Fable Legends Previews, Interviews and Footage
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We have rounded up a fair amount of Fable Legends previews, interviews and gameplay footage, courtesy of the just-concluded Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3.
GameSpot has two write-ups, one on villains and one on heroes (also has a stage demo with interview):
As we prepared to play, developers from Lionhead were quick to point out that health does not regenerate in Fable Legends, and there were no healers on hand. Fable Legends is a war of attrition: the villain tries to separate heroes from each other using traps and other methods of map control, while heroes play their chosen roles with as much skill as possible. If the team of heroes falls before it defeats the final boss, the villain wins. And the world doesn't need more successful villains as far as I'm concerned.
Alas, my fellow heroes and I were not successful in holding off this particular villain's evil. The four of us moved through the forest corridors towards our mission goal, fighting off creatures as they appeared, navigating around gates that would halt us in our tracks, and unveiling invisible enemies that we happened upon. This is where my character, Winter, came in: by spraying the area with snow, I could uncover the invisible creature. I could also throw spikes of ice, though I could never tell if my projectiles were connecting with the enemy, and could also summon a great snowstorm to envelop the surrounding area, slowing and damaging approaching foes. I felt like my support abilities were valuable, but I didn't find much joy in performing them. The game played fine, but the combat and locomotion in Fable games have never been very snappy. That's fine in a game in which combat is not the main focus. In Fable Legends, however, the lack of surrounding context made battles feel rather stale. I'm not sure that these mechanics can carry a combat-focused dungeon crawler like this.
IGN:
The fact is, I have not been excited about Fable Legends and its new direction since its reveal at Gamescom last August, and after playing it as both the Villain and a Hero at E3, I am still apathetic towards it. I'm not sure if this is the new direction for the entire franchise, or if Lionhead intends to ever make a proper Fable 4. Regardless, as a longtime Fable fan, I came away disappointed from my first hands-on session with the game.
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I began as the Villain, coached by a Lionhead developer. Controls are gamepad-friendly; unit types are color-coded, so the grunts are blue (X button), the ranged fighters are yellow (Y button), the artillery unit is red (B button), and Puck, the special invisible-turning stealth unit, is green (A button). All you have to do to order one of them to a spot or to attack is press the corresponding button on the spot you want; there's no need to click and select them first. It's a nice control scheme, and works quite well
. Once I got the hang of it, I did enjoy setting traps, raining artillery bombs on Heroes trying to revive their fallen teammates, and slamming gates shut on them to split up their group. And when I managed to get the Heroes' collective health down to 1% and then defeat them with my ogre at the end of the "dungeon," I felt triumphant.
. I had decidedly less fun as a Hero, especially knowing all of the tricks the Villain was going to try to pull on our group. With the tables turned, I used Winter (a cold-magic spellcaster) and her powers to slow down, freeze, and shatter the Villain's foes. My teammates, meanwhile three other classes all with their own skills worked on whittling down our opposition in their own way, grinding towards the end (which we never got to, as the Villain defeated us). I felt no motivation to make it to the end, though, and the gameplay was the standard dungeon-crawling fare. To drop a really old Xbox reference, playing the Heroes in Fable Legends felt a bit like playing Brute Force with a Fable skin on it.
The story of Fable Legends is set hundreds of years in the past, ditching the more modern setting of Fable 3 to return to a time when legends were being formed. Players will begin their journey in Bright Lodge, the hub city where they will be able to take on side quests, interact with NPS, change their equipment, get new gear, etc.
As you make your way through the campaign, you can choose to tackle each mission as either the heroes or the villain. The intro cinematic and results will alter depending on which side you choose to play. And, just like the heroes, your villain persona can level up, too. Earn new abilities, tougher troops and even bring creatures into zones they would not typically inhabit just to throw the heroes some extra curveballs.
As the heroes, our goal was to overcome the villain's traps and monsters, which they were able to trigger whenever they liked. Our villain was especially deceptive, triggering a wooden gate that could be destroyed and, as soon as we gathered around to destroy the gate, they dropped a round of artillery on the same spot.
