Fairy tale for all times |Review Fable Anniversary

Peter Molnieo, A person who made a huge contribution to the game industry, different people remembered differently. For some, this is the founder of the genre of the genre of God, for someone the most important … ahem … a deceiver of the whole game industry, but for me personally, this is a man who gave the players a wonderful playing fairy tale in which it was possible to live. Magic and swords in stone, prophecies, adventures, heroes and villains, honor and vanity, weddings and breathtaking sexual acts, divorces by killing a wife – all this about Fable, One of the main role action of the zero, which allowed to look at the genre from a slightly different angle. This miracle from the middle of the zero I devote this post. And, as always, I accompany it with a video version of the review for those who scare such walls from the text. Pleasant reading / viewing 🙂

In the distant kingdom, the thirtieth state, in a distant-distant galaxy, there was only one boy. A simple village boy without a name, but with a great future! From an early age, he dreamed of becoming the greatest hero, although he lived as a regular, but calm and measured rural life in the average peasant family. Once an attack is being attacked on his village. The kid is hiding in time, and everyone else brutally betrayed the sword. It turns out that the robbers did not come for the sake of robbery and deadly, but in order to find a boy. They kill his father, torture his mother and sister to find out his whereabouts, but they do not tell them anything, then the bandits take them with them. When they leave, unable to look at the Creating Lawlessness, the future hero runs to the house to find relatives, but discovers only the body’s body. Suddenly a sorcerer by name appears from nowhere MAZ and takes him to teleport.

The magician invites him to join Guild of Heroes, which Maise himself leads to teach the boy martial arts and all kinds of sorceresses before he begins to carry out his revenge. The boy did not have much choice, so he agrees and begins his training. And after years of sweat training, the time comes to be released from school. A large, full of adventure and dangers of the world opens up to the mature hero. And we can say that the introduction ends on this and finally the main part begins.

In Fable, our ward was not another dumb protagonist. When he had to give a voice, but not when talking with people. Such a shy.

If it seemed to you that the tie is shamelessly trivial, then … yes, this is really so, and I will tell you more, the whole plot of Fable is one big cliche, and the authors do not hide it in any way. The Glavherero finds out that his mother in the past was also a heroine;that he and his sister are the heirs of the ancient royal family, who is in the old days of the Rules by united lands Albion (the so -called world of the game), when everything was sweet and beautiful, “before it was better” and all that;And now a new supervpes named Jack of Blades (Valet Swords) have appeared, which intended to take possession of the supermant ancient sword to capture and subjugate the whole of Albion. And according to tradition, only our chosen main character can stop him.

Throughout the storyline, there is not a single event that could be called an unexpected turn, moreover, all those nonsense that occur in such fairy tales is in Fable. It would be clear if the developers in this way built a sort of satir for a standard fantasy-slip, ridiculed cliches, beat banal episodes in an unexpected way, in general, did what they created in a few years Triumph Studios In his Overlord. But Fable is not in Fable. Of course, a little humor in an absurd style in the game was brought in, but it does not affect the overall picture in any way, and I personally did not person.

Lost Chapters complemented the old story with a new adventure. But who would have thought that again we would have to fight with the same Walt, albeit in the dragon appearance. Fairytale villains just do not give up.

I also watched in childhood, read and listened to fairy tales, and this was not enough in my early years. But at the same time, I grew up on things like the lord of rings, forgotten kingdoms, dragon spear, all sorts of Gothic with Elder scrolls’. And it is not surprising that having played Fable for the first time then, I did not remember anything from the plot at all, because there was nothing to remember there, I am even to spoil all these events laziness now. History is far from the main side of Fable, so I propose to leave this moment, you already probably start to burn there … In general, gameplay!

In general, if you go through the game strictly following the main line, not being distracted by side quests, of which there are many, nor anything else, then I can say with confidence that you will just miss all the charms of Fable, all its interests, fun and trifles on which the whole charm of this game is built. And in the dry remainder you will get a very mediocre action river. I say this because, as soon as the main part of the game begins, we are given complete freedom of action, and no one makes you get acquainted with a particular detail by force, will not poke his nose “here, we came up with such a cool thing, do not dare to pass by!”. By the way, write in the comments which of the features of the game surprised you most at one time.

