A Fable...

Oh, what a game. This is a jem as far as I'm conserned. I'm so happy with it that I thought I'd post about it. We all know how impressed I was with BF2 and why, but this game is a wholy different matter. Remenicent of the Neverwinter days.

In the game you start out as a child who looses everything to a raid on his town. In the wake of this raid you are found by a man from the Hero's Guild. The hero's guild being a place in this world that gathers those with special talents and strong wills. Over the years your character grows up in front of you while honeing his talents and learning the ropes. Eventually you are of an age where they can't do much for you so you go out into the world. Which is pretty large considering the many continents in the game. You can run around sight seeing or take different quests which result in experience, money, and reputation. Over time both experience and reputation points get applied to your character. Reputation points go to how others perceive and react towards you. A reputation for doing good things makes people friendly and excited around you while a rep for doing bad things makes people mouthy and even run away. Pretty neat. The experiance points, gained through fighting and completeing quests, get applied to you characters abilities. The game allows you to build up the character in three basic ways with several sub-sections to each. Strength, Skill, and Will. Will being the substitute for magic in the game. Over time the more you enhance your abiities in strength the more your character shows the change. In the begining you are a scrawny kid but by the midpoint you are like a pro wrestler. Each way you develop the guy will start to show off over time.

Another neat thing is that the world in-game is consistant and ever moving, just like ours. Or pretty close for a game. It keeps track of time and must have a ton of scripts running just for it. For instance I came to a town one time but it was night time so all the shops were closed, which is what I had come to do. Normally, you can go to the local tavern/inn and grab a few hours sleep for a price to spend the time untill morning, but this time the beds were all taken. So I found a nice spot and stood there watching the sun come up, literaly. I watched it move up over the mountains and then across the sky as the patroling gaurds stopped at their street lamps and put them out. The sky changed all the colors of a real sunrise or sunset. It was an strange feeling and pretty neat too. As I looked around town the doors to the shops started to open up one at a time and a man or woman would say they were now open for business or greet the patroling gaurdsmen. The same thing happens in the evening. Everyting shuts down slowly. Street lamps are lit, children are called home for the evening, and people start to close shops or homes.

I even bought a couple of houses and renovated them. Nice places in nice towns. At the moment they are rented out to two families of those towns but I can kick them out if my character ever decides to get hitched. Currently their are a ton of AI ladies that want to get married and I even have a wedding ring in my pocket but I don't have time to tend to a lady while on so many quests. I hear if I don't keep up relations she'll get angry and divorce me so I can't do the husband thing any more than take the office of mayor which was offered to me earlier. Wild stuff.

These types of game are rare in that they meet so many needs and wants within the genre of RPG/Adventure games. All of this is not necessarily new to the gaming world I think, but it is neat to see such a reactionary game. Not one that is fixed and rigid or one that is solely focused on the main plot. This kind of game manages to include all aspects of gaming within its genre. The wanderer, the roleplayer, the random guy, the casual gamer, the focused main plot guy, the powergamer, etc. Everyone can find something in this game.

Well, it's not all good actually. The game is not all that stable and tends to crash out every couple hours. On occasion it dosen't start up on the first try either. Oh, and I had to reformat to get it to install correctly. Minor problems. (^_^)