Fable III.....

[Datastorm]

Hello

Got a notice last night that it shipped so should get it this morning sometime.....anybody else excited to play it? I'm in the middle of Arcania and FF XIV so might be awhile before I start it....

[Kup]

Yes, sir.  I am.  Was playing Fable II last night finishing up a few quests I'd left out in the last DLC pack.  I also got an email telling me my item has been shipped, so that excited me even more.

In fact, you beat me to the creation of this thread, I meant to do it earlier.

Before we go on I'd like to point out that I have completely blacked-out anything to do with Fable III - previews, trailers, screenshots, everything.  I find it's better to enjoy a Peter Molyneux game without listening to what he believes the game to be.

So no spoilers, people.  Please. =)

[ZeronHitaro]

Luckily for you lot I've never really gotten to experience the first two. So I can provide some feedback from an un-biased angle. XD About to go get my copy in a few hours and will be playing it all afternoon (turns out I managed to scrape up enough cash to get it and FNV). I'll give some feedback later tonight.

[Parn]

Waiting for it to arrive.  New Vegas isn't cutting it for me, and I have a feeling that Fable 3 will turn out nicely.

[Tooker]

Yep, I've got it on the way as well, for review.  Even getting the special edition!  I liked the previous games in the series quite a bit, so I hope I'll like this one, too.

I'll be sad to set aside FNV in order to play it, but that's life. :)

[GrimReality]

I don't get the fellow worried about spoilers. There isn't much to spoil in a Fable game, considering how poorly executed the stories are.
I enjoyed Fable II well enough, but no way am I paying $60 for III. Just like I did with II, I'll wait for it to drop to $30 and get it then.
Hopefully they've toned down the obnoxious npcs in this one. I got tired of women asking me to marry them over and over again. I suppose I could go the evil route, but I have a hard time doing that in games.
Is there a dog in this one? The dog rocked.

[Kup]

I'm getting the special edition too.  I really like the coin that comes with it - the idea of doing a playthrough letting the coin choose your fate is something I like.  Yeah, yeah, I could use any old coin - but it's part of the magic.

I caved a little and watched a co-op trailer this afternoon - I'm really keen to see what co-op has to offer after the failure of Fable II's co-op.  As soon as I saw both players using their own characters in either world and then both dogs too I stopped.  That was it for me - everything I wanted in the previous game.

It's going to be great.

Plus it has Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Simon Pegg...


EDIT:  By spoilers, I mean having to listen to Peter Molyneux go on and on - selling the game like it's perfect and has never been done.  That spoils it for me. =)

[Danku]

I already beat Fable 3 and I'm a bit mixed. The main story takes about 17-18hours to finish and is actually pretty interesting. The games environments can look amazing, but the character models are still pretty meh. The weapon morphing is cool, but there is no in depth explanation on how it works. It is no where near as intricate as Peter M said it was. They took many features away from Fable 2, no more groups of people following you, no more held down expressions to get everyone's attention, less spells (spell weaving solves this),etc etc. It just feels like they took out the interesting areas and features in order for new "REVOLUTIONARY FEATURES".

The game is amazingly fun and immersive though. Short load times when traveling to areas, no load times when heading to the sanctuary, no item list, no menus basically. If you didn't enjoy Fable 2, because of the loading or clunky menus give Fable 3 a try. The decisions you make as King were the coolest and lamest part for me. It's great watching your character sit on the throne and make decisions, but they were few and the lack any sort of grey area. It's either Good/Evil which is lame, but that's what the game is going for. Changing the landscape through decisions is cool though and the quests are impressively voice acted, even if some of the quests become a little redundant.

I put about 30hours between two character since I got the game last Tuesday and I pretty much enjoyed the whole experience. I haven't even opened all of the Demon Doors or gotten married, explored all areas, and collected the ...collectibles. I'm probably going to start another character this week and play that as my "Main" character which I take through future DLC and what not.

Three things though-Small unimportant spoiler, but it will help you.
1)Your character never gets stupidly huge or ugly, so for all you female character lamers, don't be put off by making one here.

2)You get a decision to raise/leave/or remove the drinking limit in Albion. If you remove it, almost every citizen will be walking around drunk and throwing up in the streets. ANYWHERE in Albion. I removed the limit and this totally killed the immersion for me. It's funny at first, but It soon gets annoying.

3)I forgot the exact day but it's Day 123 or around there. That's the last quest before the end of the game. I thought I'd give everyone fair warning, because the game doesn't and it could ruin your ending/experience if you continue unprepared.

