I’ll tell you a short tale to begin with.

Once upon a time there was an orphan boy named Sparrow.  Sparrow always tried to do the right thing. Eventually Sparrow became a great hero called Blade and was the talk of the land of Albion, his great deeds passed from town to town, person to person. Eventually, Blade married and had a child, and lived in bliss in the city of Bowerstone. The pressures of being a hero took their toll, though: children constantly asking for his autograph, and mobs of people following him about whenever he returned to the city to see his family, started to get on his nerves. Sometimes, people even followed him into his own house to watch him have a bit of the old ‘how’s your father’ with his wife, and he could do nothing about it.

One day, Blade, the hero of Bowerstone and the land of Albion, snapped and put a bullet between the eyes of a local man who had followed him into his home and made a comment about his hairstyle. Blade felt bad about this and was arrested immediately without resistance, agreeing to community service instead of a hefty fine, but the seed of evil had already been sown deep in poor Blade. The people of Bowerstone now looked at the great hero in a different light. Children no longer asked for his autograph and people avoided him in the streets.  He became an outcast, and resentment started to cloud his mind. His wife left him and his son was put into care. The hero had started to fall.

He remembered how good it felt to kill that man and took murder up as a new hobby. Anyone who said or did something he didn’t like would die. His appearance changed: his once shining hair became dark and lank, his skin started to turn murky grey and his eyes started to redden. The final nail in the coffin of good came when he slaughtered every living thing in the country town of Oakfield, a task for the Temple of Shadows which he relished every second.  No one was spared, not even the women; all were hacked down or shot in the back as they ran for safety, and the Temple of Light was ruined. It was around this time his horns started to develop fully, twisting out from his skull as his veins glowed red with evil blood. He became known as ‘Executioner', and his corruption was complete. Later on in his life, Executioner became tired of evil and tried to become a good man again.  It was a struggle… but the tale of a boy named Sparrow is not yet finished.

Perhaps a self-indulgent way to describe the good/evil, pure/corruption element of the game, but I thought it appropriate given the name is Fable 2. Don’t get me wrong, though, reading that is probably like comparing any of Aesop's tales to reading the nutritional information on the wrapper of a Big Mac.

"...a game of choice and consequence..."

Fable 2 is the sequel to the 2004 game by Lionhead Studios and legendary designer and producer Peter Molyneux. Maybe some of you reading this will remember the controversy surrounding Molyneux’s apparent over-hyping the first title, making promises of features that were ultimately dropped from the finished product, leading to a feeling of slight disappointment. It was still a fantastic game, but it lacked real depth and scope.  This is something which I find occurring in Fable 2, although not to the same extent.  Make no mistake, though, Fable 2 remains one of the year’s best games.

Fable 2 is a third person role-playing game of choice and consequence.  Most things you do have an effect on the world around you and the people in it, and to a greater degree your own character, who becomes a reflection of all the choices you make throughout the game. Do bad things and your appearance will be corrupted; do good things and your appearance will be pure.  But it’s not just simple black and white; this is a game of many shades of grey.

I didn’t plan to play the game as a bad guy; I just genuinely did get very annoyed at all my adoring fans. What Fable 2's designers are saying is that it’s hard to be a hero. You have a public image to keep up, and you have to be nice to people, and do the right thing. The bad guy can do what he wants without worrying about what people think.  The bad guy can expose himself in the town square in front of women and children, and when the guard comes just resist arrest and hightail it out of town – or, if he’s particularly wealthy, just pay the fine and go cause trouble somewhere else. I’m probably babbling about the morality thing too much, but it really is a fantastically realised part of the game that provides for some very difficult choices and strong emotional responses throughout.

As for the story, it’s a classic revenge saga, and this dish is served ice cold. I don’t want to say too much, because even telling you about the reason for this revenge would ruin a shocking scene near the start that really does hold a lot of dramatic weight. What I will say is that the story is a good one, if a tad on the simple and clichéd side. The characters are well written and rarely suffer from the fantasy clichés that the main story does.  For instance, one of your companions is a huge, powerful girl called Hammer, who takes the role that, usually in fantasy, is filled by the big bearded fat bloke. The voice acting is fantastic, with actors such as Stephen Fry, Julia Sawalha and Zoe Wannamaker giving the whole thing a very British feel… which leads me to my next point.

