| Fable III | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Lionhead Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Designer(s) | Peter Molyneux, Josh Atkins |
| Composer(s) | Russell Shaw |
| Series | Fable |
| Platform(s) | Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows |
| Release date(s) | Xbox 360
|
| Genre(s) | Action RPG, sandbox, life simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, cooperative |
| Rating(s) | |
| Media/distribution | DVD-DL, download |
Fable III is the third video game in the Fable series of action role-playing games (RPG). The game was developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story focuses on the player character's struggle to overthrow the King of Albion by forming alliances and building support for a revolution. After a successful revolt, the player becomes the monarch and is tasked with attempting to defend Albion from a great evil. The game was released on 26 October 2010 for Xbox 360 and on May 17 2011 for PC via both Games for Windows and Steam. The PC version includes a Hardcore mode and 3D functionality not found in the Xbox 360 version.[5] The game includes the voice talents of Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Michael Fassbender, Zoe Wanamaker, Bernard Hill and John Cleese.
Contents |
Fable III is set 50 years after the events of Fable II. The game is set on the fictional continent of Albion, which is entering the age of industry. The King, the hero/player character of Fable II, has died and left the Kingdom of Albion to his son, Logan (voiced by Michael Fassbender), the player's older brother. Some NPCs allude to how Logan has "changed" in the four years of his rule, becoming excessively tyrannical. The player begins the game investigating rumours that Logan had a citizen of Albion executed, causing a group of citizens to protest. After the player character intervenes, Logan presents the player with the first of the game's numerous moral choices. The player is tasked with deciding whether the group of protesters are executed, or whether the player's love-interest is executed instead. Following the decision, the player escapes Logan's castle along with their mentor, Sir Walter Beck (Bernard Hill) and their butler, Jasper (John Cleese).
The player then, at the behest of Theresa (Zoe Wanamaker), the enigmatic Seeress of the Spire, starts to gather allies to aid in a revolution against Logan. The allies they gain include Sabine (Ben Kingsley), the leader of the "Dwellers," a nomadic community that lives in the mountains; Major Swift and Ben Finn (Simon Pegg) from the Royal Army in command of a remote fort; Page (Naomie Harris), the leader of the "Bowerstone Resistance"; and Kalin, the leader of Aurora, a desert land across the ocean. When attempting to gain the support of Kalin, the hero learns that a creature called the "Crawler, ruler of the Darkness," the forces of the Darkness which have already devastated Aurora, intends to exterminate all life in the Kingdom of Albion. It is revealed that Logan's reason for treating his people so harshly is to raise money for an army to defend against the Crawler.
The player then leads a coup d'état and becomes the King/Queen, at which point the player is given the choice to keep the promises made to those who aided in the revolution at great expense to the treasury, or betray those promises in order to raise money for the defense of Albion through industrialization and using natural resources. The player can also utilize the treasury money for personal purposes, or transfer personal money from the player's own supply to the treasury.
If the player chooses to be a "great" ruler, the treasury will be vastly drained and the only way the player can offset this is by transferring several million gold from their personal funds to the treasury. With 6,500,000 gold in the treasury at the time of the Crawler attack, the player will be able to fully fund an army that can successfully defend the entire kingdom. With no money in the treasury and thus no army to defend Albion, the civilian casualties inflicted by the Crawler's attack amount to 6,500,000. If this happens, the world will be largely absent of civilians upon completion of the main quest. If the player passes lots of time by sleeping, working and increasing the royal treasure income significantly, plebeians will start to return. If the player was a benevolent leader but lost large sums of civilians, many citizens who return will still praise the player. However if the player raises money to fund the army through exploitation or tom-foolery, then they will be hated regardless of whether the kingdom was saved. The player can also take on the extreme evil morph. Also, it is possible to both raise funds for an army and be a benevolent ruler(in this case the player must donate his/her personal gold to the treasury until the debt is paid and the amount of 6,500,000 gold is put together), this results in the player monarch being loved by the entire kingdom and no civilian casualties.
At the beginning of the Gamescon announcement of Fable III, Molyneux stated that the game was taking a different theme compared to the others as he believes the third game in a series to be hard to do correctly. "If all the rules have been established and all you offer is a new story and a handful of locations, people will start to lose interest."[6]
In an interview with OXM UK, he (Molyneux) spoke about how Fable was at risk of becoming a generic game where the player started off underpowered and weak but slowly got more powerful after they met the bad guy. After the player killed the bad guy, the credits would roll. Believing that is the formula that applies to many games, he asked why games "end at potentially the most exciting bit?" It was this that formed the basis of Fable III, where the player can overthrow the tyrant before becoming ruler themselves. He stated that it was when the player was ruler that the consequences of "who you are going to be, are you going to be good or evil, cruel or kind" stopped applying only to the player, but affected the entire country.[6]
Molyneux hinted that there may be drawbacks to leaving your castle too often to investigate crimes or fight wars, asking
| “ | Are you going to be a king that is the equivalent to Picard in Star Trek? Quite honestly, if the captain of the ship was going down to planets and getting involved in battles I'd be worried because I think he should stay in his chair. But if he chooses to go down and get involved, that's the freedom we give you as a king. | ” |
Talking about the inspiration for Fable III, Molyneux said "if in Fable I the inspiration was folklore and in Fable II the inspiration was King Arthur and Robin Hood, then Fable III is definitely the rebels and monarchs – both modern-day and historic."[6]
| “ | What's so interesting about that is you look at it and you realise that "Gee, these people who ruled our land up until very recently were actually very creative with their power and abused it and used it in many evil ways." Take Henry VIII, let's just go through some of the things this guy did. Rather than say, "Hey, this marriage is not working out so well," he just decided to completely kill off his wives. Not only did he do that, but to do the deed he just got rid of religion and replaced it with a new one. He also took five percent of the entire tax income – the equivalent of billions of pounds in today's world – and spent it on his personal wine cellar, while many people within the country were suffering from starvation and plague. This guy definitely wasn't that nice a guy, and if you write that down he sounds really evil. Does history paint him as being really evil? Not really, it paints him as being a bit of a jolly chap who was quite infatuated with six women. That's fascinating inspiration and we really want to give you the power to be that colourful when you're a ruler. | ” |
There are also new takes on traditional Fable concepts such as morphing, where the player's weapon change depending on what they do, and their alignment. If the Hero kills large numbers of skeletons his/her weapon will appear to be made of bones, whereas if they go around killing innocent people their weapon will begin to drip with blood. The weapon will also level throughout the game, making it sharper and more deadly. Another example is the "Extreme Emote" system. For example, if someone angers the Hero, they can show them their true nature, with either demonic or angelic wings sprouting out of their back.
