FWIW IMO XBox Fable is very good

[Crystalion]

While I wasn't crazy about Black & White, I've been very fond of titles some of the creators of Fable have worked on in the past (Populous, Populous 3D, Magic Carpet I & II) so I'm not surprised to be very impressed with Fable (XBox only, afaik).

To me it is as if the gameplay that interested me in Daggerfall, Betrayal at Krondor and Drakan had been redone with a more aesthetic simplicity of design in glorious modern graphics (and very good voice acting, as these things go).

I am very very happy that this game is not multiplayer nor as extensive as, say, Morrowind, because then it would be a huge (instead of substantial) time suck.

(I do not consider the game to be "spiritually" in the same genre as Diablo, even though both could be called RPGs, so I really have no idea if a jrandom Diablo I/II player would be likely to also like Fable... that's why I mentioned all those titles above that I really like, to give you some context for my heads-up on Fable).

[Drasca]

I don't own an Xbox. Neighbors have one per roommate though... Hmm. Must ask if I can borrow it a few days a week.

I've been keeping track of Fable and hoped it was as good as it seems. Glad it is. Damn.

Well. I've been keeping busy with the Sims 2, and it is really quite good. More crack. Gaming season is back on.

[NuurAbSaal]

I would be interested in the time needed to "complete" Fable, just the storyline quests. From what I've heard (Penny Arcade for example) it is not only short but short, so you should be able to provide some guesstimate pretty soon.

I will probably get it regardless of your answer, so don't hesitate to be honest :) ;)


Greetings

Nuur

[Guest]

I havent played it but most people I know who played it are disappointed.

They think the content is great, but they arent too happy that they finished it in 3 days.

[JustAGuy]

My brother and I have it, and he's a bit nutty when he gets into a game, so he beat it in just under 13ish hours. From what I watched of him play, and what I've played myself, it's a solid game. Combat is relatively simple, and fun.

Right away though, I found a gold exploit, making the game much easier than it should be. I'm using a close-to-end-game weapon right away, simply because I'm the master at "memory". There's a card game where you match card combinations -- There are only 4 rows of 4 (or 5?) that you must match in 40 seconds. Plenty of time! I was able to get 20k gold in a short amount of time, thereby allowing me to buy some sweet gear. My brother just stumbled upon another key and gold-getting exploit as well. Looks like those boys need to fire their Q-A guys!

Over all, though, it's a good game. You can clearly see that there's lots of MMORPG influence in the game; it looks like it SHOULD be a MMORPG. When I think of the scar & body change/aging system and how that would relate to a massive rpg, I get all teary-eyed. The combat is fun, and would be very interesting in PvP, or multiplayer quests for that matter. The loading times are abysmal, though, and that alone makes this game a MMORPG impossibility. They really should have taken a page out of other game's seamless loading techniques, it would really have helped the "open-ended" feel, which is really non-existent. It's not open-ended at all. That doesn't matter, though; if you ignore the hype of "this is the ultimate RPG that has your character grow up from a little boy, your choices determine who you are, and the game play is completely open ended," and you just take it for what it is, you see that it's a fun action-RPG.

It's not the bee's knees, but it's definitely good. I tell ya, marrying everyone you can is just hilarious. You can marry just about anyone. You can woo and marry women who are already married, and then marry the man as well. It's fricken' hilarious.

[Dozer]

Thirteen hours? Am I the only one that misses 250-hour epics like Baldur's Gate II? When I get into a game, it better be open-ended (Diablo II, multiplayer FPS's) or damn long. Paying $50 for a game that lasts less than two days is a waste of money, IMHO.

[Kevin]

Hence the $5 for 5 days rentals. Sounds like Fable is a renter just like the Dark Alliance games were. Good to know.

[Haider]

Thirteen hours? Am I the only one that misses 250-hour epics like Baldur's Gate II?

I don't miss them. 250h would mean around 120 days playtime if I sacrifice all other leisure activities (more than 2h a day isn't really possible), and this is about 100 days too long. 50h is for a RPG the ideal time, but open ended Multiplayer is surely a plus.

