Hobbe-killing! Bandit,
banshee and beetle-busting! Troll-tackling and treasure-tracking!
Chicken-kicking! An entire countryside to save from the perils of
unbending evil! Oh, and more marriage proposals than Elizabeth Taylor!

Fable
2 on XBOX 360 is the long-awaited successor to the original
system’s well-lauded title and is a whimsical and light-hearted alternative
to the grim, heavy-handed sagas abounding in other games. I mean,
where else can you find a talking stone wall that simply wants you
to kick a hen into its piehole before it gives you a prize?

Fun and often head-shakingly
odd quests await you in the fantasy world (of imprecise timeline)
of Albion, where your management of strength, skill and will (magic)
abilities and your faithful dog combine to either banish evil from
the land or become the most feared being Albion has ever known.

Eradicate a throng of
hobbes infesting some yokel’s basement and earn renown, making you
a welcome sight in town. Give a dancing child a toy horse and adoration
from him and his giddy, clapping mother are yours for the taking.
Then stride over and scream at a nearby proprietor via the “expressions
wheel,” steal a handful of his wares, and watch as corruption
points slowly affect how others perceive you and even alter your physical
appearance.

Become
the ultimate goody-two-shoes and expect to be surrounded by townspeople
upon your arrival, all yipping with glee and many with heart icons
over their heads — regardless of your gender or theirs — indicating
their love.

Immerse yourself in dastardly
deeds like selling unwitting fools into slavery, engaging in paid
assassinations or simply randomly slaughtering passersby — after
turning the safety mode off on said wheel — and watch others flee
in terror from your path.

Pillar of righteousness
or the ultimate face of fear, though, eating too many meat pies will
make you fat. Only crunching celery (at least for me) got my waistline
back under control, despite having trekked upwards of 200 miles between
missions.

You earn experience primarily
by killing foes either with melee implements like swords or hammers,
ranged weapons like the blunderbuss or pistol, or a plethora of magic
attacks including electricity, force push and inferno.

Felling
enemies, human or otherwise, leaves the ground littered with orbs
of various colors for you to collect. If you had employed your swashbuckling
skills for the job, most orbs will be blue; firearm kills yield yellow
orbs and magic leaves red ones. Green, “general” experience
orbs act as a supplement to use in combination with the other orb
pools. I REALLY recommend every player become adept in will/magic
tactics; there’s something giddy about utilizing “force push”
to send an enemy or two off the edge of cliff with the flick of a
wrist. Multiplier tallies can, and nearly often are due to the game’s
low difficulty, be earned for exemplary flourishes and enemy dispatches.

You start the game with
a given nickname, but can earn or buy others. I finished with what
I’m sure many did, “Executioner,” after trying “Salad
Dodger,” “Chicken Chaser” and “Lionheart”
on for size.

What’s
fantastic about all this is that it can be tackled completely notwithstanding
the main story arc, which involves avenging the death of your sister
with the help of the mysterious clan called the Heroes Guild. You
start the tale as an ordinary child (after picking a gender) about
eight years old who, with your sister Rose, embark on several fetch
quests in order to buy a strange music box from a traveling salesman/showman.

Without giving too much
away, an evil sorcerer named Lucien invites you to his tower and shoots
both of you dead and steals the music box. You are rescued by a cloaked
woman named Theresa who tells you “it’s not your time yet.”
From then on you awaken as a young adult and the yarn of revenge,
centered around the search for two essential comrades also thwarted
by Lucien’s nefarious deeds, commences.

Main
story missions open up new sections of Albion and the game enables
a “fast-travel” from place to place, complete with a glowing
trail leading you to your next objective. Load times between locations
border on excruciating. However, once you’re there, you’ll never tire
of the storybook flora and fauna that greet your eyes as you saunter
about. Portions of the game have an almost dreamlike quality; whether
you’re topside running through a field of buttercups at the height
of day or hacking goblins in a murky cave hundreds of feet below the
surface, Fable 2 bursts with a color palette that
is sure to please virtually anyone. One of my favorite scenes was
behind one of the nine “Demon Doors” scattered about Albion,
a wintry Norman Rockwellesque segment where the music was softly soothing
and every footstep sounded precisely like snow crunching underfoot
as I searched for my prize.

It’s been noted by various
print and online sources that video games have generally become easier
over the past several years, and Fable 2 could well be Exhibit A.
Few if any enemies pose a serious threat even in great numbers. You
could pop several bandits with a high-powered rifle, and their buddies
will still come at you with swords drawn. There is also no dormancy
or “charging up” period between spells, so by all means
cast “Chaos” over and over if you like and see what madness
develops. I did enjoy hearing a bandit scream “And he owed my
money!” after seeing his friend fall to your sword, one of the
many humorous touches Peter Molyneaux and Lionhead Studios employs
in his brainchild.

