Fable

[Quigs]

Mister Nord, the powers from beyond will grant you with eternal life in one year.

One year later

Mister Nord, we have decided only to extend your lifespan by 4 billion years.

Nord: Oh yeah? well Fuck your billion years! its a shell of eternity!


*sighs*

some people complain about what isnt,
some people appreciate what is.

 

[Darkwaters]

I remember all of the hype about this game and all of the skeptical people like myself that tried to reduce that hype. Now that the game is out and pretty terrible (yes, I have played quite a bit of it) its an even bigger catastrophe that people actually love the game and its selling so well.

Is there no hope for RPGs?

 

[Stark]

Hi Quigs, since you're around might as well grab hold of you now and ask you this:

where did you get all the stuff you talked about in the first post of yours: "villagers getting prideful and decide to take matters into their own hand and go out and take on monsters and got killed".

I would hate to know it came from dev's mouth. or is it a case of you fans projecting too much?

I agree with Darkwaters. I've no stake in the success/failure of this game but I think it's a sad state of industry that all the hype allowed a developer to make alot more money out of a only somewhat decent game (I'll give it that much credit).

 

[Jedi359]

Quigs, your example is terrible.

If you promise your consumer something, you better damn well deliver it. It's your kind of concilliatory attitude that cause developers to push out the same crap over and over again.

 

[Quigs]

stark, ill do some digging around. the exact monster was a troll, and a pair of villiagers were mentioned. seeing as how even a merc that you can hire would have a hard time with killing a troll, ive got no idea how they worked out the ai so that two villiagers fighting with fists could.

 

[HanoverF]

Mister Nord, the powers from beyond will grant you with eternal life in one year.

One year later

Mister Nord, we have decided only to extend your lifespan by 4 billion years.

Nord: Oh yeah? well Fuck your billion years! its a shell of eternity!


*sighs*

some people complain about what isnt,
some people appreciate what is.

Here's a better analogy

PMBakery: We're going to make the best apple pie Evah!

Quigs: Oh boy!

4 years later

PMBakery: Here it is!

Me: That isn't apple pie, its a big steaming plate of shit!

PMBakery: We never promised you apple pie.

Quigs: They never promised us apple pie. Yum yum yum

 

[Quigs]

Congratulations, you've got a little something what some people call, an "opinion".

Alot of other people have these little "opinions" too.

The thing is, your opinion is diffrent from the people who can actually afford to buy fable, you know, the people whos mommies dont give them 5 dollars a week for taking out the garbage, the people with actual "jobs".

Maybe after you get a job, and can afford to purchase your own entertainment, you can sit at the big people's table again.

 

[Pendragon]

Glad I rented...

I've been sniffing around the RPGCodex forums for a coupe of days, found and read this thread, and registered so I weigh in on the discussion.

I was excited about Fable, but deliberately ignored the advertising and hype. I followed my standard policy for new games and rented it as soon as it came out.

It's not a bad game, but everything errorcode said is pretty accurate. Maybe I should be ashamed to admit it, but I enjoyed KOTOR and Morrowind. What I was hoping for from Fable was Morrowind's level of open environments, with some moral choices that were less black-and-white than KOTOR's.

What I got was disappointing. The story is almost ridiculously simple, makes significant moral choices without input from the player, and has holes you could drive a truck through. I played Fable pretty casually over a week; I was astonished when I reached the final boss in exactly fourteen hours. If I put my mind to it, I could easily have finished it in ten or less. I also feel like there's close to zero replayability; there just aren't enough choices.

This is, to put it mildly, very little to show for five years of development. Looking at the hype now, as well as some comments from the devs from a couple of years ago, I honestly can't believe they're talking about the game I played.

Having finished the game, I want someone--NOT Molyneux--to take Fable's graphical engine and make an RPG out of it. Even an interesting adventure game would be more satisfying than Fable.

 

[fnordcircle]

Maybe after you get a job, and can afford to purchase your own entertainment, you can sit at the big people's table again.

I, for one, am shocked to see you employing the cliched 'you don't have a job/you still sucka you momma teets' argument, Quigs. I've come to expect so much more from your posts.

Either way, your little analogy above doesn't work. They offered eternal life and delivered a cockpunch.

As for the Troll example, Trolls don't spawn in village areas anyways. And they didn't get prideful, two villagers worked together to defeat the troll and their friendship levels went up. Relationships between NPCs are certainly not in this game though.

Anyways, if you want to call a short, linear, non-interactive RPG which coopted Black and White's villager-creature relationship AI and creature morphing code the 'first true CRPG' by all means, go ahead. Lowering your standards is often the key to being happy.

 

[Quaid]

Re: Glad I rented...

...Maybe I should be ashamed to admit it, but I enjoyed KOTOR and Morrowind...

