Why Fable III is so bad?

Note the question mark on the title. This entry is not (only) a short review about the many flaws of Fable III, but also a sort of lament.

At this stage, many would say: “What did you expect? It’s Molyneux”, “Fable II was also pretty bad”, “Why don’t you play Oblivion and stop wasting your time?” etc.

I know, I know. But I liked Fable II a lot. It wasn’t perfect, but I put a lot of hours in it and tried to get all the achievements I could. Maybe it wasn’t very challenging, but it was FUN. I spent hours playing pub games, looking for gargoyles, having children and interacting with people.

With this last paraph you should have noted what I miss in Fable III… Fun. If a game is not funny, then I forget about it. In fact, there are a lot of complex and interesting games that people love, but I find it BORING. Maybe because they are too hard for me, but when a game is really fun, you get to be better and better only because you can’t stop playing.

Good-looking man from the cover

Obviously we are not talking about a complex and interesting game, however. We are talking about an easy and forgettable game. Very easy. So easy that a 5-year-old would be bored. Then you can go and talk to prostitutes, kill innocent people and do things that of course are not suitable for 5-year-olds.

Tattoos can't disguise plucked eyebrows.

Why do you (I will try not to appeal Peter, that’s too typical) make an “adult” game in which the only thing you must do is to push the buttons you ask me to? Why the hardest thing I find in my first playing hours is to hold a button? Why all jobs work exactly the same way (an extremely easy way, just for a change)? Why you have you turned the menu in a big hall with a butler, and if you want to do ANYTHING you have to enter into another room? Why changing clothes is absurdly difficult? Why the main character of the cover is a handsome man and the default character you have to play with looks like a transsexual woman (this serves as a metaphor of the rest of the game, never judge a book by its cover)? Why can’t I carry a carrot AND a beer at the same time? Why do you think that hardening the fighting means to increase the number of enemies in an exaggerated way? Why if you die nothing happens, except a slight “XP” loss? Why have you eradicated everything that looked like RPG, like removing the skills improvement and the different types of experience? And I could go on for ages.