Two women plead for you to release them from their imprisonment inside a crude wooden cage. You notice that there is a lock and to this lock there must be a key. You could go catch up to the guard that just strolled off, “silence” him and recover the key. You could save these lovely ladies. However, what do they have to offer you? The answer is Renown; the chance to stand in the crowd and hear applause and watch school children pretending to be the famous “Gladiator”, freer of the people, the light to the dark. That is what they offer in return for being freed. That’s what Fable is about. The choice to mold your character into an epic God that sports a halo and smites evil, or becomes a rank, vile, horn-donning villain that could care less about the meaningless, weak peasants that surround him. You could also go down the middle of the road, forming a Han Solo-esque character that will help when possible, but still has an eye for making (read: stealing) any profits out of the deal. 

Of course, this is deep into your hero-dom, where you’ve already established yourself as a doer of good. Where did it all start? With a childhood tragedy, of course. All good heroes have a childhood tragedy to motivate them. Where would Batman be today without the death of his parents? Exactly. Your hero gets the most cliché of childhood tragedies. Let’s set the story up. You start off as a young boy who’s forgotten to get his sister a present for her birthday. Your father isn’t going to bail you out this time, but he promises to give you a gold coin for every good deed you do. You need 3 of these coins to buy your sister’s gift. Now, you could, of course, go around taking hush-money from a cheating husband and committing other evil deeds for the fun of it. I did experiment with this simply because I was new, but from the very beginning you are adding Renown points as well as good or evil points (which count towards your alignment). Renown is precisely what it sounds like. The more Renown you get, the more your hero will be recognized around town. Your hero can gain Renown through killing evil creatures or doing good/evil deeds. Now, back to the boy. Since I had done some mischievous things while obtaining my money, I instantly heard villagers talking to each other about how unruly I was. I decided from now on I would pursue the path of good. Everyone respects you when you’ve saved them from a giant wasp queen. Once I had bought the gift and given it to my sister, bandits began raiding the sleepy village of Oakvale. A cut scene and a “follow me” trip later and I found out that my future hero had lost his father to a raider’s blade and his mother and sister had been taken.  

Did I forget to mention the kind wizard that saved my hero and brought him to the Hero’s Guild? The Guild is where all young promising students become heroes. You’ll learn basic controls here and how the Guild works. It’s a great tutorial and eases you into the excellent control scheme. You’ll meet a peer and rival named Whisper during your training. This would have been a great story element, but it feels like the potential for Whisper becoming a lifelong friend and/or enemy was barely touched. You’ll meet up with her on maybe two other occasions, but I never developed any more feelings towards her than any other character in the game. Nevertheless, once you’re done goofing around the Guild you can hop right into graduation and becoming a hero.

Since I was now an official hero, I decided to follow the path of good as closely as possible. The gameplay is a mixture of Black & White, Zelda, and some KOTOR. It’s a lot more than that, but you have a picture now, right? Subtract the frequent puzzles found in the Zelda titles, but keep the real-time action. Fable isn’t just a hodge-podge, though. It makes a name for itself and allows the player to play the way he or she wants (although the main character’s gender is male and unchangeable, sorry ladies). Your character gains experience just like in an RPG, but these experience points don’t instantly add to your overall “level” (of which, there is none). Instead, depending on whether you hack down the enemy with a giant axe (melee), dispatch your foes from afar with a bow or crossbow (skill), or pump arcs of lightning into their bodies (magic) you will get a certain number of experience points in one of those three areas. In addition, there are “general” experience points that fall into a larger pool of experience points than any other of the three. Thus, the more you use one type of weapon (any kind of magic, in magic’s case), the more experience points are allotted to that pool. You can return to the Hero Guild (by simply teleporting from anywhere, which is a nice touch) and spend those experience points on either upping your strength, health, toughness, accuracy with ranged weapons, speed, magic power, and a plethora of other areas. As you level up, your hero’s skills begin to reflect how you play and he becomes more solid and strong in that area of fighting. 

Strategy can be implemented, particularly if you focus on an archer-type character. The game also allows you to play the game as you wish. Want to grind through the enemies, smashing them with a gigantic hammer while ignoring any type of blocking strategy? Go ahead, just pump up your toughness and health to be able to take the extra damage. It all depends on how you want to play. For battle, Lionhead has implemented a targeting system similar to the more recent Zelda titles. Holding the left trigger will target the nearest enemy or citizen you are facing. This makes battle very intuitive and doesn’t require a lot of hacking around to hit your enemy. The right trigger serves as your “magic” options and changes the normally melee-based buttons into three different spells. You can cycle through these spells if you have more than three. It can be a little cumbersome when you’re on the last bit of life and are force to cycle to a new set of spells just to heal yourself. The game makes up for this by automatically dropping a potion or food item into the quick item/emotion selection that the D-pad serves as. Overall, Lionhead has smoothed over the battle controls and made it fairly easy to jump into the fray as well as dodge attacks.

If you are heavily damaged your hero will gain a scar on whatever body part that was hit. Fable’s strong point is this customization that happens through your experiences as well as through player intervention. Tattoos, dark and bright armor, and hairstyles serve as the materials with which you can paint your hero. Not only do these affect scariness, alignment, and overall look, but the way your alignment as well as your battle style affect his look. Of course, being good generates a halo and butterflies around your hero. Evil heroes will find horns sprouting and a red glow surrounding them. A melee-based hero will become bulking, a skill-based hero lithe and tall, and a magic-user’s hair turns white. All of these elements mix to form your unique hero. Sure, your friend may have the same power mustache as you do, but he won’t have the same deep gashes in his back that prove your experience as a fighter. You might even find it fun to purchase a dress set and a Mohawk just to get reactions out of the villagers