Five Reasons I Am Not Excited For Fable 3

A heroic moment in Fable 3

Fable 3 sure looks awesome....

Fable 3 is coming.  Peter Molyneux is on the campaign circuit.  The trailer is out.  The hype is huge. 

They say that those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it. Not me. I’ve been burned before. Twice. 

So before we start storming Gamestop to place our pre-orders, let’s review five reasons not to get our hopes up for Fable 3. 

1. Do you really want to role play a violent clown? 

Not all games need to sport the conversational sophistication of a Bioware or Obsidian release. But in a game that includes dialogue, I expect to be able to participate using human, as opposed to primate, language. This is not the case in the Fable games. In the Fable games, only other characters get to talk. Your character gets to fart. And burp. And make heroic grunts. This is never explained, but I’m a creative guy, so I’ll try. Maybe you are Albion’s most violent clown. You make funny faces. You dance. You put ink on your face. You kill people. Not buying it?  Me neither.  It’s just stupid. 

2. This is an RPG, right? 

Look, it’s pretty clear by now that Molyneux’s heart isn’t in the role playing genre. The guy still wishes he was making Populous, or Black & White, but Microsoft demands Fable sequels instead. Molyneux is a sim guy, not an RPG guy, and for this reason, the focus of the Fable games always seems to be on simulating shit that no one cares about. Whether it’s simulating a medieval economy in Fable 2, or, in the case of Fable 3, simulating politics, this is not why I showed up in Albion. I just want to go on adventures with interesting characters — I don’t care how raising the price of bread in Bowerstone affects the price of pizza in Oakfield. If I was into that sort of game, I would be playing one of those games with the word “Tycoon” in the title. Peter, if you want to make a sim so badly, do us all a favor and make another Dungeon Keeper. At least those games were good! 

Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper -- A classic. Not an RPG, but a classic.

3. Albion has the depth of a paper plate. 

Albion just never feels like a real place to me. It feels small, and linear, and empty. To be fair, it’s probably no smaller or more linear than the explorable areas of the Mass Effect or Dragon Age games, but it feels that way. Town leads to forest (with only one path through it) leads to scenic cliff-side leads to another town leads to a demon door leads to another town. Is Albion just one long street? At least Final Fantasy XIII had pretty cutscenes. One of the joys of RPGs is exploration. Delving into strange and dangerous locations and finding terrible monsters and glittering treasures. Fable doesn’t deliver anything close. 

4. Do I need glasses? 

In a game where customizing your appearance is one of the supposedly big draws, why is it so hard to see myself? You need to do an awful lot of wrestling with the Xbox 360 pad’s analog sticks to try to get the camera to zoom in on your scarred, tattooed clown face — why bother buying clothing (which, unlike clothing in other RPGs, has no effect on your defense stats in Fable 2), or seeking out a barber or a traveling tattoo artist, when you’re never more than a blurry bunch of pixels? And while I’m on the subject, you can’t zoom in on the other characters either? Are you serious?  How am I supposed to choose a wife when I can’t tell if she’s a beautiful woman or a dog’s breakfast? (By way of contrast, by the time I finished Mass Effect 2, I had memorized every pore on Miranda’s face.)

And the map? It’s hidden in a Fable 2 menu and marginalized to postage stamp size. This is an RPG, Peter! RPG gamers need their maps like crackheads need their rocks. 

5. British humor is not funny. 

Okay. It’s better than Japanese humor. But that’s not saying much. For me, the “funny” bits in the Fable games fall flat. Even worse, these bad jokes clash with the epic aspirations of the series. How can I take a story seriously when the Assassin’s Guild is like a high school production of a Monty Python movie? They’re assassins! Imagine if the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion murdered people by playing a parody of Wheel of Fortune? Kinda breaks the mood.  Fable 3 looks to be no different.  What are those idiots wearing in the picture below?  It looks like George Washington, wearing a pirate hat and a hockey mask, is about to get slashed by a medieval pimp.  (Wait — that actually is kind of funny.)

A sword fight in Fable 3

Fable 3 fashion invades my nightmares.

Am I excited for Fable 3? Hell no. Not this time, Peter. I will … not … buy … Oh no. My credit card is out. What am I doing? No! No!!!!!!