[ZeronHitaro]

I'm probably no where near as far as Danku but I have to say so far Fable III trumps Fallout NV in my books. The world is gorgeous and I find myself being impressed by it as a whole even more than FNV's Strip. The combat, while simple, is rather fun and offers a nice bit of variety. The dialog is down right hilarious and I love that not even 10 minutes into the game I'm already having some very "grey area" choices thrown at me when it comes to morality. Hell this game scores points because it allowed me the option of not choosing the greater of the two evils (you'll understand what I mean when events at the castle at the game's beginning come to a head) and has still left me the player questioning if I really did the right thing.

My only complaint is the "leveling system". Everything in this game is governed by "Guild Seal" points. Every time a gauge on the top left part of your screen fills up you get a point. Mostly this is done via combat and completing quests/storyline events. There is also another way to get GS points, which I will address here in a moment as it's the crux of my complaint.

Now, instead of finding powers in the world or upgrading your weapons directly you purchase these things with the GS points at a special area. But literally everything is tied to this system. Want more character interaction options? Buy them with GS. Want better job pay rates? Buy that with GS. Want a bigger sword/hammer? Buy that with GS. Want new spells? GS. Want to dye your hair purple? (Not kidding here.) GS.

And here's the rub...GS isn't an unlimited currency. GS gained from battles is relatively tiny and quests are also relatively low for a game like this. So here's where the final way to get GS comes into play...the first time you meet an NPC you can perform one of your social actions for a single GS point. There are literally hundreds of the NPCs in the game and depending on the social action you can spend anywhere from 3-7 seconds holding down the A button and an additional 3-7 seconds watching the tail end of the action play out before canceling the dialog.

So if you want say...120 extra points to unlock that Level 4 Upgrade of your Ranged and Magic skill (as the story/quests will not cover everything as it becomes avaliable). You need to spend, at maximum if you're unlucky (the game randomly chooses the social emote for you) 28 minutes just watching your character do the jig with another NPC and enduring the same random grunts and awkward poses. That isn't counting the time taken to hunt these buggers down to begin with and this is a relatively low amount of points for what isn't even the highest tier unlocks.

It's an intolerable grind. I've played some MMOs with more tolerable grinds for lesser rewards. XP Maybe I'm being impatient but I really don't want to spend over an hour hunting down and tickling every peasant in Albion so the Lute Hero job (which is a nice parody IMO) pays enough for me to start grinding it to buy some nicer houses.

[Danku]

The Guild Seal grind is pretty annoying, but it isn't too bad. I think it's pretty balanced. You need to focus on what you want( Magic with Melee, Range with Melee, etc.) Don't get Pie Making if you are never going to make Pies. After you beat the game, you will a MUCH easier time collecting Guild Seals to max out your character. But with most if not all sidequests done, by the end of the game I maxed out all three Masteries and had all expressions and dyes, but didn't have Pie Making/Lute and I only had Fire and Shock as my spells =[.  The game easy enough, I'm sure the limit on Guild Seals early on is just to make it a bit more balanced so you aren't 1 shotting things 3hours in.

I love NV, which I also beat already. But I wouldn't exactly say Fable III trumps it. Fable wins in the immersion/technical/ and fun value easily though. NV is an amazing open world game, but the technical problems hold it back big time. The amount of content in that game is outstanding, so is the voice work and quests. It's an enjoyable game, but I can't play it again until it's load times are fixed on consoles or I get it for PC. But for my 32 hours of playing NV, I loved every minute of it, and I only discovered like 57 areas and missed more than half the quests. Meanwhile, I put equally as much time into Fable III between two characters and I'm going to play start a new character tonight, because the game is just so enjoyable and immersive.

Both great games and I couldn't be happier with both purchases.

[Yoda]

I'm watching a preview play through on gameinformer. If anyone is interested in the game but on the fence they might want to watch this.

From what I gather so far they're showing side quests only and this is mainly detailing interface and crap like that. I'm about 15min in though. I doubt they'll do any plot quests.

[Yoda]

bwahaha they just found a +5 condom


Game might rule

[Noobien]

I might pick it up after my exams. Unlike Parn, I'm having an absolute blast with New Vegas although it should be said that I'm 14 hours in and have only had one glitch where an enemy started skywalking and two freezes.

[Danku]

I might pick it up after my exams. Unlike Parn, I'm having an absolute blast with New Vegas although it should be said that I'm 14 hours in and have only had one glitch where an enemy started skywalking and two freezes.

Don't kill the Cowboy guy in the Strip outside of Lucky 38. If you do, next time you enter the strip it corrupts your last save. You can bypass this by wearing a old cowboy hat whenever you enter the strip, or by not killing him. I think his name is McAfferey or something, it's part of a side quest for the Atomic Wrangler.

[insertnamehere]

If that Fallout 3 rehash (most news sources seem to call it that) or Fable 3 had to win in a contest of "which game is better?" which game would win?
I ask that because a thread just a little while ago asked which one people would prefer to buy first and Fallot won pretty much unanimously.