Towards the latter half of the game, as Fable Anniversary was throwing greater and greater numbers of enemies at me, it was rage-inducing.
With one or two enemies, this wasn't really that big a deal. Number of times Fable Anniversary hardlocked during this review: 6 Instead, it was much more likely to: turn me around 180 degrees to lock onto a civilian turn me 180 degrees to lock on to nothing at all lock on to an enemy dozens of yards away instead of an enemy directly in front of me lock on to nothing at all parallel to several enemies lock on to an enemy - which Fable Anniversary shows by highlighting the individual in red - but not really lock on to them, which I would only learn as my arrows fired in a totally different direction. This, it should be noted, would be fine, because when it does this, it does work fine.īut the lock-on system doesn't do "that" (where "that" means "work"). The way it's supposed to work: a pull of the left trigger locks on to the nearest enemy, where your focus will stick - move left or right while holding the trigger and you'll remain attached to that target to shoot, stab, or spell at your leisure. This was quickly surpassed by my colorful responses to Fable Anniversary's abysmal targeting system. In caves or smaller structures, the camera can clip through the world or otherwise collide with it in a way that successfully harvested a volume of profanity my living room hasn't been witness to for months. But add a few trees to that environment, and things get complicated - it was difficult to position it reliably where I needed it to be. It's never good, but I was able to forget about it. You can see things that are beyond your hero, and it can be coaxed to move where it should probably go. Oh, sure, outside, where there are no walls for it to get stuck on, it functions. It would more accurately be called wildly broken. Take the camera, for example, which might charitably be called unfocused. In so many ways, it's a only-somewhat playable mess, a collection of parts that feels less tightly sewn together than it did all those years ago. Fable Anniversary only serves to build a new façade on massive structural and technical problems.īasic but critical elements of Fable Anniversary reflect the amount of progress made in this kind of title since the original's release in September of 2004. But that's just about the only thing it does.
This new Anniversary release takes all of that and provides with a comprehensive visual makeover. That it's still perfectly satisfying to clean up Albion's evil with little personal danger - or serve as a tyrant without peer - is a testament to the bizarre je ne sais quoi that Lionhead found with Fable. It's not complicated to accumulate massive amounts of experience quickly and level yourself well beyond the quests you can take at any given time. It's all about easily-accessible combat and lots of little "moral" choices throughout the game that reflect on you, both in the way that citizens react to you and in your appearance. There's not a lot of gear, and there aren't many weapons. You have attributes for strength, dexterity and magic, and using abilities tied to an attribute gives you bonus experience for its respective upgrades. Saved by a member of the famous Heroes Guild, you're then guided quickly through your adolescence to become a full, card-holding member of the guild, responsible for hero'ing contracts, all while unraveling a growing mystery in the land of Albion.įable - and so, Fable Anniversary - is an action RPG light on stat tracking and heavy on actual play. You start the game as a young boy in a village who quickly loses his family and village to a violent attack. In premise and plot, Fable Anniversary is identical to the "director's cut" Fable: The Lost Chapters originally released on Xbox and later PC.