When we last interviewed Peter Molyneux, we got him to sign a piece of paper stating, “I promise Fable III will be great.” It was all in the name of fun; a bit of mugging for the camera we assumed the architect of the most broadly comic franchise in videogames would appreciate. But as in all jokes there was a grain of truth in there somewhere, a flash of recognition that, in addition to his status as one of the industry’s great designers, Molyneux is also our most famous breaker of promises. However, he seemed confident that Fable III wouldn’t follow that trend. “This time,” he told us, “I don’t think I’ve over-sold it.”
In hindsight, that piece of paper is the source of a feeling of gnawing guilt. As we finally decided to give up on Albion and end our adventure, that cute stunt began to look an awful lot like an ambush – one more example of Peter Molyneux’s mouth writing cheques that his games never quite cash. That was never the intention. We wrote that statement because we honestly believed it would be true: Fable was good, Fable II was better, and all that we had seen and heard about Fable III seemed so exciting and so eminently graspable that we could conceive of no good reason why this wouldn’t be the point where the franchise finally attained greatness.
This probably sounds far more negative than it actually is, and it’s important to remember the weight of expectation that hangs upon games like Fable III, with or without the help of Molyneux’s eternal optimism. Both its greatest strength and most telling weakness is that all of the areas where the game truly excels are exactly what we expect from the series and from Lionhead as a studio, while its great leaps forward mostly fall flat and upset the balance of the whole.
Albion remains the very best reason to stay with the series, and it is more varied and beautifully imagined here than ever before. Many years have passed since the events of Fable II, and Albion is now under the rule of King Logan, one of its protagonist’s two sons. Lucien’s cruel policies have turned Bowerstone into a smog-choked industrial dystopia, where the people starve and the children are worked like slaves. Elsewhere, Albion’s indigenous communities are being abused and subjugated. You play as Logan’s younger brother, who, after a particularly difficult choice at the very start of the game, decides to flee the castle and lead an uprising. As you appeal to the disparate tribes of Albion by completing quests to win their favour, you will be asked to make promises to secure their loyalty – you have no choice but to make these promises, but you can choose not to keep your word when the time comes.
The prelude to taking the throne constitutes the majority of the game, and is without question superior to what comes later. At its best, Fable III is an utterly charming experience, combining near-perfect art direction, flawless voice-acting, bawdy humour, and some of the most imaginative quests we’ve played in years. Basically, all of the best elements of Fable II are present, correct and, for the most part, improved. The combat is the same accessible one-button system that divided critics so sharply last time, but those demanding a Devil May Cry-esque mess of combos will be as wrong-headed now as they were then.
If there were no more to say we could conclude the review now and proclaim Fable III the best of the series, but in trying to do more Lionhead has created an experience that, finally, feels like less. When you claim the throne the game takes an abrupt turn; you learn that there was a reason why Logan was brutalising the population, and in exactly a year from your coronation that reason will threaten the very existence of Albion. So, you are given 365 days to honour your promises, address the people’s problems, and fill the treasury with as much gold as possible – one piece of gold corresponds to one life saved in the final reckoning, so every penny really does count.
In concept, it’s daring, ambitious and really quite brilliant; in execution, it’s a bit of a mess. Every choice you’re given to make straddles the furthest reaches of the moral compass, and the positive option is always far less financially appealing than the negative – when asked what to do with an old factory, you can choose between turning it into an orphanage for a net loss of 50,000 gold, or a whorehouse for a net gain of 1,000,000. Similarly, breaking the promises you made to your allies always results in more gold for the treasury, and therefore more lives saved, despite the fact that, logically, the loss of their help in the final battle would almost certainly lead to higher casualties.
The internal logic of Fable III’s climactic hours makes little or no sense, and this is best exemplified by the way your final year counts down: completing the first full day of decisions caused 30 days to pass, as did the next full day, and the two after that, but just as we began to detect some consistency the following two days passed 120 days each. With absolutely no warning we were thrust before our fate without even the money we should have earned from property to fill our coffers. The Albion we had spent so many hours happily exploring was destroyed in a manner that felt entirely beyond our control. It didn’t entirely undo all of Lionhead’s good work, but it came very close.