[Occhidiangela]

Well, how about that!

Another person with a life. :D (Darned RL, getting in the way of games!)

Occhi

[Zafarium]

Thirteen hours? Am I the only one that misses 250-hour epics like Baldur's Gate II? When I get into a game, it better be open-ended (Diablo II, multiplayer FPS's) or damn long. Paying $50 for a game that lasts less than two days is a waste of money, IMHO.
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No you are not the only one that misses those 250-hour epics. I've played Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 for at least 200+ hours each. They were incredibly involved games that required a huge amount of effort. I like that in a game. These games are too washed down when you can beat them in less than 50 hours. Thats just my two cents. :D

[Crystalion]

Right away though, I found a gold exploit, making the game much easier than it should be. I'm using a close-to-end-game weapon right away, simply because I'm the master at "memory". There's a card game where you match card combinations -- There are only 4 rows of 4 (or 5?) that you must match in 40 seconds. Plenty of time! I was able to get 20k gold in a short amount of time, thereby allowing me to buy some sweet gear. My brother just stumbled upon another key and gold-getting exploit as well. Looks like those boys need to fire their Q-A guys!

Ah, you're faster than I at the card pairs game (it would be easy for me at 50 seconds and clearly impossible at 35... I always run out of time on the last few cards at a 40 limit).

The design center of the game is clearly "easy" and getting gold is no exception. While quests are atomic, requiring that you complete them in entirety once in the initial critical region, the game even allows you to do "Hero save"s to keep items and experience found within the quest (when you fail and/or reload). This is of course "exploitable"... apart from the obvious fact that the design is meant to be "easy", not frustrating.

(Well, it did take me four or five tries to win the ultimate boxing championship, and that was a bit frustrating... but I did learn to box better).

In such a game design, it is really up to the players to decide how hard they want the game to be (e.g. since gold is easy to come by, and "boasts" only grant you more gold, clearly making a quest harder on yourself by boasting is largely meant for fun factor).

BTW, understanding the Combat Multiplier, the CM/2 for zoning (e.g. recall), and Physical Shield, it is quite easy to pretty much start off by getting the Greatwood Caves Demon door prize, a really nice light melee weapon (iirc 135 damage with lightning augmentation).

The in-game games are fun and pretty easy apart from the time limits... many of the games I just barely can't beat because I can't quite meet the time limits. The game I personally find trivial is Ha'penny, which isn't available until late in the game. For those that don't know, you didn't mention that most games have modest betting limits (e.g. 200 to 1000 gold) and the games take both real and game time (the later as I discovered while playing a game as an assassin was beating up on me). So spending time and effort beating these games isn't much different than repeatedly trashing the Greatwood Caves troll for rubies (or any other easily repeated fight with decent payoff).

Trading can generate decent cash early on. Renting out property generates tons of cash if you just spend a minute sleeping 3 times (e.g. free bed in South Bowertown Quay and zone back to collect rent). In other words, gold is "cheap".

My favorite "exploit" thus far, for gold, is the following (because it's sneaky)...

Buy the Marital home in Oakvale and upgrade it if desired to two trophy holders (one at least is needful). Don't rent it out during this process. Put your valuable trophies on the wall, stand in the doorway and sell the house. The sales price you recieve will include the value of the trophies (which is small for early trophies but substantial for later ones--ranging from hundreds to thousands of gold). As you are standing in the doorway, the doors will not close... so duck into the house and reclaim the trophies. You can now walk out the (open) doors (which close behind you) and buy the house back at a discount.

Effectively what you are doing is selling your trophies and stealing them back over and over (without risk of being caught, afaik... assuming a guard were ever up that way, I'm not sure that being in the house qualifies as tresspassing and there isn't any "evil" involved with either the trophy removals or door finesse).

