E3 08: Fable 2 Hands On Impressions
By: Sarkis Daglian
Posted: Jul 17, 2008
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If you’re looking for objectivity on this one you’ve come to the wrong place. If Peter Molyneux invited me to spend all of E3 at his presentations for the entire show, I would probably do it. Fable 2 is going to be a singular RPG experience on the Xbox 360.
I won’t spend time going through the combat which has been polished very well since last year or the seamless coop over Xbox live that was announced at the press briefing. Or the fact that the game is done and set to ship in October.
Did I mention, the combat and game play of Fable 2 as a fluid experience is second to none? Nothing like slicing away your enemy with a sword then seamlessly switching to your shotgun to blow him away with a simple press of the Y button. But all this compares little to having the best presenter in the industry show off his game.
The presentation began with the explanation of Hollywood actors showing up to Lionhead to rehearse the Fable 2 story aloud to made sure it passed a human ear test. Lionhead is going for a dramatic experience. The in game demo started about an hour into the story in Brightwood. When you look out and see the forest around you, you start to wonder if it’s all explorable and in Fable 2 it is. On display today was combat and other miscellaneous bells and whistles.
Combat for a low level character unfortunately is nothing more than button mashing. You still have seamless switching between weapons but they’re not as powerful. As you at the low level are able to string moves and even moves across weapon types your enemies drop orbs which account for experience. The more style you have, the bigger the corpse’s of your dead enemies produce. I noticed two things in this opening sequence: Bower Lake is beautiful and the fighting animations are liquid fluid.
However, there’s much more to the world of Fable 2 besides just combat. In a surprising twist, you get no gold for completing quests. You can receive items from NPCs using an expression mini game where you have to properly time your expression along a meter. You can get hints for who to talk to or what expressions to use by mini icons that appear above NPC’s heads such as a heart for love or a skull for fear. Or, you can actually get a legit or illegitimate job within the game.
Of course there’s a payoff in the choice. Work an honest job and make little money or become a henchmen and make an hourly wage. There are a variety of jobs in Fable 2 such as crook and assassin. You can also hold multiple jobs to be an honest blacksmith by day and use your own created swords to kill by night. There’s also a full criminal system within the game where you can go to jail for your misdeeds.
You can also do some cool things in Fable 2 like teach your dog new tricks, literally. By walking into a book store within the game you can buy a book to teach your dog to do all sorts of new activities. You can also be married in a variety of ways and when you assess an NPC their sexual orientation is a primary state. Here’s the kicker, say you have two wives in different towns and they find out and divorce you. It’s a massive penalty just like in real life because you lose your home in those towns and half of all your possessions and cash. Look on the bright side though, there’s no Fable 2 alimony.
In the final part of the demo we were taken back to the Hero’s Academy which if you remember the end to Fable 1 was left in ruins. 500 years later, it still is. But the visuals of the academy and the world overall are second to none.
The story appears very engaging and there’s a ton of things to do within the world. Fable 2 will be out in October with the arcade games to make in game money out approximately 6 weeks prior to that which makes it August/September according to Peter.
