Environments look far richer, and even though many character faces are still pretty ugly, they represent a marked step forward from old character models.
The artists have really slaved away over this project, re-modelling everything in the Unreal 3 engine, re-drawing all textures in high definition and adding improved lighting and particle effects – all of which bring the title closer to modern standards. The game maintains all of its old ideals: do good deeds and people will love and respect you, but do evil deeds and they will fear and despise you.įable Anniversary has an incredible visual improvement over the original, but is also a strange grotesque object to behold. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of it’s release on the first Xbox, Lionhead have lovingly remastered the game in high-definition. But it was Lionhead Games who really championed user-defined gaming and brought the idea to the forefront of our consciousness with the original Fable. They might just roll their eyes at the echoey voice of the Guildmaster telling them their health was low, but then kids are so good at games these days they probably wouldn't hear it nearly as much as I did.Modern titles such as Mass Effect and The Walking Dead offer gamers a plethora of choices that they can make throughout the course of a game which will effect its development or outcome. I could give this to my brother and sister who were in nappies when the original came out and know that they could still get something out of it. Updated graphics, improved controls, and a new save system were all that was really needed to tweak Fable for modern players. The map is relatively small, but its locations have character, and everything looks a lot nicer under the lights and shadows of Unreal Engine 3.įable Anniversary hasn't added much to the original formula save achievements and a harder 'Heroic Mode', but that's OK. There's no royal after-game, but I could buy myself a house and attract a wife or husband (or several). I resented that I had to be male despite Albion's acceptance of female Heroes, but I didn't once wish I had a dog.
#Fable anniversary review steam series#
The features added to the series after this first entry go largely unmissed. The whole game seems simple compared to its modern-day equivalents, but because those games have built on its formula and haven't yet replaced it entirely it feels more like a blueprint than a basic alternative. This game's choices are overly simple, but purposefully so. Besides, that binary morality makes it much easier to play through Fable Anniversary again and have an entirely different experience than it is with a game like The Walking Dead. Its polarity - protect the farm or attack it - might seem farcical, but it's part of that self-referential humour as the Hero grows a halo or horns, and unlocks the ability to do a Disco Dance or a Vulgar Thrust. Many of the side quests are similarly mundane, which is another way games have hardly changed since 2004, but they're most interesting for the part they play in the morality system for which Fable is known. My only real frustration was with the targeting system, though that turned out to be most irritating outside of combat, when I was escorting three merchants through a swamp and had to repeatedly target and command each of them in turn. Boss battles are a typical cycle of avoidance and gradual damage, but games have hardly left that in the past yet either. The combat might feel simple, but the ability to switch between Strength (melee), Skill (ranged), and Will (magic, in a range of unlockable forms) keeps things varied, and a combat multiplier that awards bonus experience and abilities encourages more strategic play. I favoured mouse and keyboard, particularly when using a bow and arrow to pop an enemy's head off, but you can also play with a controller, and this remake even adds a Fable 2/3-inspired control scheme. Aside from a few fiddly menus, however, Fable Anniversary feels natural. enhanced, but it's still incomprehensible to me. Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition's UI might be. One advantage of the relative lack of progress in games this past decade is that it didn't take much adaptation to make Fable Anniversary playable in a way that some remakes of classics just aren't.
We're still fighting nameless bandits, carrying out fetch quests, and finding treasure hidden in plain sight. I still laughed when I came across my first loot and was told "The people of Albion like nothing more than hiding their treasures inside wooden chests," because games haven't moved on enough in the past decade to make that quip irrelevant. Ten years later, with an HD facelift and the word 'Anniversary' stuck on the end of its name, Fable is still funny.
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