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A good four years or so ago, Peter Molyneux announced Project Ego: a revolutionary game concept that would change the way we perceived the RPG genre. This game would feature some of the deepest, most immersive gameplay ideas ever implemented into a game of any type, up to and including: real-time aging, the ability to have a player controlled sidekick, real-time competition between NPC heroes that vie to beat you to quests, branching storyline depending on the actions you take in the game, and so much more. Fable, the final product of what was once Project Ego, however, is a very different animal indeed. You won’t age in real-time, you don’t have a sidekick, there’s only one storyline, no matter your actions, and the game isn’t very revolutionary at all. Don’t get your pants in a twist quite yet though… just because Fable isn’t revolutionary doesn’t mean it’s not a damn fine game.

The first thing you have to do when entering the world of Fable is to throw out all your extremely high expectations that you have for the game, or you won’t enjoy yourself. You have to look away from what didn’t make it into the final game, and focus on what did. First: Fable doesn’t really play like and RPG, it plays more like an action/adventure game akin to the likes of a very advanced Zelda. Your character, whom which you can’t name save for their title (more on that later) starts life as a young boy, totally innocent to the world. This is, of course, until a horde of bandits raids your hometown of Oakvale and slaughters all it’s inhabitants, including (sadly) your father. Your mother and sister are taken captive for unknown reasons, and the village is left ablaze.

It is after the blaze that you run into Maze, a mysterious mage that saves you from the wreckage that was once your life. He takes you under his wing to have you trained as a hero at the Albion Heroes Guild. The Heroes Guild is the central hub for the lands brave warriors for hire. The Guild trains you to become one of their own, and walks you through the basics of gameplay: melee combat, archery, and will (Fables word for magic). The combat in Fable isn’t overly complex or deep, but its very gratifying. There are 2 attack buttons for melee combat, X for standard attacks, and B for a flourish attack (or, in lamens terms: unblockable attack). Your flourish attacks are dependant on landing a few good hits with your weapon, at which point your weapon will gain an aura around it, allowing you to perform a flourish attack, which is an unblockable attack that can hit multiple enemies, or just one, depending on the direction you’re pushing on the joystick at the time you hit the button. This is pretty much the basis of the melee combat system in Fable, but there’s more still!

Archery is pretty basic in Fable: pull out your bow, hold down the targeting button, pull the arrow back, release. You can also, if you choose, zoom in for precision aiming, though you can, and likely will, go through the entire game without having to do so. Archery is best served for a long ranged jump on the enemy, taking out one or two enemies before they get a chance to attack you. Usually, when in enclosed spaces, or facing a large group of enemies, it’s best to switch to your melee weapon, since it’s quicker and more efficient.

The last and final skill is Will: the ability to cast and use magic spells to your advantage, which, like any game, takes up energy. Fable features a pretty vast array of spells to cast, varying from simple lightning casting, a Jedi-style ‘force push’, a bullet time style spell, ghost swords that will aid you in combat, and so many more. The list is pretty extensive, and there are some pretty sweet ones to boot. You can also combine some of the spells for awesome results. I won’t divulge exactly what they are, or what they do, but believe me, you’ll have a blast figuring them all out.

One of Fables biggest faults lay in its targeting system. No matter what sort of combat you choose to make use of, the targeting system is shoddy. You’ll often find yourself struggling with the system to stop aiming at innocent bystanders while you attack a group of monsters, or to aim at the proper monster. At least a couple times, you’ll end up killing an innocent or two, which will lead to accidental evil points, which, if you’re trying to be a good guy, doesn’t make you very happy.

Fables big RPG elements lay within the games character development process. Unlike so many other RPGs that force you to choose what kind of character you will be before you even step foot within the world, Fable gives you the freedom to choose for yourself as you play. When you kill an enemy (or innocent victim, if that’s your thing) it will drop an experience orb. When picked up, these orbs will stack up and allow you to use them to advance your character. On top of the experience gained from these orbs, you will gain experience every time you do something tied into one of the 3 main areas of development: strength (melee combat), skill (thievery, archery) or will (magic). For example, if you use your melee weapon a lot, you will gain an abundance of strength experience, which you can only use to develop strength-based skills like physique, which will make you do more melee damage, health, with extends your lifebar, or toughness, which lowers your damage taken when you are hit. If you use your bow and arrow/crossbow a lot, or sneak around and steal a lot, you will gain skill experience, which will allow you to develop traits like accuracy, which lets you do more damage with your bow, speed, which makes you attack quicker, or pull your bow string faster, or guile, which is the art of theft. Utilizing a lot of magic will earn you will experience, which you can use to obtain and upgrade any of the games numerous spells.

The character development system is pretty deep, and you’ll have a blast creating YOUR character. Wherein most games you control ‘a’ character, Fable puts you in the role of your character, the one you create to your specifications. Which brings me to the next very cool element of Fable: character customization.

