Summary

Fable: The Lost
Chapters is the PC version of the Xbox-only release
of Fable. Fable is a role-playing adventure game (RPG), where you
can become a character of great evil or great good and anywhere in
between. Like a traditional RPG, Fable has a series of quests. The
difference is the twist on the quests, which can be for good or evil.
The choice of quest directly changes the alignment of the character
and the responses of the non-player character population to the hero
avatar of the game. You can play as a fighter, archer or magic user
or all three.

History

Peter Molyneux’s reputation as a world-class game designer
started in 1989 with the release of the immensely popular game hit
Populous from the Bullfrog game studio. Peter started Bullfrog in
1987 with Les Edgar and they both produced hit after hit. Peter has
been involved with the game design of Powermonger (1990, a personal
favorite), Syndicate (1993), Populous
II (1992), Magic Carpet (1994),
Theme Park (1994), Dungeon Keeper (1997), Theme
Hospital (1997),
Homeworld (1999), Black & White (2001), Republic:
The Revolution (2003), Panzers:
Phase One (2004), and Fable (2004).

In 1997 Peter left Bullfrog
and founded Lionhead Studios. Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios has produced a game not typical
of their previous endeavors. The closest game to this one was Bullfrog’s
Syndicate which involved a team of special operatives with unusual
drug induced powers. Most of Peter Molyneux’s Bullfrog or Lionhead
products have been huge successes. The financial success ensures
that we will see more of Peter’s work in the future.

Rumor has it that Peter is not averse to using his considerable
profits from previous games to finance salaries needed to produce
new games. There are six designers listed for this game: Peter Molyneux,
Dene Carter, Julian Glover, Richard Ham, Ben Huskins, and Josh Atkins.

The Xbox version of the
game was called Fable and was released a year ago. The new version
is purported to have “more quests,
more weapons, and more choices!” The “Expanded Content” allows
the player to “discover additional regions, storylines, and
side quests as well as new optional missions.” The “Tons
of New Choices” is described as “We’ve added more
spells to master, new armor and weapons, and even new monsters to
use them on!”

Another rumor is that the game for the Xbox was rushed due to production
schedule deadlines and the Xbox game was incomplete as a result.
In any case the new game has given the team time to add content to
the game. The new PC version of the game has more things to do than
the original Xbox edition. The designers plan to release an expanded
Xbox version of the Fable: The Lost Chapters soon.

Plot

Your town is raided by bandits and your father is killed. You believe
that your entire family is dead but as the plot unfolds your older
sister and your mother surface. Your family has a lineage of heroes
and great powers. Your family powers are envied by some of the most
powerful beings in the world who seek to dominate and imprison your
family and perhaps glean the source of your powers to possess them.

In the midst of the raping,
burning, pillaging, and murdering in your town of Oakvale, you
are transported away by a magic-using hero
who takes you to the Guild. The Guild of Heroes is a training school
and haven for heroes. You begin your training with “Whisper,” the
younger sister of an arena champion named “Thunder.”

Once your training is finished and you pass your final tests, you
are released into the world to find your way as an evil, good or
neutral character. You progress the plot by selecting good or evil
quests from the map room in the guild entrance. You can also find
quests by talking to the inhabitants of the land in towns and on
the roads of the land of Albion.

Your main goal is to find and rescue your mother from the evil Jack
of Blades who emerges as a rather nasty villain whether you are good
or evil. Along the way your sister helps with clues and guidance
to move you closer to your confrontation with Jack and the eventual
rescue of your mother.

Game Play

Each quest takes you deeper
and deeper into the lands. The total number of quests is not more
than 30 making the game much shorter
if you tackle it like most RPGs: one quest after another. The main
plotline or gold quests are less than fifteen which if taken alone
would make this the shortest RPG on record, except for Michael Crichton’s
Timeline game.

The depth of the game comes with the manipulation of your alignment
and other mini-games such as digging for treasure, fishing, opening
magic mouth doors, finding silver keys that open special chests,
wooing and marrying the females of the land, buying the most real
estate, treasure hunting, the pursuit of good or evil, gambling,
fishing and the fishing contest, chicken kicking, and the pursuit
of fame. You can change your appearance with clothes, armor, tattoos,
haircut, beard, mustache, and even control your weight by over eating,
under eating or eating in moderation. The replay ability comes from
these mini-games.

The manipulation of your alignment and fame changes the way the
populace of the towns and wilderness roads respond to you. You can
have everyone in town of the opposite sex fall in love with you,
applauding your deeds, cringing in fear, or simply ignoring your
presence. The game population was designed with a special artificial
intelligence to appropriately respond to your actions in the world.

The previews of the game did not adequately describe the depth of
play given by the various mini-games, which include many other choices
than originally thought. Part of the game play involves a complex
matrix of choices and resulting effects. All of the mini-games feed
into the main plot, the other mini-games, and the reactions of the
artificial intelligence of the populace.