Fable 2 is British through and through, not least in the humour. This is a very funny game, with loads of little touches that sometimes have you laughing away to yourself as you play. For instance, the ambient chatter of people in town, that you end up standing around listening to as it’s so entertaining; and the item descriptions, which are so funny that whoever wrote them deserves a medal, a pay rise, or at least a book token or something.

Now let’s get on to the exciting stuff. Combat is comprised of three styles. Brutal styles are all to do with the physique and melee abilities like blocking, flourishes, gaining more muscle mass and endurance. Skill is all about ranged attacks and speed, such as being able to zoom in when using a crossbow or gun, or targeting specific areas of the body, like performing insta-kill headshots or knocking an enemy’s weapon out of its hands. Will is all about the spells, such as fireball, lightning, time control, raising the dead etc. You improve these skills and buy new ones by spending experience points. Experience is dropped in the form of coloured orbs every time you successfully attack and kill an enemy, and collected by pulling and holding the right trigger of the gamepad. Combat is fast and satisfying, ranging from long-range sniper encounters to massive brawls and one on one combat. Gunplay is particularly brutal, with loud cracks as the guns go off, bodies that pirouette through the air, and heads that detach from bodies.  It’s all glorious carnage, and it never gets boring.

Two of the most innovative features of Fable 2 are the glowing breadcrumb trail that leads to whatever task you have chosen as your main quest, and the dog. Initially, I wasn’t that keen on the glowing trail, so I turned it off. But then I found I couldn’t find my way anywhere without it, which I found quite strange, as I can usually find my way around more open-world games than this with ease. So I turned it back on begrudgingly. Being a hardcore RPG fan, I did find it a bit insulting being led around by the hand, but eventually I started to see the positive side.

Then there’s the dog, which I am in two minds about, really. On the one hand, it’s cute, and the way it runs along the roads next to you and chases its tail is very endearing. But on the other hand it just seems a little pointless, and takes away some of the thrill of exploration. The dog barks and leads you to any treasure, or digs spots that are in the vicinity, which means you never actually need to find anything for yourself. Still, you become attached to the damn thing, and start treating it like a real pet. Very strange.

Although these features were not really my cup of tea, I can see how they would be great for the more casual or even non-gamer.  Or children, but then the problem with that is that Fable 2, while having the visual style of a kids’ game, really isn’t. This is a very adult game, in which you can murder, drink, gamble, have sex, have group sex and even pick up STDs if you don’t use a condom. It just seems like a massive contradiction. It’s not a negative point; I just find it bizarre.

Unfortunately, there are a few negatives which I have to mention. The inventory system is terrible: it’s all done through menus where you can select different categories like food, weapons, clothing etc. Now that doesn’t sound bad, right? But two problems prevent this from being a good system. The first is that the menu is particularly unresponsive, meaning it takes more time than it should to select something and use it. Moreover, every time you select a sub-menu the game disk sounds like it’s revving up like a jet engine. I actually got quite worried at one point, as I thought the 360 was about to blow. 

The other problem is this. Say you select some food to eat to replenish your health, it drops you right back into the game. So if that food didn’t restore you to full health, you have to go back into the inventory and go back through all the sub-menus until you get to food, and all the while your 360 sounds like it’s going to blow a gasket. It becomes rather tiresome after a while.

Another annoyance is the impassable terrain, like small slivers of rock that look like tiny cliffs when you're walking down a slope. You could easily just step over it, but no, the game won’t let you, so you have to walk all the way around. Navigating your way around the interiors of houses and shops can also be quite painful, as you seem to get stuck on tables and chairs and people. Graphically, while the game can be stunning, sometimes it feels a bit rough around the edges, especially in the caves, which all look the same and seem to be made from Plasticine.

To be honest, though, these problems don’t prevent the quality of the game from shining through.  There’s so much stuff that I can’t fit in this review, like jobs, the insulting gargoyle heads, marriage and kids, the demon doors, the mini-games, owning property, dressing up in drag and much more. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.  Overall, Fable 2 is a very enjoyable game, with high replay value and lots to keep you entertained for a long time. A lot of love has gone into the making of Fable 2, and it really shows in the vibrant world of Albion and its inhabitants.