I didn't enjoy Morrowind as much, but KOTOR was fun - gotta love Pazaak! Hardcore RPGs seem to be few and far between compared to 'fun action / adventure games with RPG elements' nowadays. How about a Hardcore RPG with fun action / adventure elements??

...Either way, your little analogy above doesn't work. They offered eternal life and delivered a cockpunch...

Maybe some people feel a cockpunch is actually better than eternal life? :shock:

 

[Spazmo]

Re: Glad I rented...

Maybe some people feel a cockpunch is actually better than eternal life? :shock:

It's a lot easier on the guy doing the cockpunching, to be sure.

 

[Sylonious]

It's a shell of what it was supposed to be? no

You can argue that it doesn't suck ass, but there is no arguing that it is, factually, a shell of what it was supposed to be.

Don't believe me? Go on the BBB boards, if it ever loads up, and search for GashPrex. Specifically his unofficial FAQ post. That post is made up entirely of quotes from Gradius, Dene, Peter and previous reviews. Read what the game was supposed to be. Then what you got. Not even a shell of what it was supposed to be, it's a completely different game.

I'm sorry about that I meant to put Yes it is a shell of what it was supposed to be.

I think what top's it all off is just how short the game is and how little land mass their is in the game. That too me is the dissappointment but it is an addictive game. Who cares what a bunch of guys typing on the internet think? If anything it only worked to ruin the game for me.

Hey errorcode. What happened to like 40% more content after you beat the main story?

 

[Pendragon]

The after-main-story gameplay annoyed me, too. You can run around and collect all the items you missed during the main game... except that there's nothing to do with the cool goodies once all the worthwhile baddies are dead. Also, why is the Heroes' Guild closed?

There is, almost literally, nothing to do after the main story is beaten. No more quests means very little combat, which would be fine if there were really anything to do other than combat. That's where the lack of features that were supposed to be in the game really shows up...

Okay, I'll stop now.

 

[errorcode]

the last build i saw had no after-the-end gameplay. The only thing i can think is stuff regarding Demons doors maybe...that or they're gonna have D/L content on xbox live.

I'll ask a friend of mine still on the test team. Maybe he can elucidate on it.

 

[dipdipdip]

I, without hesitation, traded it in toward Dawn of War and Gradius V. In fact, it only just hit me that I got rid of the Fable after returning home. I do believe I'll rent it to finish the game, but I had no desire to hold onto it for any longer. Not worth my time. Now Gradius V is another story....

 

[fnordcircle]

I'm sorry about that I meant to put Yes it is a shell of what it was supposed to be.

Whew. Ok, for a minute I thought you were losing your mind since with all those posts on the B5 I was sure you knew where our expectations had been set.

 

[Stark]

stark, ill do some digging around. the exact monster was a troll, and a pair of villiagers were mentioned. seeing as how even a merc that you can hire would have a hard time with killing a troll, ive got no idea how they worked out the ai so that two villiagers fighting with fists could.

Hi Quigs,
unlike some here i do not want to bash you for your support of this game. ultimately it really boils down to if you enjoyed the game or not, and from some word of mouth, hype or no hype, it is a decent game. So if you enjoy it, all the better for you.

I of course, dislike the fact that there are so much hype and misinformation surrounding this game and that hype actually worked, and lots of people lined up to buy something that is not exactly promised. Again, ultimately if a game is entertaining and well worth the $50 it should suffice.

I'm still interested to know the stuff about troll killing and villagers getting prideful and went out to hunt themselves. I want to know if this came from mouth of developers, or from fans. If it came from developers, it'll give me some understanding of the ethics of these developers. At this point, i'm not dismissing the possibility that it is the fault of the fans in distorting the words of developers.

 

[fnordcircle]

Stark, the troll story is an anecdote from Peter Molyneux from about a year ago. I want to say it was in the first article announcing the big bombshell of the game having multiplayer. Which never made it in.

I don't bash Quigs for liking that game. I didn't like Kotor but don't bash people who do. What gets me irritated is fans who seem so willing to look past what is borderline unethical behavior on BBB/LH's part, if you ask me, where features were proclaimed to generate hype yet when they were removed the fans were suddenly left in the dark on far too many.

And, like you said, it worked. I made -many- posts on the primary board for Fable, as did others, wanting clarification on how exploring the world worked and how long the game would last. Right up until the end we were told that the woods were big and there was plenty of free roaming and that the game would take at least 20 hours if you did nothing but scream through the main story ignoring side quests.

Which was bullshit. Bullshit that got them one additional unit sale in my case because had they answered me or anyone honestly I wouldn't have bought it. Instead they mislead us and stand to gain from it.

So that's why I'm irritated by the sycophants and apologists. One way or another they are encouraging a behavior that hurts us all, if only by excusing it.

