Review: Fable III Game

Fable III - Brightwall Village

If you were a fan of Fable and Fable II, then today has probably long been circled on your calendar, as Fable III finally launched, just over a year since it was first announced.

Now, full disclosure here, I’m not a big gamer overall, but when I was given a copy of Fable II, I fell in love immediately. The Fable series is characterised by a mix of fighting, solving puzzles, finding hidden objects and deciding if you want to be good or evil. The gameplay is of the style that leaves you begging for “just five more minutes”, and suddenly you look at the clock and bedtime was 3 hours ago!

In Fable III, you pick up 50 years after Fable II, as the brother (or sister) of the current king, Logan. I say current as the first part of the game focuses on your path to becoming King (or Queen) of Albion - and as usual you will need to run all over the kingdom, completing quests and gathering items - and allies - before you can take the throne.

Fable III Female Hero Fires Rifle

If you’ve played previous iterations of Fable then the overall gameplay will seem quite familiar to you, with a few small alterations. Gone is the 2D menu system, in favour of “The Sanctuary”, just the press of a button away. From here you can manage all aspects of your hero, his equipment, money, weapons, statistics and more. All the key game elements that made the previous games great are still in play, including levelling up, trading and becoming a property magnate. Happily, you’ll only find one gargoyle in this game, but you might want to watch out for the gnomes!

Where Fable III differs from previous games in the franchise is what happens after you become King. Now we don’t like spoilers here at Culch.ie, so I won’t be telling you what happens, but needless to say the game doesn’t finish at that point, you still have many more decisions to make and lands to explore.

To whet your appetite, here’s the opening credits of the game - will the chicken survive?

So far, I’ve been playing this game for about a week, and I’m still loving it - to the extent that the hubbie & I are fighting over the gamepad (and we’re quite glad that we’ve finally got co-op play as of today!). Games that are hyped as much as this one has been don’t always live up to it, but Fable III is a ground-breaking RPG that will keep you coming back for more.