Overview

I never had the opportunity to play Fable on the Xbox and perhaps that’s for the best. Fable: The Lost Chapters is the PC version of the game, and it’d be disingenuous to mark it up as a straight port because it most certainly is not. Featuring more story and side quests, as well as new regions, spells and equipment, The Lost Chapters is arguably going to be the game that the original Fable should have been.

For those not aware of Fable’s basic premise, it’s rather simple; you guide a character from childhood to fame (or infamy). The childhood and adolescence parts are canned, short sequences, but after graduating from the Hero’s Guild, your character is free to do as he wishes. This isn’t the mind-boggling open-endedness of an Arcanum or Morrowind, but neither is it a firmly guided path.

Most of the game is spent completing quests accepted at the Hero’s Guild or in various towns, but the player is free to break off at any time and do something else. An apt comparison might be the Freelancer singleplayer campaign. One of the most highly touted features of Fable is that the player character changes to reflect the way he’s played. His reputation grows over time, and his alignment changes as well. Scars can be accumulated in battle and new nicknames may be collected, as can expressions. Expressions serve to amuse, seduce or intimidate NPCs.

The story, despite the light art style, is an odd mix of the light-hearted and serious – oft times even brutal. There’s no lack of killing, maiming or other acts that defy the expectations one might get from the cartoon graphics. The art isn’t as flatly cartoonish as WarCraft III or World of WarCraft, but it definitely leans that way more than towards realism.


Like all Lionhead games, Fable is loaded with speech and there’s a definite dearth of text to be read compared to BioWare or other RPG titles. The story thus, is rather concisely relayed, with no beating about the bush. Come across a story-related puzzle? As often as not, the answer is going to be found in minutes and often hinted at by the puzzler himself. Non-story puzzles can be more difficult to resolve, unless they’re key to a quest that the player is on.