Fable is all about choice. You get a say in nearly every aspect of your character, from his hairstyle, to his clothing, to his physique, to his sexual preference. Throughout Fable, you’ll come across traveling barbers and merchants. Barbers, as you may have guessed, will be able to help you gain your choice of a multitude of hairstyles, some of which will make people react differently to you. Some of the styles you can get will add a scariness modifier, which makes you more intimidating to NPC characters, or some of them will have attractiveness modifiers, which make you more appealing to the fairer sex, which can help you further into gaining a hand in marriage, but I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself. Aside from the traveling barbers all over Albion, you’ll be able to find some barber shops littered throughout the games towns. There really isn’t any difference as to which one you choose to use, but it’s good to know they are never too far away for a trim.

Alongside the traveling barbers is usually a merchant or two. These merchants can sell any means of items to you, depending on the merchant. A lot of the traveling merchants, though, sell clothing. While what you wear has the biggest impact on how well you can take a beating in battle, your style also affects how the population of Albion perceives your character. For example: wearing a jet-black assassins uniform won’t exactly make you come off as prince charming, while running amuck in your tightie whities (yes, you actually can) won’t make people cower in fear at the sight of you. Much like the hairstyles in the game, your choice of clothing can often have modifiers for scariness or attractiveness. People looking to help sway NPC reactions should take note of what can do what.

If all that wasn’t enough though, you can also deck your Hero out with some tattoos. Yup, if you so desire, you can take your bad self to go get some ink at a local merchant, or one of the many traveling artists you’ll come across. Again, tattoos, like clothing and hair, come with modifiers. This is important to remember when playing around with the idea of slapping a picture on your body. If you’re trying to be Albion’s savior, you’re not going to want a tattoo of Skorn (Albion’s version of the devil) painted on your back, right? So you have to watch out for things like that.

While we’re on the topic of choices, and the perception NPCs have of your character, we should probably talk about the most evident feature of Fable: the moral battle between good and evil. Some games, like KOTOR have touched on the idea of flirting with the darker side of your characters persona, but none have captured the concept as well as Fable has. From the very second you get control of your character as a boy, to the very final act you will perform in the game before the credits roll, you have choices to make that will ultimately cement your place in Albion as Savior or Ruthless Conqueror. Early on in the game, you can do things like take a bribe to keep quiet about an affair, smash boxes you promise to keep watch over, or help a bully beat the crap out of an innocent little boy. These choices are open to you if you decide to be a little brat and stir up trouble. If your desire is the route of the true and pure, you can rat out the adulterer to his wife, resist the urge to smash boxes, and beat the crap out of the bully in the boys defense. Choices like these, and many, many more, are open to you throughout all of Fable, beginning to end. The end result is all in how you played up to that point.

Playing as the valiant hero will eventually earn you a halo, butterflies will follow you, and a glowing aura, while commiting evil deeds and generally being as mean as humanly possible will earn you glowing red eyes, pale skin, horns, and a congregation of flies. Your appearance isn’t the only thing that changes when you commit acts of benevolence or wickedness. As you grow to be more noble, NPCs will cheer, and clap for you when they see you near, women will throw themselves at you, and you will be the envy of all the land. On the other hand, if you are a cold-hearted, malevolent being, NPCs will cower in fear from you, run away when the see you coming, while guards will make it well known that they have their eye on you, making sure you don’t break any laws.

In the case that you do break a law, may you be good or evil, a guard will eventually find you, and charge you with whatever crime you have committed (and believe me, there’s plenty to commit if you want to). At this time, you will be given a choice: pay your fine, and be excused, or refuse to pay. If you pay your fine, your gold is taken accordingly, and you are forgiven for your fault. However, if you refuse to pay the fee, the guard will attack you. Your first reaction after this, will surely be to strike back and kill him. This leads to more guards, and more guards, and more guards. If you aren’t careful, you’ll eventually end up with a fine of tremendous magnitude equal to that of a kings ransom. This, of course, is not a good idea, since every guard in the game will be out for your blood. Therefore, it’s usually best to just pay your fine and be done with it.

When you aren’t out saving Albion from all manner of terror, your hero can chill out at any of the towns and interact with the locals, purchase items, play small side games, get drunk out of his face and puke all over the tavern, kick chickens… the list is endless. NPC interaction is a fun aspect of the game, albeit not a very deep one. You interact with NPC characters with expressions. Expressions are bound to the D-Pad, or are selectable from a list on-screen. There are general expressions, like ‘fart’, ‘giggle’, and‘follow’, that are always available to you, while others like ‘flirt’, ‘scary laugh’, ‘sexy hero pose’ and ‘sneer’ are earned after your hero becomes popular in Albion, or if they get to be so evil, or good. Expressions, while being your key to interaction with NPCs, also act as the key to earning a bride, or husband. Flirting up the locals with some of your more appealing expressions will lead to a heart over their head that grows the more they like you. Once someone likes you enough that their heart is big, and gold, you can ask them to marry you. You can purchase wedding rings from merchants all around Albion. After you’re married, you can keep your significant other happy by buying she or he gifts, and being nice to them. Of course, if your heart is blacker than coal, you can also choose to bash the hell out of them in a public street just for the fun of it. After enough beatings though, you’re looking at divorce.