Your critters are far weaker than the Heroes they're up against, as you'd expect, but waves of reinforcements arrive at intervals. "When they get in combat with heroes, the creatures will die," Lionhead's Lewis Brundish told us. "But your goal as a villain isn't to keep the creatures alive it's to damage the heroes. Down in the bottom left there, those icons represent the heroes' health and you're chipping away at it."
Traps such as spiked walls can also be placed either to hurt the Heroes or separate them from one another, making it harder to revive a fallen friendly. "A dead hero is just fantastic bait," Brundish noted. "You can leave dead heroes and lie in wait near them, because reviving takes time." Left 4 Dead veterans may have the edge here, I suspect.
Surprisingly, the controls map very well to the Xbox One controller. Your melee monsters are on the X, your archers are on Y and artillery is on B. You move a cursor and can give commands to attack or move with tapping those buttons once. Holding the right trigger is how you unlock special moves on a cooldown, so the melee guys can berserk, for example, if you hold right trigger and tap the X button. You can also manipulate objects in the arena with the right bumper, and it's pretty fun to raise a gate, say, to cordon heroes off from each other. I'm not going to say the controller is better than mouse and keyboard would be for these RTS-like commands, but it was effective nonetheless
The villain mode is definitely the more complex way to play Fable Legends and it will appeal to players who enjoy the Dungeon Keeper and StarCraft combination of gameplay. It is a lot to take in and manage, mentally, but that also means it can be a bit more rewarding than your normal hack and slash game.
One of my first concerns was if Fable Legends would still offer a classic single player narrative campaign or if the focus of the game was set on this always cooperative experience. The developer I spoke to answered my concerned question with (Yes, and yes). Fable Legends will still offer a rich narrative story but does it with the four hero characters still in your single player experience via AI controlled heroes. I wasn't able to find out if you could still do things like own a house, fall in love, have kids, and the likes, but I'm not entirely sure how all that would pan out if you have four human players in your party.
I played as Rook, a Skill user who expertly wielded a crossbow and was one of the primary damage dealers of my assigned group. I grew worried, however, when he was described as a character that fans of shooters would enjoy. Now, I love shooters. But when I played the Fable series in the past, the last thing I wanted to do was spend my entire experience with my view focused down some crosshairs. And that's exactly what happened here. I wasn't able to enjoy the lush green gardens that I stomped through as I mowed down trolls of varying difficulties. I wasn't worried about looking for loot. I didn't care about protecting my allies or saving villagers. The world of Albion that I'd grown to love was focused into a very tiny corridor with a singular goal in mind, taking away the fun choices I used to have in combat as I slipped between the three power sets.
The hero players must tackle the challenges and enemies that the villains place throughout the quest. The four playable heroes are Winter and Rook, the melee-based characters as well as Sterling and Inga who focus on ranged attacks. Similar to how the villain can earn points, so too can the heroes, which can later be used to upgrade various skills and abilities.
Despite being designed around a five player experience, Fable Legends can also be played alone or with smaller groups. In the case that a full five players has not been met for a quest, the game's AI jumps in and fills the slot, ensuring that a full party is always available. This design is a nice touch, especially when considering the importance of keeping balanced teams when the action begins. Those who do plan to play alone will be happy to hear that, from what was shown, the AI-controlled characters are more than capable of handling themselves.
Playing as a hero, combat itself is fairly simple, but works well. Each character has a regular attack and a defensive action, which vary from hero to hero, as well as a selection of special abilities. I played as the tank, Inga, who can block attacks with her massive shield and taunt foes to force them to attack her for a few seconds regardless of what commands the villain player is issuing. With my taunt up, it was easier for the person beside me playing Sterling to build up combo points without getting hit and deal big damage, or for Rook and Winter to fire off their ranged attacks from a safe distance. It's more or less your standard class-based RPG breakdown, but the fact that there's another player pulling the strings of the monsters certainly makes things more interesting.
I didn't get to play as the villain, so I can't offer too much insight into how well everything worked in practice. But, at least from my heroic perspective, everything seemed to balance rather well. The villain has a limited resource with which to place obstacles, preventing them from just overloading the map, and the tactical focus means that strategy (as well as communication, as far as heroes go), is the deciding factor. Sadly, my team of would-be saviours of the world fell to the nefarious journalist on the other side of the room, but it was a close game that came down to his final monster.
Finally, GameTrailers has some eyes-on impressions in video form.
