PushingPlay

Before you get your nuts twisted, please note that this article is tagged as an opinion. Specifically, my opinion. The views expressed by me don’t necessarily reflect the views of PushingPlay, who seem to have somehow found enjoyment in the game.

Alright, I’ve been getting some backlash for my obvious bias against Fable 2, both from my fellow writers and customers at my store, so I feel it’s time to justify my opinion.

Many games have a difficulty setting, usually something along the lines of hard, medium, and easy. Imagine now if there were a difficulty setting below easy, called “super easy”. Now, imagine if there were an even lower setting, called “Fisher Price easy”. Fable 2 is permanently stuck on that setting. If you want to cheat in games, most of the time you have to either use codes, or an Action Replay. But with Fable 2, there is no need. It already has built-in hacks. For starters, the player has infinite health. The game doesn’t even create an illusion of death. Sure, each time your health gets to zero, you lose a bit of experience, but the amount lost is inconsequential at best. There were times when I lost as little as 40 experience (out of almost 2 hundred thousand). The player is revived on the spot will full health, ready to fight again.

Magic is a staple in most RPGs, and Fable 2 is no exception. However, like health points, the player has an infinite expenditure of magic at their disposal. You can spam the most powerful spells in the game over and over again until everything around you is dead. If you get hit in the process, it’s no big deal because you can’t really die!

Fable 2 also introduced guns into the mix. Flint lock rifles, revolvers, oldschool stuff. Aesthetically, it was cool, but if you haven’t played the game, you can probably see where I’m going with this. Yes, the guns have infinite ammo. I remember back in the day, playing Turok on N64. When I wanted infinite health/ammo/lives/etc, I had to type in a cheat: NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK. If you had told me back then that there would come a game which would have cheats active all the time, I would have laughed at you. There are no penalties at all, and therefore no sense of urgency, risk, or danger.

Continuing with the problem of difficulty in Fable 2 (or lack thereof), I have a problem the dog. Exploration is a big part of good RPGs. Treading off the beaten path and finding treasure gives the player a sense of satisfaction. The dog takes away that element of the game, because he finds the freaking treasure for you. He’ll sniff those goodies out from a fair distance away. This makes exploration feel like a game of hot-and-cold, which I outgrew in kindergarten. Further negating the pleasure of discovery is a golden line which traces a path for the player to follow. I don’t need a bloody line to tell me to continue down a linear hallway, thank you very much. When a path branches out I don’t need to be told which direction is the correct one, I could have employed certain things that worked great in other games. Things like a “map” and “process of elimination”. Call me crazy, but I like to figure things out on my own. Fable 2 doesn’t let you. Instead, it plays itself.

Next I will debunk claims that the game is about “freedom”. First of all, WHY CAN’T I TALK TO PEOPLE. I can fart, give them a thumbs up, growl, flex, but not talk? I feel like I’m only person who doesn’t care that you can fart on people. The gesture-based social system not only felt juvenile, but limited.

Next, they practically force your character to look like a brute. The more points you put into strength, the bulkier the character gets. I wanted to look like a LEAN, mean, killing machine. Instead, my dude ended up resembling Vinnie Jones as the fucking Juggernaut. Screw a sword, my characters ludicrous cheek bones could have slaughtered an entire army.

A large aspect of Fable 2 is the “freedom” to make good or evil moral decisions. As far as I could tell, these decisions were largely insignificant in the grander theme. Basically, being good or evil had virtually no bearing on the plot, besides the ending. The only changes that occur because of your moral decisions are aesthetic. If you’re evil enough, your character grows horns, if you’re good, he gets a halo or something. That’s pretty much it.

Spoiler alert!!!
There is no last boss battle. Just an interactive ending in which the player can choose to shoot the antagonist in the face as he stands there or have Reaver do it for them. An RPG without a last boss battle is like stopping Beethoven’s 9th symphony before the crescendo; ultimately unsatisfying.

Oh, and the plot was virtually nonexistent.

There you have it. Fable 2, in my opinion the most overrated game of all time. Flame away.