I’ll start with quests, this is what pushes the player to find new adventures on his ass, creates incentives for researching the world, and, in general, this is the engine of history. And as I already said, in the case of Fable, you should not neglect the sideceses. Sometimes they are much more interesting than the main plot tasks, and it is precisely in them that almost all the humor of the game lies. And sometimes we have the opportunity to make a choice. The guard hires a hero to kill one very malicious bandit, but when you find your victim, it turns out that this bandit is a guard’s brother, and he wishes his death not because of the crimes of it, but simply because he will not tolerate such villains in the family. And we can nevertheless kill him and get a reward from the guard, or vice versa, return to the guard and put his sedeline on Katana, and then the bandit will give us twice as much gold.

For dopkvests, you can take additional conditions, sort of challenges: to complete the task naked, without weapons, not get damage, etc.D., the execution of which leads to an additional award

Or here is another example. Having finally got into the northern part of the city of Glushville, you can try to establish relations with the local mayor, sexy lady Gray. You will have a chain of quests to conquer her heart, however, if you wander around the city, you can get into a cage with a prisoner who will inform him that he was locked here, since he conducted an independent investigation in the death of the mayor’s sisters. In the end, it turns out that it was the current mayor to kill his sister, and here is a dilemma in front of you to tell everyone the truth or choose Lady Gray boobs. I played a good guy, so this “mayor” from the city was kicked out of the city, and the hero was offered to become a new mayor. Well, what did I refuse good people? The truth, except for formal purpose, it did not give me anything else … but still nice!

And here we got to another interesting point: a worldview system, simply speaking your hero or bad. Your choice in the above quests affects not only the outcome of these mini-stories and your awards, but also where the Morality of the protagonist will swing: towards the knight of light or the warrior of evil. Sometimes in the game there are tasks that fall out in pairs and the choice of one or the other will already imply what glasses of worldviews you will eventually receive: help the bandits beat off the guards of the prisoner or vice versa, help the guards transfer him from the city to the place of execution, fighting off the attacks of the robbers;save merchants in a certain location or kill them, and all in the spirit. As a result, the external appearance of the character will begin to change: a good man will be like an angel, even the halo will light up over his head, but the villain will begin to turn into a real devil with horns and hellish flame in his eyes.

You like to turn dark divisions, love and wear horns

The population of Albion will treat you accordingly, because no one wants to deal with the “Atsky Soton”, but with the blond (strange, but your “worldview” affects the color of the hair) Angel-Palatin another matter. Two more indicators come into business here: the attractiveness and horror that your armor, hairstyle, beard with antennae and tattoos affect. But nothing prevents you from becoming a formidable sympathy, the girls will still start to sink on you, but more on that later.

There is also such SuperB casino login a thing as glory, the higher it will be, the more recognizable your protege becomes, it will be honored, applauded everywhere, but you can fasten the enthusiasm of the public, exposing the trophy from the defeated monster. However, as in the case of worldview, glory does not affect anything globally, except that only one’s own pride can be amused. It is especially insulting for the indicator of good / evil: as in side effects in plot quests, too, sometimes you need to make a choice, but this does not affect the development of the plot at all, even the ending. Whatever style you go through in the end, both outcomes will still be available and good and bad, well, at least so ..

As in any other game with the open world, the execution of quests is not put at the forefront. You can just travel from one location to another, chop the monsters to a sausage, pump the characters, open chests and search for all kinds of game secrets. You can solve the riddles of demon-passions guarding the doors to new places, collect silver keys for special chests … No one will stop you except yourself: sooner or later this business can get bored, because Albion, although it seems big, but this is not entirely like that.

The hero demonstrates the head of a special adversary from the ridge of his head. It’s funny that even from this, the developers made a sort of mini-game

When looking at the game map with all open points of locations, you can be covered by a feeling of a little person in the big world, but it is worth considering one fact. There are really a lot of locations, but absolutely all of them are intersections of several narrow paths, from which you cannot step and step aside, on very small areas. Exceptions are cities where you can at least somehow take a walk, however, there are enough narrow labyrinth-shaped streets in them, and the cities themselves are small enough. And when every half -minute you have to see slow darkening at the moment when the transition begins, and then the load screen, this causes a negativity. Fable was released in 2004, well, 2005, given the supplemented version Lost Chapters, But then there were already games with open worlds and “rail”, in which locations even if they consisted of a heap of corridors, but they were large, and also did not cause boredom. And in Fable it is rarely when living corners are found, and, perhaps, they all fall into settlements.

