Fable II: A World for Wordsworths
The Fable franchise doesn’t have many friends in the press world. The first game was a difficulty received high-fantasy RPG that pretended to be more than it was and I never played it as a result. Early on in the second game, the protagonist and his/her sister question whether magic exists. Like a question on the metagame of the Fable franchise, Lionhead tries to persuade the player that it does.
It’s easy to roll one’s eyes at the seemingly Tolkien-esque trappings of Fable II. Another high-fantasy RPG? Well yes and no. Fable II was one of the first times I understood the appeal of steampunk; the game’s not completely without the staple swords, mages, and trolls, but the game has some fantastically designed early modern cities that had me wishing for a time machine. The city life mainly resolves around Bowerstone, a port-town with the entire range of shops (clothes, weapons, food, furniture,etc.), a buzzing population that loves to follow you around (if you’re good to them that is), a job site or two, and all sorts of nooks and crannies to poke around in. Cellars, the old town, a blooming pub, and houses of all sizes and shapes. There’s something inherently cozy about Bowerstone, -and with that the couple of other towns in Fable II- that’s hard not to like.
The attitude Lionhead took towards the city can be seen throughout the entire game. The world isn’t designed to be entirely functional or utilitarian, yet at the same time the game doesn’t steer towards the kitchen sink attitude either. It’s this sort of attitude that really showed how focused on adventure the game was. Within seconds of leaving your initial camp, you’re in a wide-open space where you could start wandering around the forest for treasure, bad guys, or just for unknown places. There’s plenty of times throughout where you’ll be trekking amongst farspread plains or valleys, all places that don’t really need to be there. But they’re there to make the world feel real, and that is an aspiration that most RPGs have trouble touching. A more linear player could go from each story mission nearly one after the other, although there’d be a lot of great moments to miss along the way if one took such an approach. Even going along the same roads with my newly upgraded treasure hunter, the dog Mars, was an enjoyable experience because he’d always manage to find new places to dig or treasures that had been cleverly hidden away. I didn’t have to make the world seem interesting, the opportunities were all around me.
To push the feel of the adventure more, the game does not contain an obsessively designed battle system nor intricate dungeons. The battling, a combination between standard melee fighter, ranger-style shooting, and slow but strong mage, is fun as a whole and fantastic when it wants to shine, but rightly does not take away the focus from the rest of the game. I would recommend that any player mix all the main combat styles together, it creates a lot of potential outcomes when done correctly. For the majority of the game I’d been neglecting the shooting style since it lacked the powerful response of the melee-geared style. But when I threw some points in towards the end, I was amazed to find that I could decapitate and destroy some enemies with a shot or two.
What is amazing about the action and questing is how nicely it is rolled into the overall adventure. I never felt like I was going back and forth between dungeon-crawling and town work. The few dungeons were rather small, and in general most of the action took place right out in the fields and forests. It felt closer to a real hero’s story than the through-the-motions approach other RPGs take. It’s common to find games that have a desert dungeon, water dungeon, foresty dungeon, etc., an approach to give each new one a sense of freshness. But this tactic has been so overused in gaming that it’s become a tired method of design. In Fable II, I never wanted to be too far from the towns or from my job at the blacksmith as usually that’s where I wanted to end my adventure for the day anyway. Back in town, I’d spend time buying up the local properties, walking around looking for new things to do, and every so often stopping to watch as one of the townspeople stopped to play with my dog. It was as much of a home to me as it was to each of its fictitious citizens.
Most games are so intent on shoving a new experience to the player at every corner that they forget to create a place in that experience where the user can relax in or to get their mind off the end-of-the-world. Fable II has that, and overall is designed with such a sweet and lightheartedness to it. One of my favorite moments came near the end, when upon winning some pirate’s treasure, the game showed me the new spoils I’d won, with some text that commented whether the treasure might be cursed. The sentence right after said: “Don’t worry it’s not.” For gamers who are wondering whether Fable II is like every other RPG, don’t worry, it’s not.
