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Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

theguardian.com

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Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#71

Post by slater »

greazy wrote: post #70
Aeolun wrote: post #2

Huh, what this whole article actually led me to find is that the winner of Curiosity never actually got any price. The price they were supposed to get was never even developed. I guess that’s some way to get out of your contractual agreements. Wonder how that would have gone for them if the winner wasn’t a clueless 18 year old.

Peter Molyneux is the king of bullshit. He's back again with another God game. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/08/peter-molyneux-is-bac... He's a dreamer who won't shut up. Nearly everything that comes out of his mouth is bullshit hype.

So would you say you're a fan of Peter?

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#72

Post by Frummy »

pmarreck wrote: post #64

My favorite aspect of Fable and one that few other games have touched for some reason is the fact that many quests asked you to choose between a moral solution and a moneymaking solution, which meant basically that only wealthy people could afford to be good. At the same time it let you invest in businesses and collect profits while you played the rest of the game, so that you could make some passive income basically…

And also if I recall correctly you could raise the rent past all reasonable limits and collect evil points and degrade the health of the cities. But that was probably Fable 3 and/or 2. In 3, you also got to play as king in the court, after usurping the evil brother, and had to make evil decisions if you were poor enough, to prepare for that darkness thing in the desert. Contrasting with the authoritarian rule of the brother who was sort of just preparing for the bigger threat no one knew about.

That’s a pretty funny progression, from quests and arbitrage between traders in Fable 1, to a bigger focus on being a landlord than earlier in fable 2, then just straight up being a king in fable 3. Industralism progressing in the background of the three as well to full on childworker factories in fable 3 with Reaver if i recall correctly being the tycoon.

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#73

Post by hombre_fatal »

I'm amazed when I see positive coverage of / nostalgia for Fable 1 for Xbox.

I was 15 at the time at the peak of Xbox vs Playstation vs Gamecube message board arguments on forums like NeoGAF.

And Molyneux's bullshit wasn't making it easy for us online Xbox crusaders. He made crazy claims like how it was an open world game with an advanced social system where you build relationships with people and can plant a seed and watch the tree grow if you were to wait next to it for many ingame hours. The lead up and hype made it part of gaming forum discourse for years!

Finally, Fable comes out and it's this short, easy, linear, arcadey, simplistic game. The super complicated reputation system was just a basic "you got +10 good/bad points" alignment system. "People remember your actions" just meant `if player.didThingX then cheer()`.

After all that, it was a weekend rental at best. I think I beat it in 8 hours. It was so disappointing.

After having not thought of Fable in 20 years, it's kinda funny to see it covered without the "gravity" of the waves it made in the Great Online Message Board Console Faction Wars. Not that the context was worth preserving nor that nobody should be allowed to enjoy it. It's funny because it was such a big deal to many of us forum crusaders.

But I guess that's part of getting old.

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#75

Post by jakubmazanec »

mrob wrote: post #68
thom wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Baldur's Gate is as much to blame for this - that was really the origin of these high-touch, narrative-driven, asset-heavy games, especially with voice acting. It completely demolished the keyword based interactions of the Ultima and Wizardry games, almost completely removed wilderness exploration as an option in RPGs, and turned them into very curated experiences. As much fun as Morrowind was, it was still a…

It's more Baldur's Gate 2 that's to blame. The original still has plenty of wilderness exploration, and while the main quest is linear, there's no real urgency to following it. You need to pay attention to figure out what to do next, and it's possible to go the wrong way and wander into encounters much too difficult for your character. The NPCs are lightly characterized archetypes with minimal dialogue and no romance…

But BG2 is actually a bigger game IMO - yes, in BG1 there are a lot of areas where you can just wander and explore, enjoy the game atmosphere; there are only enemies, sometimes a simple quest, or a cave, etc. - but in BG2 while there are fewer areas, there usually have a lot of content, so you spend more game time in them.

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#76

Post by tracerbulletx »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #73

I'm amazed when I see positive coverage of / nostalgia for Fable 1 for Xbox. I was 15 at the time at the peak of Xbox vs Playstation vs Gamecube message board arguments on forums like NeoGAF. And Molyneux's bullshit wasn't making it easy for us online Xbox crusaders. He made crazy claims like how it was an open world game with an advanced social system where you build relationships with people and can plant a seed an…

Eh, the fact it didn't live up to the promises was certaintly a massive part of the narrative, but I have a different memory. I remember most people finding it to be a masterpiece immediately. It got a 9.3 from IGN back when that still meant something after all. A lot of people don't care about length if what you get is as densely charming, well written, and well art designed as Fable.

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#77

Post by rahkiin »

amatecha wrote: post #42
Aeolun wrote: post #2

Huh, what this whole article actually led me to find is that the winner of Curiosity never actually got any price. The price they were supposed to get was never even developed. I guess that’s some way to get out of your contractual agreements. Wonder how that would have gone for them if the winner wasn’t a clueless 18 year old.

(for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity%3A_What's_Inside_the... )

Ugh the wiki says ‘1% of all revenue of Godus’ and then Peter remarks it ‘never made a profit’. Bait and switch there

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#78

Post by BigParm »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #69
mmastrac wrote: post #4

I vaguely recall playing Fable on the Xbox and being satisfied, though not blown away by it. It was certainly one of the most fleshed-out house-buying/marriage-allowing games I recall playing (not the first, though) and probably paved the way for more complete systems. I love Peter Molyneux and he's built amazing things, but he is certainly a hype factory.

I remember the house buying as being very basic. You could buy a house, fill it with items, sell the house, steal all the items from it, and buy it back for less, as many times as you like. I also remember being rather frustrated I couldn’t pull the sword out of the stone by becoming max good, to I gave up and became max evil, much to the disappointment of my character’s wife.

That was based on strength, nothing to do with good/evil lol.

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#79

Post by VoodooJuJu »

I'm so glad I didn't hang around in video game forums & news sites and got to experience Fable in its pristine form.

It's a beautiful game with a great environmental quality to it, much like classic World of Warcraft and Skyrim. Simply roaming around, taking in the visuals, the music, and the ambience was an enjoyable experience in itself, without even doing the quests or progressing the story.

Whenever I read about it now, it's just a bunch of people complaining about how overhyped it was and how their own expectations prevented them from enjoying the game. Sad!

Re: Fable at 20: a uniquely British video game with a complex legacy

#80

Post by underlipton »

Terr_ wrote: post #54
narism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes into what happens: https://fable.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Lodge

Found a video, it's a minor jump-scare when the player enters the front door. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IdL49GA3-Dk

I feel like that's a bit reductive. The jump-scare is only effective because of the expectations set by previous experience. As the wiki article mentions, it at first seems like a winter version of https://fable.fandom.com/wiki/Serenity_Farm. Once the illusion is broken and you begin to leave the area, you're forced to pass by and see how all of the cozy elements that built your initial impression were transformed. And then, of course, nothing is explained; you're just left to ponder what happened. Describing it, or even seeing it divorced from some amount of contextualizing gameplay, doesn't quite convey the quale of the moment. It sobered us up in a way that I can best compare to the feeling of walking out of the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki.

I appreciate when games are confident enough to play these sorts of tricks with players. I'm also reminded of the Pitioss Ruins in Final Fantasy XV, a secret dungeon that also messes with player expectations and emotions by using your understanding of the game's mechanics against you, while also using the environment as a monumental storytelling device (in this case, your journey through the ruins serving as a metaphor for the game world's lore).

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