Fable Musings

I don’t really know if these will actually be musings, mostly because I am not entirely certain that I know what a musing is. Fable II is awesome. Ridiculously so. I am enjoying playing this game more then any other game this year and possibly last year. This of course comes with a condition. I am comparing this only to other sandbox or role-playing games.

In the past couple years I have played Oblivion, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto Four and Saints Row. I have enjoyed each in its own way but have yet to find one that combines everything that I love from those games into one cohesive package. Fable II comes pretty close to doing this. It has a minor RPG element allowing you to level and increase your stats which is like Oblivion. Like GTA4 and Saints Row you are allowed to do whatever you want, killing whoever and whatever. This leads us to the Mass Effect good vs bad system. In Fable II you are able to become a demonic psychopath with very little work. Unfortunately like most games that have a good/evil track this has very little effect on the actual game play. NPCs act no different towards you when you are evil then they do when you are a saint. I guess technically they are more likely to run from you when you are evil and charge you more for equipment and the like, but this has little effect on you since you can kill people and take their stuff/gold/anything you want.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the game has been the real estate system. You can but pretty much every building in the game. Sure it costs a lot of money to buy the really nice buildings but you are able to adjust prices on stalls that you own as well as charge rents for the houses you buy which makes buying more property really easy. Another thing that the designers did right on this game is that you make money in game even when you are not playing. This means, since I own most of the world, I make about 21000 gold every five minutes in game. This number is reduced out of game until it is 1% of that every five minutes out of game. This is about 210 gold every five minutes or 60000 gold every day spent not playing the game.

This has led to the other problem with the game. I have money to burn, I can buy everything in the game without batting an eye. Like most RPGs you eventually reach the point in which you cannot be killed. In fact in this game I am un killable. I cannot be knocked out, hurt or anything. This takes a little bit of the worry out of the game. I am not worried for my character’s safety so I am not very dedicated to protecting him during combat, I just stand toe to toe with no strategy.

Spoiler: the ending is lame. I was so disappointed that I haven’t played any of the after finishing the main quest missions at all.

FALLOUT 3

Thanks to Jon I have just started playing Fallout 3. It takes every other RPG I have played and makes it cry. Not only is it post-apocalyptic in all it’s glory, but the story is engaging, it has great creatures and it has a fancy combat system.

There is nothing I like better then wondering around a wasteland, getting attacked by giant mole-rats and actually being afraid for my character’s life. It kicks some major butt. I don’t have much more to say right now since I just started but suffice to say it is my current favorite game.

I am not going to speak to the middle of the game because there is so much to it that you can’t even begin to sum it up into a few measly sentences. I will say that my favorite part of the game and also the worst part is that making a simple mistake and trusting someone you shouldn’t leads to you killing the entire planet. THE ENTIRE PLANET.

I think Sarah got a kick out of the look on my face when I beat it. I was appalled, I was upset, I was crying. What kind of game makes it so you play a basically good character, I never killed an innocent, never stole, only got hooked on one drug and killed all of the bad guys, and still destroy the world.

My tears still haven’t dried from the experience.

The next day I started a new character. Instead of going combat happy I went social skills happy. Talk about a much smoother game. I was able to talk my way into and out of any and all trouble.

I didn’t finish the game with that character, mostly because school started and I avoid engrossing games like the plague during school, but I imagine that he would have made it through the game with the minimum amount of killing and the maximum amount of awesome.