It happens that you run the next site, and it is absolutely empty and dead. Of course, the world of the game is very beautiful, but you will not always admire it and stick it every time stepping into the same location. Somewhere, random travelers and merchants sometimes sparkle, and this is a plus, and somewhere every time you return to the location, you are met by constantly reviving monsters, and this is already a minus. Moreover, in some locations, the respuna occurs only after the hero leaves Loku and comes back, and there is, for example, a cemetery, in which he crawls out from the corporal continuously, and just somewhere at this stage I began to score to kill the enemies and simply began to run the map straight, occasionally dodging and getting arrows in the back. Well, there was no desire to kill the same mobs once again.

No matter how large the world of the game may seem, no matter how many red dots on the map (actually labels) on the map, in reality, the albion sample of the first Fable is very limited

Maybe only I have such feelings, but it really annoys when the endless revival of opponents works in the games, it seems to be left for all your efforts on their destruction earlier. There are games in which this technique is used correctly, for example, in the second Gothic locations were replenished with monsters only when moving to a new chapter, when you did something important in the plot, which influenced the alignment of forces in Khorinis, the villains noticed and began to send your agents and push the orcs to more active actions. Here, and in Fable it looks stupid, IMHO.

Fable pumping is quite interesting, I would even say unique at that time. In games like Gothic, we gained experience, gained level and pumped skills due to special glasses. In Elder Scrolls, we pumped skills directly using them in the case, and already due to their increase took a new level and put into characteristics. In Fable, everything is different, simple and tasteful. The hero has no levels, there are only 4 types of accumulated experience: General experience, received for completing tasks and killing opponents, combat experience, which is given only in battles in close combat, Magic experience with witchcraft and the so -called “Experience of skills»For the use of onions. The character of the character is three branches: in the first we pump hits, the power of the hero and his resistance to damage;The second is the damage from the arrows, the speed of the attack, as well as a very interesting skill called “cunning”, which reduces prices among merchants, makes the hero more invisible when he sneers, and allows you to steal pies from the counter with impunity. Well, in the branches of magic, you can increase the mana glasses and study the whole heap of all kinds of magical abilities. And each of the directions pumps out at the expense of the relevant experience of experience, but common experience can be spent on any of these branches.

This is what car your character can turn into … This is if you pump the first branch, and the second is carried away, you will turn your hero into a high skinny prone

The process of improving the hero takes place directly in the guild, where we have to return every time, since every third location there is a teleport, and it is not necessary to look for it: the hero can teleport at any moment, though I did not quite understand whether this is free or something unnoticed from my hero. The guild itself has a special stone printer, from which green light comes, and in order to start the process of pumping, it was necessary to just stand on it. Another unique part of Fable was aging. Whenever the character improves one or another indicator, he begins to grow old, so at the end of the game, if you swing directly very actively, you can turn it into a gray -haired grandfather. It would be cool in this way to reduce GG straight to the grave, but upon reaching 65 years, he stopped decrepiting and remained like that. You can only envy the hero of Fable, because making donations of several tens of thousands of gold rubles to the local temple, he can again become young.

Age is not the only external reflection of the improvement of the hero. Pumping a branch of power, that is, the first branch, the character visually becomes larger, and, swinging it gradually, you do not even notice it. At the beginning, the mature hero does not differ from everyone else, but at the end of the game he becomes the bodybuilder – tall, fleshy, wide, and if you eat very often, then also a fat.

Magic is cool, not all Fable spells were useful, but still it was not worth neglecting them not at all.