 

[Darkwaters]

I have some serious problems with the game Fable, but I think my concerns are much different from everyone else's. I heard the good preachings of brother errorcode months ago and realized that Fable wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So when it came out a flop, I was neither pissed, concerned, amazed, nor angry.

Actually, to be entirely truthful, I have no problem with the game as it stands today. I think that what was realized is a decent run-of-the-mill adventure game. And so, I won't bash anyone for enjoying this game or even thinking its the greatest thing ever.

What does concern me (and pisses me off, amazes, and angers me) is the fact that the game was marketed as a CRPG, nay, the GREATEST and TRUEST CRPG to EVER have been made. That is the biggest sack of crap ever. But the main problem here is that PEOPLE BUY INTO IT! And not only that, this doesn't simply act as a selling point to get money into the hands of idiots like Molyneux, but people actually do believe that it is a true form CRPG and one of the best ever.

I was eating lunch yesterday in my University cafeteria and two guys were talking about Fable. So I sat next to them and asked their impressions trying to seem as though I knew nothing at all of the subject. They proceeded to rant to me about how immersive and wonderful the game was. But the thing that bit me in the ass was when the guy said "you really should get the game man! It was made by this guy named Peter Molyneux. He is a freakin' genuis and probably the best RPG maker ever." Needless to say, I couldn't contain myself and told him my feelings on the subject.

...resulting in my standard reaction when the RPG market hurts itself..."JOSH SAWYER, WHY HATH THOU FORSAKEN ME?"

Or would you prefer, "You served with Black Isle in the Van Buren wars, now I need your help once more. Help me J.E. Sawyer, you're my only hope."

-Midway cannot contain him!

Anyways, all this is to say...."Where is this market going?"
When a game such as Fable can sell itsell off as an RPG and have such a great following...what happens to things like BG3, Fallout3, and other real CRPGs?

Seriously, somebody help us!

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

What does concern me (and pisses me off, amazes, and angers me) is the fact that the game was marketed as a CRPG, nay, the GREATEST and TRUEST CRPG to EVER have been made. That is the biggest sack of crap ever. But the main problem here is that PEOPLE BUY INTO IT! And not only that, this doesn't simply act as a selling point to get money into the hands of idiots like Molyneux, but people actually do believe that it is a true form CRPG and one of the best ever.

Welcome to one of the reasons why RPG Codex exists.

 

[Hawkwing74]

It was made by this guy named Peter Molyneux. He is a freakin' genuis and probably the best RPG maker ever."

That's pretty bad...while you know what they say about the unwashed masses...

 

[errorcode]

i know i come across as irrationally bitter about fable, but it's this exact reason why i hate fable so much. I was there, watching the decision being made while it was being created. I saw how they were trying to sell Fable as the GREATEST RPG EVAH!!!11! and i knew that it would shift the market just that much more away from "true" RPGs and more towards the watered down, action/adventure RPGS.

Fable, with it's marketing and it's RPG-lite gameplay, is another nail in this generation of RPGs coffin. I've already seen the fallout, with publishers moving money away from true RPG projects and moving it towards action/adventure RPG hybids beacuse "that's what gamers want...just look at how well games like Baldur's Gate Dark alliance and Fable sell"

This isn't hyperbole...i've actually heard publisher's say this. RPGs are dying again and it's people like Molyneux who are killing it.

 

[Quaid]

Ahh, Capitalism at its best. The publishers are taking the easy way out by making simpler games while simultanously using advertising and BS to paint their half-assed creations as the best that can be acheived.

And if only 80% of the population buys into it - great! Who cares about the other 20%? It is all about volume after all - and if the masses buy shit and enjoy shit - it can't be all bad, can it??

I have to agree with errorcode. Fable needs to be exposed for what it is, and the hype must be attacked by those that know better. Whether you like Fable or hate it, at least understand what was accomplished and what wasn't accomplished, what pushed the envelope of CRPGs and what set them back.

 

[errorcode]

exactly.

 

[Quigs]

Im really not understanding this.

If "the masses" like it, then it must be bad?
whats so wrong with public opinion?
After all, people who go to this message board and post a generally accepted opinion are just another group of masses.

How far did the original GTA set back Fallout? years? Because GTA was an adventure game with rpg elements. So it must have had a total and detrimental impact.

The fact that populararity in any form is emulated has always been with us. It usually doesnt matter what the subject is. If interplay thought that they could make Halo back when they were making fallout 2, do you honestly think for a second that they wouldnt drop FO2? (obviously the timeline is fucked up, but the point is valid)

Its happened tons of times in the past. Racing game makers switching over to rpg's. (Square, in one of its many forms.) Rpg's switching over to adventure games. (Team Sonic) Adventure games switching over to Strategy games (LucasArts)

Just because this time the trend is more simliar to RPG's doesnt mean they are forever more going to drop off the face of the planet. Its just the current trend. Deal with it.