Many people are playing
the game over and over again seeking these other non-plot related
goals (mini-games). One such internet challenge
is to marry and bed all the eligible females in the game as a good
character, an evil character or a neutral one. Another quest is to
get as many silver chest keys as possible and open all the chests,
which appears to be much easier on the Xbox version of the game,
than the PC one.

Interface

All of these elements are maintained on a character personality
status screen (F10) within the game. The personality screen keeps
track of scariness, attractiveness, alignment, renown, age, weight,
time spent in game, game days past, class, nickname, number and type
of creatures killed, favorite melee and ranged weapons, decapitations,
highest combat multiplier, favorite magic spell, uses of magic, spells
available, sexuality, number of spouses, people in love with you,
number of weddings, number of divorces, times widowed, times had
sex, favorite region, number of regions visited, number of completed
quests, total quest money acquired, core quests completed, optional
quests completed, boasts completed and taken, trophies acquired,
number of trophy uses, buildings owned, houses owned, shops owned,
buildings rented, rent collected, best chicken kick, biggest fish
entered into competition, six gambling game high scores, number of
times vomited, number of drinks consumed, drinker class, crimes reported,
total fines, total fines paid, number of times thrown out of town,
number of bribes give, highest amount of money ever had, total money
acquired, total money spent, experience acquired (total, general,
strength, will, skill), and total experience spent. So you can see
that the game has a number of complex parameters, and scoring of
the game is equally complex, possibly to the point of being ridiculous.

Inventory is infinite and categorized and sub-characterized into
clothes and armor, weapons, potions, gifts, groceries, and other.
A really nice feature is that you cannot buy weapons, clothes or
armor that you already have in your inventory preventing unnecessary
expensive purchases. You can only wear one suit of clothing at a
time but can have many suits of clothing. You can put on an entire
set of clothing with one mouse click, which is very convenient.

The map and teleport screens are a bit busy so that the entire map
of the land cannot be seen when teleporting or when looking at the
local map. One additional key press to put the larger map on the
screen after the local mini-map and then cycle to the map returning
to the upper right hand corner of the screen would have been a better
design.

As an afterthought (We are assuming this is an after thought since
this feature is not in the printed manual or hot-key templates.),
Lionhead decided to assign function keys to all the menu functions
making the game more playable without making everything mouse driven.
This undocumented feature is one of the best conveniences in the
game and should have been in the original design for the PC.

Save games are incremental
similar to the save games seen on most consoles. You can only save
your game at certain places in the game
(save points). One such save point is in the jail, where you have
to run a footrace, in your Austin Powers-style jockey shorts, with
other prisoners who can all run faster than you. The only way to
win is to get ahead early with a trick. You can slow them down by
bumping them (“pushing and shoving” is the hint). Bumping
makes the other prisoners in the race hesitate when they try to pass
you. If you win the race you are taken to the warden’s office
to listen to poetry and sneak to where you can read a combination
which you use on one of three books, which seem to change positions
each time you try. The books contain the key to your cell. Once the
cell is opened you must sneak into the guard room get the guard uniform
and your items and kill the guards to get to your mother and then
take her out of her cell. Your mother who is supposed to be a seasoned
veteran and one of the very few arena champions of all time is so
weak and vulnerable that if she is hit she will die. At the end of
a gauntlet of guards in several map areas you are presented with
a boss Kraken with eight arms. If during this sequence your mother
dies, you fail the mission and you are put back in your cell when
you restore the game. You are forced to play this sequence over and
over until you get it right.

This entire sequence is intolerable; PC like saves for any point
in the game would have avoided another situation of inane ad nauseum
repetition of arcade sequences, which seem to be enjoyed by the makers
of games and not by game players.

My continual plea is to stop divisive repetition. Making the game
player repeat inane arcade sequences does not increase game play.
Making the game player repeat inane arcade sequences just angers
those players who are required to play them over and over again to
get to the next plot area.

Magic Mouth Doors

Almost every location has a magic mouth door, or at least it seems
that way. Each door provides a verbal riddle, so you have to be quick
to write them down. (Whatever happened to a text box that remained
on the screen long enough for you to write hints down, or a log that
keeps track of the hints? Text boxes also help make games accessible
to people with hearing disabilities. Even with subtitles on the text
goes by very quickly.) One door requires that you eat fattening foods
so that you are disgustingly obese to open the door. Another door
requires that you do some great evil before it will pop open. Each
riddle has a solution, and solving them is a game in itself.

“Hot Coffee” Romance

The avatar can become attractive as mentioned previously and use
gifts, booze, manly arm pumping, heroic poses, flirting, the flamenco
dance, and sometimes a laugh to increase the size of the heart over
top of the females in the game. Once the heart swells to a maximum
size the character will begin to glow green so that the character
can interact with the female. Some female AI plays harder to get
than others and requires more work to get the female to green or
interaction status.