Wipe up Fable for a pure warrior, scoring on magic tricks – meant to doom himself into a lot of dull battles. Fable fighting system I don’t like it frankly. It is very simple, even too simple: a slight blow and a heavy blow, block, somersault and at the same time no combinations. While the enemy is open, pounding it to the first block, which cannot be pierced with a light attack, but after a couple of shocks at the time of the parrying, the bad attack badge lights up, which overturns the adversaries to the ground. Because of this, the fights in the game are too prolonged and monotonous. There are enemies who almost constantly go to the block, and each time they have to be laid with a heavy attack. She does not demolish much hits, according to my sensations, the damage there is the same as from an ordinary attack. Everything spoils the stupid rule “Do not beat the bedridden”. That is, if the enemy has lost consciousness, it can be finished off, and if he just fell, then you will do hell with what. But not all opponents fall into the knockout and far from often it happens at all. And when you just overturn the enemy, he lies for a second, then he gets up for another two seconds, and you wait and wait, because, like a sword, not Masha, as not to fry it with lightning – he at that moment invulneor. And in words it is 2-3 seconds, but in reality it is very slow down and just infuriates.

For example, there was a task to save an archaeologist. I go into the right location, and a new type of enemies appears there – and these devils constantly flea my attacks, and at the same time they were invulnerable to knockout, when they could be quickly finished off. So there are a lot of them in this task and how much time it was necessary to lay each of these creatures (and in that task the timer was also going to the death of the archaeologist). Trash and cargo … although no, without a fucker, only a trash and irritation. So I very soon regretted that I was not particularly invested in the development of magical abilities, and since then I poured all the accumulated experience only into them to fry bastards and not leave stone on the stone!

Beautiful, but the effectiveness of the level of Palpatine is very far away

In general, the magician has a full of all kinds of useful things: lightning, fireballs, berserker regime, time, healing, calling, I will not list everything, but I think you already realized that it was very unreasonable to score on a branch of magic, and it’s more interesting to play with opponents more easily and faster to deal. What I can’t say about Luke. Shooting just seemed to me completely optional, you begin to use it only where it is necessary and just in any other way, that is, during some bossfites. By the way, about them.

The battle with the bosses in Fable is by no means complicated, sometimes they could take a lot of time only because I, for example, still had a rotten weapon in my hands and I had not visited the guild for a long time to put up the hero. But the rest of the enemy’s behavior was predictable and the fights with them were no more interesting than with ordinary opponents. Perhaps only the final battle with the Walt I would call more or less exciting. There have never been any problems with ordinary mobs at all, although they have carcasses, their behavior, strength and style of battle are changing, but whether it is one monster or a gang of robbers – they do not pose a particular threat to the hero. With the exception of the nymph calling the hobbes. These knots have a little apart me: they rush in the air in the form of luminous lights, pass any damage that you are trying to inflict them, and become vulnerable, only at the time of the call, but then for only a couple of seconds.

Perhaps not a single boss (with the exception of a jack in two hypostases) did not hook me

But okay, let’s leave the poor adversaries alone, and turn to the inhabitants of the cities. Oh yes, we can also exterminate them. True, because of this, the hero will have problems with the law, but … Suppose you liked some house, and he is busy, and you would like to buy it. What needs to be done for this? Correctly, his own owner to disappear forever. And then the house can be bought. And what to do with the purchased house? Well, for example, you can leave it for yourself, and periodically relax in front of the fireplace and admire the trophies on the walls … But this, of course, is a matter of an amateur. But you can rent a house for rent and receive passive income. But such classes, I mean theft, damage to public property and attacks on residents of cities, entail the consequences. Guards will begin to attack you, who can also be killed, or you can pay off. Here regarding RPG, I generally am a big fan of breaking into someone else’s hut and sleep there until the morning. In Fable for spanie in someone else’s bed you will have to pay a fine. And this is not talking about morality, which will roll very quickly to hell in case of violation of the law. Guess what action the largest penalty for morality will be? For divorce. Fable can both marry and get divorced, and who would have thought that divorce is generally the most malicious crime that the player can commit. Beat the population of half of Albion and do not get as much fine for morality as for returning to the status of a bachelor.

Fable has a lot of all kinds of mini-games, they are all simple, but still you can pass after them … and a couple of golden shekels also earn money

In general, Fable is full of such optional moments, which nevertheless arouses interest and enrich the game. There are also several simple mini-games. They do not shine at all depths, but it was interesting to test them. The first mini-game that I came across during the passage is some mackening entertainment, when for the highest number of shocks you need to carefully drive the coin into the illuminated circle. Another game directly involves your memory: it was necessary to remember objects, and then remove the extra at a certain time and each time you had to remember more and more, and the timer is reduced … well, the third game, the game of kings!, It is called “resourbol”, although I like its original name “chiken-kicking”: the hero needs to kick a living curly, calculating his blow and direction so that it falls into one of the squares, each of which brings a certain number of points for getting it. There were also a few card games, I won’t take them out … fishing can also be attributed to me, but to me, to be honest, it seemed pretty crooked, and I took advantage of the fishing rod only once and that according to the plot quest, and then I did not even try.

