Fable III Previews

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Written by Brother None on June 19th, 2010

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If Fable 2 was an RPG with action elements, then Fable 3 is an action game with RPG elements. It's much more streamlined and faster paced, which means less fannying about with menus and stat points. You won't be collecting experience in the traditional sense, and you won't be leveling up your skills and spells by purchasing upgrades. Your character will still develop based on how you choose to play, but you won't be sucking up different colored orbs anymore. Instead, experience comes from how many followers you've attracted. Some will join you after you complete quests for them, while others can be won over by interacting with them socially. You'll eventually gain somewhere around 300,000 followers, but you don't have to collect them one by one; some connections you make will bring large groups of people with them, or perhaps entire cities.

Curious of the weapon forging process, I asked what one should do if they start to develop a weapon they're not particularly in love with. Weapons, as it turns out, will not be set in stone, and will be completely malleable throughout the entire game. Don't like a sword? Change your behavior accordingly and see what happens (I can already imagine leagues of tables buried through huge FAQs). With community taking a greater focus in Fable 3, it should come as no surprise that you'll be able to swap weapons over Xbox Live. Your weapon is intrinsically linked to your Gamertag, and can be bought and sold as such. Hell, you can even buy back your own sword, should you so desire.

Two demo sequences were available on the show floor: a character customization demo, and a combat demo. The character customization demo was a simple affair, giving the player the opportunity to dress up the main character and play around with some of the expressions in the new game.

These elements were fairly boiler-plate Fable 3, which is not to say they were bad; there just didn't seem to be any major improvements in this areas. Other than a widened selection of character clothing and some tinkering with the expression options, the system applied in Fable 2 is continued mostly unchanged here. The noise on the show floor made it difficult to hear the reactions to expressions, so I may be missing out on some of the new elements, but it seems like players who were fans of farting, dancing, and picking out outfits to wear home to visit your family will be just as pleased this time around.

As the world changes, so does your character. The line between good and evil will be symbolised through not only your person, but your weapons as well. Walk on the corrupt side, and your sword will curl and drip with blood. Your weapon will also grow sharper and stronger as you level throughout the game, with your character becoming taller, stronger and bigger. And fear not, your dog won't miss out; you'll be able to buy skills for ol' pooch.

As the two descend deeper into the dungeon the danger ramps up and when they're separated Walter is picked off and blinded by the dark forces, leaving the hero to fight solo against a new breed of enemy. To our eyes they were some strange iron armoured birds, though those steeped in the history of the series might notice a nod to the first game's minions.

It goes one step further before there's any respite, throwing a fight with a sentinel an angel-winged boss character at the player. After their defeat, the blinded Walter must be lead by the hand out of the dungeon and into the light, and it's here that Fable III makes an aesthetic departure from its pastoral past. The desert wastes of Aurora stretch out before the player, and it's here that the demo comes to a close.

Two quests were presented in the Brightwall demo, which ranged from dressing in a chicken suit to lure chickens back to their cages, to helping a man arrange a divorce by seducing his wife. Both quests were fairly standard, but ended with morality choices. The chicken quest forced me to offer my opinion in what to do with the chickens; kill them or set them free. It was a hands-off decision, but my choices outcome to the morality of character was easy to understand. In the quest to seduce the wife, the end of the quest forced me to choose between the wife and the husband. I could kill the husband and stay with his wife or let the husband go to follow through with the divorce. I chose to kill the husband, but in my clumsiness with the sword found that there was a third option. I had accidently killed them both in one swift strike. It was here, that I discovered that the morality system in Fable III isn't so black and white this time.

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