fable? Read on…

 

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that Peter Molyneux was perfoming his song-and-dance routine in front of a mob of lapdog journalists, talking up the wonders of heroes aging in realtime, a world that reacts to the players choices, and growing trees from acorns. Fast forward to 2004, and we were left with was perhaps one of the greatest disappointments of the past generation, second only to Halo 2. Instead of a grand, lush world to explore, we were stuck on roads. The main story was absurdly short, with dramatic encounters and whole chunks of the world chopped out at the last minute. Eager gamers were left stunned by the sheer smallness of it all, and lashed out at Molyneux himself, forcing him to make a public apology.

I had once entertained the idea that perhaps if Fable had been made on a more powerful platform (at that time, it was PC) instead of being constrained by the relatively meager Xbox hardware it would have fulfilled at least some of the potential Project Ego had. Now, four years and a generation later, I find myself thinking the same thing about Fable 2, both in terms of it’s status as second most disappointing title of the generation behind Halo 3, and wondering what could’ve been achieved on the vastly more powerful PlayStation 3.

Fable 2 is a textbook example of what happens when ideas are larger than the media format used to express them. From the poor visuals, constrained world, and technical shortcomings it’s difficult to decide exactly where the blame for Fable 2 lies, with the incompetent developers at Lionhead, or with the underpowered, last-gen media constrained Xbox 360. Installed on the Xbox 360′s hard drive (if you’re lucky enough to have any room on that $100 20GB HDD, that is) Fable 2 takes up only 6.8GB of space. Just indulge for a moment, and imagine if they had a Blu-Ray disc with a full 25GB to play with. Close your eyes and imagine the textures, so real you might reach out and try to touch the screen in disbelief. Let the soaring sounds of 7.1 lossless audio fill your ears and lift your soul. Now wake up.

Glitches and game-stopping bugs pop up left and right. Forums are rife with complaints about broken quests, graphical problems, and general malaise. Just opening the ingame menu is a stuttering, nausea-inducing experience. Technically the game is a mess at best, at worst it may actually be a danger to you. The Xbox 360′s DVD drive is working overtime on this game, so much so that several times I feared the disc might break apart, causing injury or death. Additionally, the decibel level put out by the drive when playing Fable 2 may cause hearing damage, so be sure you have earplugs and sit at least 15 ft. away from the console at all times. Here at SDF your health and well-being is a major concern to us, and I could not in good conscience recommend playing Fable 2 with anything less than a sheet of bulletproof glass between you and the console (you might consider investing in a pair of nice safety goggles as well, one can never be too cautious when dealing with such poorly made hardware).

With respect to the actual features of the game, once again Peter Molyneux’s inflated sense of self-importance gets the best of him. You may recall the dramatic and tantalizing revelation of one “innovation” after another, all seemingly poised to revolutionize the gaming landscape as we knew it. Fool me once Peter, shame on you. Fool me twice… well, I wasn’t fooled this time. He’s as full of hot air as the space inside the Xbox 360′s cheap plastic casing, only his hot air comes out the front instead of the back (he’s also guaranteed to RROD).

The much ballyhooed dog companion is little more than an annoying device to point out “hidden” treasures, even when they’re in plain sight of the player. This should tell you just the kind of audience Fable 2 is made for; dimwitted man child Xbots and actual children who need the obvious pointed out to them. There’s never any emotional attatchment to the dog, so you won’t really care when he’s killed in the end. Whoops, was that a spoiler? Sorry about that. You can bring him back to life though, so don’t worry. Damn, that was another spoiler. Sorry again.

The highly anticipated and ultimately highly gimped co-op feature ended up being more a source of discontent among players than enjoyment, who were angered over being promised one thing and given another. Originally a friend was supposed to be able to bring their unique hero into your game world and quest with you with their own clothing, weapons, and look. What we got was downgraded to being able to select from a set of premade characters and join in as a generic henchmen. Your co-op partner is also denied their own dog because of “framerate issues” according to IGN. The Xbox 360 can’t handle two dogs onscreen at once before being brought to it’s knees? What generation is this again?

The shallow sim-like social aspects are much the same as the previous game, i.e. they’re a waste of time. You can influence the poorly-modeled copy/pasted NPCs’ perception of you in the most simple and moronic ways; fart at them, give them a ‘thumbs up’, etc… you can woo a spouse in about ten minutes. It took me all of that ten minutes to get completely bored of it. There’s also a crude economic element to the game – you can buy property and rent it out, or buy and sell items to try and make a profit – again much the same as in the original Fable, and just as boring to get involved in. What is new is that now your ingame hero can earn money even when your Xbox 360 is turned off. I haven’t turned my console on for weeks since I’ve last played the game, so should I ever find reason to turn it on again I’ll have a fortune.

Visually the game looks eerily reminiscient of it’s older Xbox cousin, with low resolution textures everywhere, polygon-starved NPCs, and flat lighting. Sometimes there are shadows, sometimes there aren’t. Even with all the compromises Lionhead had to make to get the game running on the overheating Xbox 360 hardware, the framerate still manages to drop time and time again, even when playing the silly minigame jobs where it’s only the main character onscreen. I won’t even get into the animation. Let me just say the first time I dove into the opaque polygon plane crudely representative of water, I thought the game stalled for a few moments and some frames of animation had been skipped. Nope, that’s just the way it was animated. Just to compare it with a game in a similar vein on PlayStation 3, the upcoming PS3 exclusive White Knight Chronicles outclasses Fable 2′s visuals in every way, with a true four-player online mode to boot.

Double the graphical fidelity, double the number of players online. This seems to be a recurring theme.

I won’t go into describing the succession of events that loosely approximates a “story” in Fable 2 (calling it a story would be an insult to geniuses like Kojima), not out of a philanthropic desire to let you, the reader, experience it’s highs and lows with virgin expectations, but because it was so utterly forgettable I can’t recall a single thing about it.

Ultimately Fable 2 is just the latest in a line of Microsoft-funded first party efforts that fail to live up to the high standards set by Sony and the PlayStation 3. Failing to even live up to the 2001 promises of Project Ego, it has left gamers angry, confused, and disappointed. What will it take for an Xbox 360 game to live up to next-generation expectations? The answer is that it will take next-generation hardware, and the Xbox 360 doesn’t cut it. For all of you who purchased Fable 2 before reading this review and were left with a hollow feeling upon realizing that you’ve been taken by Peter Molyneux once again, there is a small consolation coming in the form of a downloadable island to visit that they couldn’t fit on the retail DVD. Called Knothole Island, you’ll be able to travel to the snowy land and make the same expressions at the same copy/pasted NPCs, get a few new outfits you won’t be able to use in co-op, and button mash your way through the same enemies from the regular game, all for the bargain price of $10.

SDF Score (Not an average) – 1/10

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 8:15 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.