You
need currency to buy properties, potions, gifts and whatnot and this,
too, is ludicrously simple. Jobs abound, including chopping wood,
crafting swords and a bartending task that upon higher levels had
me earning over $500 per pint! That’s without tip! I only wish my
real bartending job was that lucrative.

There are also pub games
to play to earn (or in my case, lose) cash, and I shudder to think
how many real-time hours I wasted playing Fortune’s Tower. At least
I don’t have to genuinely worry about having my kneecaps broken, but
in the game, the law will hunt you down for indebtedness if you go
too long owing money from pub game losses.

And then we come to Fable
2‘s mode of communicating with non-player characters. Oh,
the silly “expressions wheel” where you never utter a word
but instead growl, show off trophies, dance, blow kisses, give the
middle finger and fart to either endear people to you – and perhaps
get a gift – or scare them into giving you a discount on their goods.
Use the L1 and Y buttons to discover what expressions, gifts and/or
locations that “Lindsay the Whore” enjoys and she may fall
in love with you.

Although
I relished my time in Fable 2 — really, I did —
the half-baked marriage crap nearly killed the game for me.

I did a bunch of good deeds,
establishing my renown in Bowerstone Market and environs. I spied
a potential spouse (it wasn’t tough, having at one time 233 people
in love with me when played as a “pure” character) wooed
her with a ring found in one of the treasure chests liberally sprinkled
across the land, and got her hand in marriage. So far, so good. I
selected one of the many houses I’d bought as our family home and
then a cut-scene blessing our wedlock played. We then went upstairs
to consummate the marriage and were followed upstairs by four others,
men and women alike, all muttering variations of “Doesn’t my
finger look sad without a ring!” People, I JUST GOT MARRIED.
I’M TRYING TO GET LAID! A LITTLE PRIVACY?!!

I
know an orgy sounds great to many of you, but you get my drift. I
also can’t count how many times I’d come home after an arduous quest
to find people, including the town crier, in my dining room. I know
no game is perfect, but come on. Maybe the “building a family”
element will be given the full treatment in the third itineration.
Having hookers hit on you in Bloodstone was a neat touch, though,
except for the creepy cross-dressing dwarf.

I guess I’ll finish a
scrutiny of Molyneaux and company’s labor of love with a list much
like Virginia (I think) the Travelling Trader lists her wares. Punishment
and praise (and at least one spoiler) follow!

• I loved the dog. I’ve
  played a lot of games involving a sidekick, many of them canine
  (Haunting
  Ground, Fallout
  3, The Bard’s
  Tale, Resident
  Evil 4 for a minute or two) and this guy animated perfectly.
  He alerts you to “dig spots” to find treasure, figures
  into your expressions (including urinating on people), growls to
  alert you of danger, hides his tail between his legs when he’s frightened
  and assists in combat. He’s even required to open one of the Demon
  Doors!
• Likewise, the game wouldn’t
  be complete without the bard regaling me and others with tales of
  my adventures, or the statues you can have erected in your honor
  after you stand for them. I chuckled every time I saw the one with
  my “Kiss My Ass” pose in Bloodstone.
• Though
  the Expression Wheel is ridiculous in sum, I would like to live
  in a world where “Vulgar Hip Thrust” could alone make
  someone fall in love with me. Or where a $750 fine could absolve
  me of a robbery/triple homicide. Um, not that I’d ever do such thing.
• I thought it was very
  accommodating and open-minded that one side mission involved finding
  a lover for a farmer’s son, only to discover that the lad doesn’t
  want a woman but a man as his partner and doesn’t know how to tell
  his father. As the player you can also engage in same-sex liaisons
  if that’s your bag.
• But what’s up with the
  treasure chests all over the place? They’re right out in the open
  and still contain wealth despite the throngs of bandits, highwaymen
  and creatures running around! It’s enough to boggle the mind! That
  doesn’t mention how often your character will be under attack, which
  I’m sure is to enable you to gain experience but is at times downright
  irritating when all I want to do is poke around the countryside.

Back
to the main story! One mission in “The Spire,” toward the
middle of the main game, trades the whimsical bright colors of the
rest of the game for drab grays and blacks and all the guards look
alike and all the prisoners do, too. It’s frustrating in a modern
game to see this and thankfully this portion of the game is brief.

The endgame moral dilemma
involving three difficult choices — sacrifice, love or wealth —
will last throughout the rest of the player’s time in the game and
is particularly noteworthy not least due to it determining who remains
in the world with you. I had to have my dog back (oh dear, another
spoiler…).

Last but not least, this
will be the only time I’ll be heading down into “Reaver’s Rear
Passage.” Period.