Once the object of your affection is green, the player can then
give the significant other a wedding ring turning the heart above
her head golden, and then purchase a house to live in which completes
the process. The player can then have his new spouse who now has
a golden ring follow him home. The spouse also becomes blue again,
loosing the green interactivity status. Once both are home another
round of gifts, booze, arm pumping, flirting, and heroic poses will
make the new bride green.

Once the player has the
bride “green light,” interacting
with the bride will prompt a yes or no question “would you
like to go to bed with your wife.” A blank screen, similar
to the shaking house screen in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (GTASA),
is overlaid with various giggles, “ohs” and “ahs,” and
actress-scripted comments such as “you are norty!” and “that
is pleasant.” Your new conquest will be recorded in the personality
screen.

In an attempt to be politically correct, a male player can court
and marry a male non-player character. There is even a dress you
can wear in the game if you want to try cross-dressing. I was unable
to determine if you could play the game as a female character, so
further comments on playing as a female are moot.

The game is rated Mature
(17+) and there are no real nude scenes or “hot coffee” like mini-games, which were removed from
the original GTASA and later reactivated by the “hot coffee
mod.” Just to re-emphasize, as with GTASA, this game is rated
Mature (17+) not recommended for children 16 years of age or younger.
Parents have a responsibility to monitor the game play of their children
and to prevent them from playing games that have a violent, profane
or sexual nature that they feel is offensive and inappropriate for
their children.

There is no pornography or sexual content in this game that in any
way exceeds that seen in movies or television. Responsible parents
make their own determinations as to what is good for their children
to play or watch. Responsible adults make their own determination
what is good for them to watch and play. This does not imply that
the game had anything offensive or inappropriate for 17+ year olds.
A rating system is a guideline, not a substitute for parental responsibility.

Fishing

Fishing starts when you
buy a fishing rod or you get one at the “fisher
creek” area in the game, just southwest of the heroes’ guild.
Selecting fishing from the F1 hot key slot when it appears starts
the fishing mini-game. Your character holds the rod but the real
mini-game is in the upper right hand corner of the monitor where
a white line appears with a hook on the left end. A mouse icon appears
which allows you to reel the fish or other item in, the fish moves
right to left. If your catch goes all the way right, you loose your
catch. If you reel your catch all the way left, by repeatedly pushing
the left mouse button, you will land your catch.

Pub Games

A chicken kicking contest that you can play in Oakvale is like shuffleboard;
the difference is you kick a chicken with your foot instead of pushing
a puck with a stick. The target area has boxes with points in them,
just like shuffleboard. You wager 50 gold and if you get over a certain
score you go home with that gold. The best score is 200 points for
200 gold. You can also win a chicken hat.

You can play coin golf,
shove ha’penny, guess the addition,
pairs, and card sorting for money in various places on the map, usually
in pubs in town. You play for gold and can wager and win or loose
more gold by playing pub games.

The Fame Game

Every time you complete a quest or kill a monster of a high enough
level you get more fame. The higher your fame the more people fall
in love with you or applaud or run from you depending upon alignment.
Not only does fame help you with other games and quests, the pursuit
of fame is a game in itself.

Graphics

The designers took extra time to optimize the graphics for the higher
graphics resolution and power of the PC and the higher output, high-end,
graphics expansion cards of NVIDIA and ATI. You can just look at
the two games side by side and see the difference. The PC version
is much more highly detailed.

The PC graphics engine takes advantage of up to 1600x1200x32 resolution,
higher (up to 100 Hz) refresh rate, anti-aliasing, texture detail,
mesh detail, shadow detail, effects detail, automatic screen aspect
ratio and vertical synchronization to produce a great picture. The
video can be set to lower resolution and refresh rate, and shut off
certain effects to accommodate machines with less video sophistication.

Rating

This review is based upon playing through the game several times
and checking out the different ways of playing the game.

The game had great innovative
design elements such as the multiple folder organization of the
inventory and the complex alignment structure.
Many modern games should incorporate these elements. “Since
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” we hope to see
game designers using these design elements in their game. The game
lacked the artificial intelligence sophistication of a Black & White.
The quest content was too little to support a traditional role playing
game. Game value was in the replaying the game over and over and
trying out different things. Frustration was heightened by incorporating
diverse elements that did not mesh in a smooth manner.

Final Grade: B+
(find out more about our
grading system)

System Requirements:

• Microsoft® Windows® XP
• PC with 1.4 GHz equivalent
  or higher processor
• 256 MB of system RAM
• 3 GB available hard
  disk space
• 32x speed or faster
  CD-ROM drive
• 64 MB shader capable
  video card required
• Sound card, speakers
  or headphones required for audio
• Microsoft Mouse or
  compatible pointing device