Choose Your Own Destiny

Roleplaying games have come a long way since Dungeons & Dragons. At first, the "dungeon crawl" was enough, but eventually gamers wanted more than just another "hack-and-slash" quest. They wanted fully-defined game worlds, intriguing characters, and absorbing stories. In short, they wanted a game like Fable®.

The new game from acclaimed designer Peter Molyneux and developer Big Blue Box has all these elements and then some. The huge game world is painstakingly detailed, and the rich story line holds your attention throughout the game. But Fable does more, exceeding these standard RPG conventions in several ways and giving us what we've been waiting for since we first delved into a dungeon: a truly heroic journey.

Fable is a roleplaying game and then some.

The Journey Begins
The game's revolutionary approach to storytelling begins with your character's childhood. You begin to forge your destiny at a young age, and every decision you make shapes the person you will eventually become.

Your journey starts on a typical day in your peaceful country village. It's your little sister's birthday, and you need to get her a present. But—like most kids—you're broke, so you'll need to get some money to buy the gift. Fortunately you're surrounded by opportunities to earn the pennies you need. You might, for instance, agree to watch over a merchant's supplies while he runs an errand. That would be an earnest thing to do, but you could just as easily raid his stock when he's not looking. If you're feeling particularly underhanded, you might even take money from the merchant for watching his stuff, then return later to steal from him!

Later that same day, a man may offer you a bribe not to tell his wife that you saw him flirting with another woman. You could accept or refuse the money, but what will you do when you encounter the wife elsewhere in the village? If you accepted the bribe, you might be tempted to keep your word and tell her nothing … but there's nothing preventing you from keeping the pennies and telling her anyway. You can take different paths toward earning the money you need. Which one will you choose? The same options apply to the choices you make when money's not involved. Will you protect a younger child from a bully, or join in the harassment for fun? How about that teddy bear you found in the woods? Will you give it back to the child who lost it, or keep it for yourself? Fable confronts you with a series of decisions, and the cumulative weight of these choices defines you as a person.

Make some bad choices, and you could end up looking like this guy.

Choice and Consequences
These might seem like pretty unimportant situations, but it's decisions like these that create epic heroes ... and villains. Each choice nudges you a little farther along the moral scale in one direction or the other. By the time your first day ends, you'll already have made a surprising number of choices that determine your initial path on the way to adulthood. The game's ingenious character development engine continues to shape your persona. Some decisions, like choosing which skills to develop, have obvious repercussions; for instance, if you invest more heavily in accuracy than in strength, your ranged attacks will become more effective than your melee attacks. The consequences of other choices aren't nearly so clear-cut or immediate.

But these choices will have an impact. Everything you do affects some aspect of your character, whether it's your appearance, skills, or reputation. Let's suppose that, back in the village, you double-crossed everyone whenever you had the chance. That sort of behavior has a strong impact on how others will now perceive you. Instead of friendly greetings and warm welcomes at the inn, you'll get the cold shoulder from people who don't trust you and won't help you. You might still become a white-cloaked hero loved by all if you change your ways and devote yourself to good deeds, but if you fail to change your treacherous behavior you'll become a sinister black-clad figure with an unsavory reputation.

RPG fans will find many Fable elements that are distinctive to their favorite genre. But it's the way the game innovates within these conventions and surpasses our expectations that puts it on the road to RPG greatness.

Article by Jim W. Gettys