Fable III

Reviewed Platform: Xbox 360

Other Platforms: PC

Lionhead Studio’s Fable series is awesome. Yes, that’s a biased opinion, but so many people would agree. Fable was an amazing game, and whilst Fable II was lacking the first one’s charm it was still a good game. They featured good controls, a great morality system and, most importantly, brilliant voice acting and lashings of the British wit and humour mixed with truly fantastic plots. So does Fable III pull it off?

Fable III starts in a strange way compared to the rest of the series: you are a fully formed adult and a prince or princess, no less. Seeing as the other games have you as a poor child this is quite a shift. However, this shift allows you to be dropped right into the plot, starting off the chain of events that will eventually lead to the changes within Albion.

You are the son/daughter of a great Hero king who reshaped Albion into its newfound glory. However, not all is not well as Albion is going through an industrial revolution and the tyrant king, Logan, your brother, does nothing to help, in fact plunging the land into further poverty. Through a chain of events you are set to lead a revolution against Logan and become the new monarch. This leads to a game with a truly epic plot, taking you across all of Albion and to other lands to save the world from its untimely fate.

In this game your actions really do have consequences. This doesn’t show so much at first, however in the latter half of the game you will have to make some decisions that you would rather not make. This is a game where the moral choices seem truly like your own personal choices, with some decisions being so hard to make as they go against your own personal morality, but they still need to be made.

The audio in this game is superb, ranging from the great voice acting (featuring Simon Pegg, Stephen Fry and John Cleese!), allowing you to connect with the characters, as well as the beautiful music (some of which I swear is lifted directly from Fable II). The graphics are also pleasing, though look a slightly dated compared to some games being released at the moment.

Combat is fairly intuitive, if a little bit heavy, and the new style of magic (using magic gauntlets) allows for more interesting fights. However, the magic does seem a touch overpowered at times, which sometimes makes things a little too easy.

The plot, the humour and the gameplay are all key parts in probably the best Fable game so far.

Final Verdict: 9/10