Lionhead associate sound producer Georg Backer announced at the Develop conference in Brighton that Fable III would contain over 47 hours of recorded speech. This rises from 36 hours of recorded speech in Fable II. Backer said that the AI is the "biggest chunk of dialogue." Backer also said that the over 47 hours include "gossip lines" in which the "AI talk to you about what is happening in the game." The "30 or 40" different types of AI characters each have "about 2,000 lines." Three writers wrote the 460,000 recorded words in the game and it took more than 80 actors to voice them.[7] Many lines are ones that previously appeared in Fable II, so how many hours of vocal track are original recordings is unknown.
Various downloadable content has been announced by Microsoft for release on November 23, ranging from dyes and extra hairstyles to new quests, much of which is actually just locked content that is already included on the game disk but requires players to pay for it separately to unlock it.[8][9]
The PC version will have all the Limited Collector's Edition content and 9/14 DLC content released on the Xbox 360 version included for free. The last five items are not included and must be purchased.
An exclusive mini-game called Fable Coin Golf developed by Ideaworks Game Studios, in close conjunction with Lionhead, was released for Windows Phone 7 on 30 March 2011. Played from an overhead perspective, your quest is to rid the land of evil and conquer each area by getting your Hero Puck into the Pillar of Light in as few shots as possible. Gold earned on the phone can be transferred to your Fable III game on Xbox 360 or PC and completion of each of the 3 chapters unlocks a unique weapon in Fable III.[10]
Shortly before Gamescom 2009, images of famous revolutionaries and quotations appeared on Lionhead's website, causing discussion about what the next game Lionhead was developing. During the press conference of Gamescom, where Fable 3 was announced by Peter Molyneux, Lionhead had decorated the walls with medieval shields and banners.[6]
Lionhead announced in August 2010 that there would be a companion game to Fable 3.[11] Peter Molyneux was quick to say that it would not be like Pub Games for Fable 2 and hinted that it would utilise a mobile-phone. The official reveal was made on September 28, 2010 for a smart-phone application titled "Kingmaker"[12] The game consists of players marking real-world locations for the two factions in the game, the Royals or the Rebels. The game earns players power-ups and gold to use in Fable 3. The game was announced for use in the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden.
The Xbox 360 standard and limited edition was released on the October 26, 2010, with the PC version was released in May 2011. Xbox games that were preordered (both standard and limited editions) in participating stores, were given a code for a special weapon, a code for tattoos, and a code to transfer the villager created from the Villager Maker to the game on the release date.[13]
Lionhead has also announced they will release a Fable 3 limited edition wireless controller for Xbox 360 on October 5, 2010.[17] The controller will come with a code to unlock a unique tattoo for the game. There is currently no other way to unlock this unique tattoo as of yet.
A book titled Fable: The Balverine Order was released in North America and Europe in October 2010.[18] The book came with a code for a unique weapon called the Shardborne sword for Fable 3.[19]
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 80.52% (Xbox 360)[20] 72.19% (PC)[21] |
| Metacritic | 80/100 (Xbox 360)[22] 75/100 (PC)[23] |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| 1UP.com | B+[24] |
| Computer and Video Games | 9.2/10[25] |
| Edge | 7/10 [26] |
| Eurogamer | 8/10[27] |
| Game Informer | 9/10[28] |
| GameSpot | 7.5/10 (Xbox 360)[29] 7/10 (PC)[30] |
| GameTrailers | 8.9/10[31] |
| IGN | 8.5/10 (Xbox 360)[32] 6/10 (PC)[33] |
| X-Play | [34] |
| Joystiq | [35] |
| Hardcore Gamer | 5/5[36] |
Upon release, Fable III was met with generally positive reception on the Xbox 360. GameRankings indicated an average score of 80.49%. IGN gave the Xbox 360 version an 8.5/10, praising the final segment of the game involving your role as king or queen, but criticizing its slow beginning and a lack of innovation. GameSpot gave the game a 7.5/10.
The PC version of Fable III received more mixed reviews. IGN gave Fable III (PC) a 6/10, calling it "a royal disappointment" with "interface not well tailored to the PC platform", "uneven story and pacing", "dull combat" and "repetitive quests".[33] Gamespot gave it a score of 7/10 while Ausgamers awarded it a 7.2/10.[37]
GameZone gave the Fable 3 PC DLC a 2/10, stating "The two questlines both show promise, but neither maximizes on its potential. Fable III wasn’t great, but it deserves far better than this. Unless you think you’ll enjoy several hours of extremely repetitive combat, these are two DLCs to avoid."[38]
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