What New Fable Needs To Correct Fable 3’s Failures

What elements the newest Fable game should keep from its predecessors, and what it should change to correct the franchise’s past mistakes.

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As the signature franchise of Lionhead Studios, Fable, Fable II, and Fable III were open-world RPGs famed for their colorful fairytale fantasy settings and irreverently British sense of humor, while also being infamous for their sometimes awkward implementation of ambitious open-world and moral choice mechanics devised by Peter Molyneaux. With the recent announcement of a new Fable game under development by Playground Games, long-time fans are hoping this newest installment will retain the charming atmosphere of the first three titles while adding more nuances to the moral choices and core storylines of the game.

The three main games of the Fable franchise weren’t without their flaws. Developers of the first Fable game were forced to cut out certain open-world features fans were excited for. Fable II managed to implement many of these missing open-world features, but had a tendency to railroad players down certain story routes with cutscenes and limited arrays of choices. The plot-twist in the middle of Fable III was meant to be a parable about moral ambiguities of leadership, but was presented in a way that felt contrived at times.

Despite all this, the Fable trilogy was an RPG experience that many gamers fondly recall to this very day. The game’s worlds were colorful, the side-quests were hilarious, and players were able to get up to all sort of crazy shenanigans absent from other RPGs of the time – deeds ranging from baking pies, buying property, getting married, and performing music to farting in public and teaching their pet dog new tricks. Ideally, the new Fable game under development by Playground Games will embrace the open-world freedom of choice that Fable III and its predecessors had, while refining the gameplay mechanics that restricted this freedom in sometimes jarring ways.

Fable’s Moral Choices Should Be About Cultivating Heroic or Villainous Reputations

Deciding what’s right and what’s wrong is a tricky issue, one that philosophers and pundits have struggled with for ages without reaching a single, decisive solution. The games of the Fable trilogy tried to implement a black-and-white system of morality straight out of fairy-tales, where good deeds inspire admiration in NPCs and give your character an angelic appearance, while bad deeds inspire fear and give your character a devilish appearance. The issue with the black-and-white moral choices in the Fable games, particularly in Fable III, was that they failed to properly depict the motivations a good character might have for making a bad decision, and vice versa.

If Playground Games wishes to add more moral complexity to the morality of their Fable game, a good fix would be to make moral choices less of an objective value within the game and more a matter of the reputation a player’s character has among the people of Albion. This would empower players to role-play characters with more complex personas, such as a grim hero who commits controversial acts for the greater good, or a devilish scoundrel who hides their wickedness behind handsome looks and a noble facade…

Fable’s Main Story Needs To Stick The Landing

The side-quests of the Fable trilogy frequently had a wicked sense of humor in the tradition of Monty Python, with vividly-drawn NPCs voiced by famous British actors ranging from John Cleese to Stephen Fry. The main plot of the Fable games, in contrast, tried too hard to be serious and grim, featuring well-worn plot devices such as doomed hometowns and loved ones murdered by the Villain right in front of the Hero’s eyes. The climactic confrontations with said Villains also had a tendency to be anti-climactic, resolved through cutscenes or battles that lacked a certain gravitas.

With luck, Playground’s upcoming Fable game will have a core storyline constructed with greater care, featuring villains who are threatening and dramatic without needing to kick metaphorical/literal dogs, paired with a climactic confrontation that rewards players for all the choices they’ve made and the challenges they’ve overcome to get there.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/fable-4-game-changes-xbox-fable3-morality-lionhead/