Playing Fable Anniversary. It’s been sitting there some years and I’ve some time off so thought let’s get through the back catalogue.
Fable was, at the time of its release in the early 00s, my first proper introduction to action RPGs, as I would play Morrowind later and the JRPGs I’d played felt like a completely different genre to me. At the time it captivated me, I thought the world beguiling, layered and with the fairytale charm with an underbelly of the sinister.
Going back to it after all these years, I’ve a few thoughts:
- The art style is a touch goofy albeit due to graphical limitations of the time and the touch ups in Anniversary make some characters look worse.
- The story is pretty fun.
- It’s very content-light, even by RPG standards of the day.
- Combat is ropey. It’s almost like a prehistoric ancestor of what The Witcher’s combat would become.
- I still love the feel of the world and find it unique in gaming that I know of, there’s so much potential and I hope Playground Games do the sequel justice, whenever it finally drops.
- Going to guns and the Industrial Revolution in the sequels was a terrible idea. It killed some of the charm and the pre-industrial shire-like rural England is a much better setting than late 19th century for the series.
