Fable

Fable is a world where depending on how you play the game will alter your character’s look, skills, and the way other characters react to you. You can be good or evil. You can get married. You can even stop at a stream and go fishing. You can really do pretty much anything you want. After four years of hype and big promises, Fable is finally here. The final result isn’t as great as it certainly could have been, but it is a fine game that stands as yet another must-own game for the Xbox.

You begin Fable as a child and just barely begin to explore your hometown when bandits attack the town and, as far as you know, everyone has been killed. You are whisked away by a strange man known as Maze just in the nick of time and taken to the Heroes’ Guild. At the Guild, you learn how to fight, use a bow and arrows, and also use magic. This learning process takes your character through his teenage years and when you pass your final test, you are an adult and are ready to enter the outside world and face your destiny and get revenge on the person that destroyed your town. The story is really well put together, but doesn’t play a major part in your experience until the latter half of the game.

Everyone who plays Fable starts out with the same character. You can alter your character’s look by giving them one of dozens of different hairstyles, tattoos, and facial hair options. More important, though, is that depending on how you play the game, your character will change as well. If you use a lot of magic, your character will age faster and be kind of skinny. If you use melee attacks a lot, your character will develop a bigger, more muscular look. And if you aren’t very good at blocking, you will have visible scars. Whether you are good or evil also changes the way your character looks. What all of this means is that even though every player will start the game looking the same, by the end of the game they will all look very different from one another. You can look at a character and tell exactly how that person played the game. In case you couldn’t tell, that is pretty darn cool.

A big part of Fable is how the rest of the world reacts to your character. As you complete quests and collect trophies to mark your conquests, the people you meet will start to respect you more and more and treat you like a hero. Of course, if you play through the game on the evil side the people will fear you instead of cheer you. Again, this is all really cool and it fills you with pride to see such a reaction to the character you worked so hard to create.

Interacting with the people is also very important. You have a number of things you can say and do around people and they will react to you differently. You can strike a sexy pose, make a scary face, and even fart and burp if you want. You can also flirt with girls and eventually marry them if they like you well enough. You can give people gifts and even buy the people in the pub a round of beers. How people react to you depends on how attractive or scary your character is, which is determined by your clothing, hairstyle, tattoos, and good/evil alignment. It is possible to reach a point in the game where every girl in town will want to marry you. Once again, that is freaking cool. Playing with all of the people in town and seeing all of the different reactions to your antics is very fun and like a whole game by itself.