Compelling Fable

I'm an early adopter of most gadgets; however, I'm not someone who would ever be labeled a gamer. I play arcade style PC games 2-3 hours per week at most and the first console I've ever owned is the Xbox I got in 2004. Six Xbox games collected dust on my shelf for almost a full year before I finally played a couple of them on the console. Then I started seeing advertisements for Fable.

Fable bills itself as a choose your own adventure of sorts, where you can be as good or as evil as you like, journeying through a fantasy land rescuing villagers or plundering with a group of bandits in tow. The game starts a little slow, making you go through what amounts to a fairly length tutorial to learn all the controls and options before departing on an adventure. After the tutorial section ended, I was on the verge of putting the game back in its clamshell, never to open it again.

After the first couple adventures, the pimply-faced dork who thrived on Dungeons & Dragons during my adolescent years took control of my mental faculties and I was suddenly thrust into a fantasy realm where might and magic define the law of the land. This was just like D & D, only better, because instant visual feedback showed me making mischievous decisions, overpowering foes in the gladiator arena, and adventuring through forests and caves where I couldn't wait to see what danger lurked around the next corner. Fable plays like you are the starring role in the latest book offering from Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman.

World development goes beyond the standard interaction with ever tougher monsters, focusing on subtleties like using vocal expressions to communicate with other characters, fishing in select locations to find hidden objects, and dealing with morality when making choices throughout the game. Fable offers enough Sims-like features to make me care about the character I'm playing, without forcing me to wonder why the character seems to get bored and depressed for no inexplicable reason. I have yet to find all the secrets of Fable 1, but I already know I'll be first in line to get version 2, if a next version is in the works.