Video Game Vintage Title: Fable III

Fable III

Fable III is the third video game in the Fable series of action role-playing open world video games. The game was published by Microsoft Game Studios and developed by Lionhead Studios for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story focuses on the player character's struggle to overthrow the King of Albion by forming alliances and building support for a revolution. After a successful revolt, the player becomes the monarch and is tasked with attempting to defend Albion from a great evil. The game was released on 29 October 2010 for Xbox 360 and on 20 May 2011 for PC via both Games for Windows and Steam. The PC version includes a Hardcore mode and 3D functionality not found in the Xbox 360 version. The game includes the voice acting from Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Naomie Harris, Michael Fassbender, Zo� Wanamaker, Bernard Hill, Nicholas Hoult and John Cleese.

Fable III Plot

Fable III is set 50 years after the events of Fable II. The game is set on the fictional continent of Albion, which is entering the age of industry. The Hero of Bowerstone (the player character of Fable II) and ruler of Albion, has died and left the Kingdom to their eldest son, Logan, the player's older brother. Some NPCs allude to how Logan has "changed" in the last four years of his rule, becoming excessively tyrannical. The player begins the game investigating rumours that Logan had a citizen of Albion executed, causing a group of citizens to protest. After the player character intervenes, Logan presents the player with the first of the game's numerous moral choices. The player is tasked with deciding whether the group of protesters are executed, or whether the player's love-interest is executed instead. Following the decision, the player escapes Logan's castle along with their mentor, Sir Walter Beck, and their butler, Jasper.

The player then, at the behest of Theresa, the enigmatic Seeress of the Spire, starts to gather allies to aid in a revolution against Logan. The allies they gain include Sabine, the leader of the "Dwellers", a nomadic community that lives in the mountains; Major Swift and Ben Finn, soldiers from the Royal Army in command of a remote fort; Page, the leader of the "Bowerstone Resistance"; and Kalin, the leader of Aurora, a desert land across the ocean. When attempting to gain the support of Kalin, the hero learns that a creature called the Crawler and the forces of the Darkness, which have already devastated Aurora, intend to exterminate all life in the Kingdom of Albion. It is revealed that Logan's reason for treating his people so harshly is to raise funds for Albion's military to defend against the Crawler.

The player then leads a coup d'�tat and becomes the next Monarch, at which point the player is given the choice to keep the promises made to those who aided in the revolution at great expense to the treasury, or betray those promises in order to raise money for the defense of Albion through industrialization and using natural resources. The choices made help decide the hero's fate as a good or evil ruler. The player can also utilize the treasury money for personal purposes, or transfer personal money from the player's own supply to the treasury.

If the player chooses to be a "great" ruler, the treasury will be vastly drained and the only way the player can offset this is by transferring several million gold from their personal funds to the treasury. With 6,500,000 gold in the treasury at the time of the Crawler attack, the player will be able to fully fund the defence of the entire kingdom. With no money in the treasury and thus no army to defend Albion, the civilian casualties inflicted by the Crawler's attack amount to 6,500,000. If this happens, the world will be largely absent of civilians upon completion of the main quest. If the player passes lots of time by sleeping, working and increasing the royal treasure income significantly, people will start to return. If the player was a benevolent leader but lost large sums of civilians, many citizens who return will still praise the player. However if the player raises money to fund the army through exploitation or tom-foolery, then they will be hated regardless of whether the kingdom was saved. The player can also take on the extreme evil morph. Also, it is possible to both raise funds for an army and be a benevolent ruler(in this case the player must donate his/her personal gold to the treasury until the debt is paid and the amount of 6,500,000 gold is put together), this results in the player monarch being loved by the entire kingdom and no civilian casualties.

Reception
Fable III received generally positive reception on the Xbox 360. IGN gave the Xbox 360 version an 8.5/10, praising the final segment of the game involving your role as king or queen, but criticizing its slow beginning and a lack of innovation. GameSpot gave the game a 7.5/10, saying "This gorgeous world is brimming with humor and personality" but felt "a bevy of technical problems and overly simplified gameplay distract from the fun." Official Xbox Magazine said "Fable III is most memorable not because it makes you laugh, but because it also makes you care. If a spouse gets carved up in your absence, you'll feel pangs of guilt. When your dog saves your bacon during a fight, you'll feel pride."

The PC version of Fable III received more mixed reviews. IGN gave Fable III (PC) a 6/10, calling it "a royal disappointment" with "interface not well tailored to the PC platform", "uneven story and pacing", "dull combat" and "repetitive quests". GameSpot gave it a score of 7/10, saying "It lands on the PC with graphical enhancements and tougher combat" but criticized the "simplified gameplay" which "still distract from the fun." Most negative responses came from the fans who pointed out the bugs that never got fixed in a patch, or that the child of the hero is generated randomly depending on the location of its parents; a design flaw in Fable III where the ethnicity of the biological children does not match that of the player character or its spouse.