An excellent premise and inginuity which is marred by its subpar execution but still maintains to be a good AAA title!
Fable's premise deals with the Heroes of Albion. You play as a young child who has had his home ransacked by pillagers. After being rescued, you strive to become the greatest Hero of all the lands. Within your home, you are able to train and take on Quests which periodically become available to you. These quests range from the varying fetch quests to slaying a number of monsters. These quests although look to allow the player a certain amount of autonomy, the reality of quite the opposite. Very few quests actually deviate from the main storyline, and they all work in conjunction to achieve a very linear storyline. Added to the fact that the storyline is rather short, Fable's story has become a grievance to many people.
The graphics of the game are awesome and showed some of the most varying settings ever seen on the XBOX. Similar to Diablo II, Fable's characters are unique and change in appearance depending on what armor set they are wearing, what weapons they are wielding. Little gradual changes like skin complexion, tattoos, and ageing are all handled very well by the game. However, despite the impressive attentiveness to the graphics, the majority of the little notorieties are simply gimmicky and lack real value to the game.
The sheer amount of little gimmicky tricks are vast. For example, the hero can marry and live in various homes with his wive(s), hang trophies on the walls of his home, punt chickens around, and even can go about the mischievous path of theft and robbery. The game does a good deal of stat keeping and at any time, the player can review his longest chicken punt, if need be.
The sound is good, but not excellent. All weapons, bows, magic sound as they should and can only be truly appreciated in the presence of a Dolby Digital surround sound home theatre system. The music is striking, but not nearly as varied as one would like it to be.
The overall game play seems fragmented. While there is a plethora of little things for you to do, the main storyline and the real meat of the game is done at a sub par level, for example the change from youth to adulthood is handled poorly with the hero simply stepping into a portal. In-game cut scenes help to flesh out a lackluster storyline, and although Molyneux allows the player to continue running about the world of Albion after they finish the main story, it provides little actual incentive to do so. In fact, besides going through the game as a "bad" and a "good" character, there is no other incentive to re-play the game.
Finally, the RPG elements of the game (in my opinion) are done very well. By collecting money from the various quests and monsters you slay, the Hero is able to spend these points to increase his proficiency in the various attributes and overall gradually strengthen himself.
Overall, Fable is an ambitious game which falls a bit short of expectations. Nevertheless, it shows some flashes of that ingenuity. Here's hope that Fable 2 brings about the greatness that we all expected from Fable.