BTW, for those reading that don't know Fable, the above sleaze is certainly in line spiritually with the design... one intended thing you can do is learn enough guile to steal, which is, e.g., effective when you bribe the guards to "take a break" and scare the shopkeeper off. If you get caught then the game provides that you can flee town without paying fines, as long as you "hide out" (i.e. stay out of the town with fines) for eight minutes (realtime).

Personally the only spendy things I think are needful to buy over the course of the game is one suit of decent armor (many decent weapons are available free) by the end game. Early game doesn't need armor and mid-game has free armor available that does just fine (actually one mid-game suit is available trivially at the beginning). The best complete suit of armor in the game runs less than 20k net, iirc, which is a paltry sum of money (at least by the time you need it).

So the only major use for money, if you intend to be good, would be 100k+ in donations to the Temple of Avo (the gods grant several special rewards for that, but any gold donated generates "good" points, so this is one possible way to redeem yourself if you've done a bit of evil you wish to erase quickly).

I've played the game through twice now. Tonight I did some testing with my second character (didn't save) in which I maxed out every skill in the game (some magic skills require that you be fairly good or evil inherently to do the max notch, but there isn't anything stopping you from swinging from absolute good to absolute evil and back again, as I did tonight).

Some of the skills and equipment that works well in the early to mid-game would not cut it for the finale battle... however the lead up to that involves endless battles (you're expected and instructed to pass on through the "cinematic" battles) in which you can harvest as much xp for skills as you wish.

This is not a game in which you "mess up" your character unrecoverably by ignorance. It is clearly intended to be enjoyable when played in many different ways, with a lot of room for "role-playing" in the non-statistical sense (the success of the AD&D model tends to equate CRPG with things D20 because that is easier to program).

I might play it through a third time, with a character that eschews combat (and being good at it) as much as possible (and is good or evil in a completely self-serving way). The main questline has several "locked door" encounters where you must triumph militarily (including the final battle, of course) but apart from those a surprising amount of the game should be possible to finesse in a sneaky or cowardly manner.

[Munkay]

Thirteen hours? Am I the only one that misses 250-hour epics like Baldur's Gate II? When I get into a game, it better be open-ended (Diablo II, multiplayer FPS's) or damn long. Paying $50 for a game that lasts less than two days is a waste of money, IMHO.
[right][snapback]56374[/snapback][/right]

I must agree, Baldurs Gate II is one of my all time favorite games, and I've still never technically beat it (always been too busy doing side quests). There is something about that game that is amazing. I still to this day have my Baldurs Gate II save files saved on a cd, and although I've never had the time to install it again, I've brought the cd's to college every year.

Perhaps over Christmas Break we can throw some lurkers together and get a BG game going?

I've got a huge itch to retstard and go the sorcerer route this time, and make a tag team pair with Edwin and a dark Mage. I don't know if I can handle not having Minsc and Boo around though. I love those guys!

Oh nostalgia,

Munk

[Treesh]

Hence the $5 for 5 days rentals.  Sounds like Fable is a renter just like the Dark Alliance games were.  Good to know.
[right][snapback]56382[/snapback][/right]

And after renting it Saturday afternoon, I've now beaten the game with a good character. It had its good points and its bad points. I'm still annoyed that, since it's supposedly such a breakthrough in RPGs, you can't even choose your sex. You're forced to play as the boy. It still feels more like a hack-n-slash with some brief nods to roleplaying to me than a true RPG, but a lot of that is because I wanted to see how quickly I could beat it. I could have done more non-main quest things, more roleplaying things than I did, so keep that in mind when reading this post. The NPCs did make me laugh frequently though. I spent more time laughing at them than telling them to shut their pie-holes, which is a good thing. I had fun kicking the chickens and beating my best distances. The mini-games annoyed me though, the gambling ones. Not quite sure why though. I did fish a lot in the game, until Gnollguy got bored watching me fish. ;)

I did have fun with most of the game, but it really doesn't seem like its worth going out and buying though. I'd much rather just rent it for 5 days for only $6 and play through it a couple of times.