However, this is not all the fun that our hero can be given to Fable. And I’m not talking about fist fights and treasure searches now. Yes, they are also there, but there is also something more interesting ..

Do I want? But for the sake of this I spent so much time and effort?!

I specifically left a conversation about a strawberry, let’s say, for dessert. As said in the introduction, the Glaverorea is ready to fight not only on the battlefields, but also on the marital bed. Yes, it was a marital one, because, like in the USSR, there was no sex in Albion (of course, the most notorious adventurers can find a brothel, but only TSS!). Koitus is available only after the wedding. In general, local women are excessively mercantile. Look, you liked some girl, so that in turn, she needs to monitor her appearance, and this, I remind you, you need to pay for the services of a barbershop, a tattoo, buy fashionable clothes. When she likes you, her heart will light up over her head. After that, it is necessary that the heart increases in size, and for this it is necessary to compliment her in the form of a sexual “Hei” or give gifts. And so she fell in love, offers you her hand and heart, but now you have to buy a ring to put it on this hand, and a house where This ass Your future spouse will move to live. I did everything, they played the wedding. Well, now Sex? RA-Ano. It was here that the mercantile of these Fable’ovs rumbles to the surface … Lady: so that the wife wants to “go to bed” with you (as she calls the game), you need to make gifts-flowers, precious stones-and sink it with these nishtyaks, until the greenish aura is sunbathing around her, and she herself will not offer to have sex with her.

And then, finally, it came to … body. The screen is getting dark, I already intended to see the scene a la Hot Night from the red lantern in Khorinis … But in the end I got a black screen and two alternate samples of the groans of a newly-made wug, and such groans that in the first Diablo invisible demons that complement the soundtrack with their walls more sexy. And for the sake of this I bought a house, ring, flowers, stones … On the other hand, even this for such a fabulous game was already enough.

Okay, so be it, I will show you the brothel fable. Without this, with such capricious wives.

And finally about music. I can’t characterize the soundtrack in Fable in any words, except to call it magical. The music is directly imbued with a fairy tale and brings the atmosphere of the game to the necessary condition. Her compositions are simply nice to listen to, even in isolation from the game. You put the soundtrack on the background and go to collect rubies, then to ask my wife, she will have a green aura and ..

Fable is a great game, in some places contradictory, and in some places innovative, if you look at it in the context of the action genre-RPG. And it’s a shame not to have it in your game collection, at least in Steam’s. I am far from those law -abiding gaming citizens who buy every game they like, but Fable at one time I acquired and did not regret at all.

For the first time I played Fable: Lost Chapters more than ten years ago and since then I managed to forget a lot, and I will not say that then I managed to feel all the features of this game. Even now it is not a fact that I found them all. It was insanely nice to plunge into this world again, even though I didn’t like the plot. Fable captivates and does not let go for a long time, in it I would like to do unimportant things that are created only for the player’s entertainment, regardless of the main gameplay, I just want to live here.

The uniqueness of this game is that it gives the hero that it is not just a model with characteristics, as in a board game, but a developing, changing figure interacting with the environment. What other game would have so many different opportunities for the player’s activities as in Fable? Where else can we go the hero’s path from a small village asshole to the 65-year-old older, despite the fact that age, starting with youth and ending with old age, does not change according to the scenario, but exclusively as a result of our actions. Where the hero would have changed externally during the pumping, earned scars in battles, became fat or earned indigestion after numerous feasts, where he could become a good vegan or evil meat -eater, conquered the hearts of the crowd and local Ladies. And this is only part of the charms that Fable offers us. Thanks to Lionhead for giving us this fairy tale, and after almost a dozen years they werehed down the HD-transformation, which is pleasant to play in Fable even in 2020. And if for any reason you still have not played the good old Fable-it’s time to fix it. Who knows what the upcoming restart will be.