A game that strives for greatness and innovation, but stops just short of a masterpiece.
User Rating: 7.3 | Fable XBOX
Roleplaying games, by their nature, are games in which you take the role of a character to act as your video gaming alter-ego. Fable is apparently made on the assumption that the more options you have in playing this role, the more fun it will be. I, for one, agree with this assumption. However, Fable falls short on it's execution for apparently trying to tone down the effects of your decisions on the actual gameplay. For example, the usage based skill advancement makes for a very intuitive concept, you get better at the things you do often faster than the things you very rarely do. However, in execution, the "General Experience" acrues much faster than any of the usage based experience. Additionally, despite the premise that you can be either evil or good, there are very few oppurtunities to really be evil with a purpose. After playing games like KOTOR, there is no excuse for not having more evil options for the main story mode. There aren't even enough side missions that you can do on the evil side. This is a huge disappointment. In fact, speaking of side missions, why so few? You can finish all of the story missions and side missions in just a very short few hours. On the side of doing non-mission related tasks, this game falls short on its promises. Sure, you can get married, you can uy a house, and you can run around killing people indiscriminantly. But after all is said and done, you would be better off grabbing a good MMORPG, and playing around with that for a while. The graphics are beautiful, and change appropriately based on the mood of what is going on. This is extremely impressive. In the end, Fable has a lot of promise, but there is not enough done with it, and there will probably never be a sequel, or reprise. You can get everything out of this game in a day, or a weekend at most. So go out and rent it. 