Of course, if you’re married, or even if you aren’t, you’re going to need a place to live, right? Well, Fable has you covered. Throughout the towns of Fable, there are houses available for purchase if you choose to. Houses range in price depending on their size, and once you purchase it, you can choose to upgrade it with nicer interior items, which is all handled by simply interacting with a sign outside the front of the house. You will know when a house is up for sale by the obvious ‘for sale’ sign outside. If you find that the houses readily available to you aren’t to your very specific tastes, you can walk around until you find one you like, walk in, and slaughter the poor bastard that lives there. Once the owner of a house (or even store) is dead, that building becomes available for purchase. If you’re the ruthless type, this is a great way to make money, because Fable also allows you to rent out any house you buy for a profit.

A dozen or so paragraphs ago, I made mention of the Heroes Guild. This Guild, as I said, is the hub for all heroic activity in Albion. This is where you train as a young lad, and this is where you will find and accept quests as a grown hero. There are plenty of quests to come across in Fable, and they come in two types: mandatory and optional. Optional quests will help you gain experience, gold, and renown, which makes you more popular in Albion, and mandatory quests progress the story forward. Questing is important to any hero who wishes to become renowned in the world, and such, you’ll want to make sure you get your fair share in. Quests can range anywhere from ‘protect this’ to ‘kill that’ to ‘find this’, pretty standard stuff, but well done. If you choose, once you take a quest, you can additionally take a ‘boast’, which is basically gloating that you can do the quest under certain conditions, like using only your fists, or doing the quest in nothing but your underwear, along with more quest specific things which I won’t divulge here.

While you progress through Fable, you’ll come across some of the most unique, and truly well designed creatures to be seen on Xbox to date. While there are only a small number of different enemy types (slightly less than ten), what’s there is enough to keep you interested. My personal favorite, the Balverine, is like the Fable equivalent to a werewolf, only way cooler. You’ll also come across Earth and Rock Trolls, which are the biggest enemies (save boss’) in the game. It’s pretty nice to see that Fable strays away from the cookie cutter enemy types seen in most games these days.

Throughout your time in Albion, you’ll surely quickly come to notice ‘demon doors’ which you will only be able to pass through under certain conditions. Every door has a specification that must be met before you are allowed to enter beyond. Some doors require you to be very good, or very evil, some require you to do something evil in front of them, be married, get fat, or any of a thousand different things. It’s nearly impossible to open all the doors in one game, so you’ll be spending plenty of time trying to open them all within numerous files. Why open them? You might be asking… well, the demon doors hold within them some of Albion’s most powerful weapons and armors, which, as any hero worth his salt knows, is good to have. The demon doors often have a strange sense of humor when speaking (yes, speaking) to you about their demands, and are generally amusing to hear, even if you don’t meet the requirements to open them.

Albion itself it a pretty fairly-sized place; The game is no where in the same proportion of say, Morrowind, but still offers a nice array of places to go and see. The areas are generally pretty linear in design, and modestly sized, likely to cut down on load times and allow for Fables gorgeous graphics engine to do its thing. In your time with Fable, you’ll be traversing through graveyards, fields, towns, creepy wooded areas, and more as you make your way to the top of the heroic food chain, and to your ultimate destiny. Every area in Albion is full of the most intricate of details. Gravel roads, swaying trees, reactive puddles all bring Albion to life no matter where you may be at any given time. NPC characters are all very well done as well, though there aren’t many models for them. This leads to seeing the same person in pretty much every town, or walking on every road. While not a huge deal, it would have been nice to see a bit more variety in the games inhabitants.

Likewise, there are only a handful of voices to accompany the NPCs, which is lesser an issue than the lack of models, but still pretty tiresome, albeit very well voiced. While reacting with characters using expressions, you only get a handful of responses, which can grow very tiresome after a very short while. Things like getting a wife can grow tiresome after your 10,000th ‘flirt’ or ‘sexy hero pose’ with the same 2 responses each time you use it. This is rather discouraging since some of your funnest moments in Fable will include some form of NPC interaction. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is almost perfect. Big wig composer Danny Elfman penned and composed the opening theme for Fable, and the rest of the score, while untouched by his hand, seems very much in the same vein as something he would have written. No matter what situation you find yourself in during Fable, the musical score always accompanies the action perfectly.

In the end, Fable is not the game it was once conceived to be, but that’s fine by me, since we still got a hell of a game out of the deal. While the core game is only about 10 hours long straight through, there are more than enough distractions in Albion to keep you busy for at least three times that, if not more, depending on how you play. Once you finish the main story, and the credits role, you’ll be able to take control of your character in Albion once more, but to little end. Once you beat the game, there really isn’t much else to do except kill more creatures, make money and interact with NPCs, which, while it’s awesome to be able to control your character after the main game is over, there isn’t much to do.

Fable is the kind of game that while you’re playing, you’re already thinking about what kind of character you’ll make the next time you play the game. Only a mere few hours into the game, you’ll already know very well that you’re in for another round after the first one is through. While the combat may not be super deep, the targeting system is less than stellar, and the game is pretty short, there is a truck load of fun to be had in your time with Fable. If you can get past what could have been, and enjoy what actually is, you’ll be playing this one for quite some time.