The Fable Franchise and it's Future

What I love about the Fable franchise (particularly Fable 2), and what I hope that the new game brings to the table for the future of the series.

A recreation of Fable 2's promotional image of Hammer by Me!

The Fable franchise was one of the first game series I ever played where I felt like I really connected with the characters, the story, and the gameplay. Each game hit me differently, and I'm curious and cautiously optimistic to see where Fable 4 takes us!

Fable Day

I remember the first time I’d heard about Fable. It was 2005, I think? So I would’ve been 16. My older brother, Harry (age 18 at the time), and I were in high school at the time and he told me about this new game that was coming out. He described it as a game where the decisions that you made really mattered. It changed the direction of the story, it changed the appearance of the player, it changed the way that the game ended. And not only did the game have a choice mechanic, but the music was done by Danny Elfman and me, a 16 year old alternative nerd, was thrilled that one of my favorite composers had a hand in a video game I could play! I remember being so excited by it all.

He described it as a game where the decisions that you made really mattered.

We’d played other games with choice mechanics (Morrowind comes to mind) but none that felt as impactful as this one sounded. Where in Morrowind, if I turned on god-mode and killed an essential NPC, the game just gave a pop-up akin to a jaded D&D Dungeon Master saying something like “good job, you ruined it and you’ll never know what happens >:(“, Fable’s choices were advertised as being the whole point of the gameplay. There was something so appealing to me about the idea that if I made a good or bad choice in the game that it would have lasting impacts on everything from the character’s looks to the world around them. I think largely it appealed to me so much because I was always creating my own stories and characters. Getting to apply that into a video game seemed super cool.

Later, in 2005, Harry even burned a handful of pirated music onto a disc and labeled it “Fable Day”. We listened to it the entire week until the game’s release on the Xbox. I still own the disc in my car’s barely used CDs that I’m too sentimental to let go of. Harry drove us to the local Best Buy and we picked up the game as soon as we were able to, drove home, and popped it into the Xbox. It booted up, and after some loading screens, the soothing sound of Danny Elfman’s Fable Theme filled my ears. I was in heaven.

Harry played the game and I watched (this was our way). In true older brother fashion, he played through the opening tutorial and the second tutorial (there were too many tutorials in Fable 1, not gonna lie) choosing mostly the evil choices. I disapproved but this wasn’t my play through nor was it my Xbox. Whatever. I shook off my annoyed feelings. I was just happy to watch the pretty graphics and see where the story led. But as Harry continued through the gameplay, I started feeling a bit bored and realized that my initial impressions based on gossip were mistaken. While Fable 1 did have some choices, you couldn’t play as a girl, you couldn’t change your hair color or skintone, and the “open world” was less open than I was initially led to believe. And… frankly… I was tired of watching Harry be mean to Whisper (an NPC/the hero character’s friendly rival and definitely an early queer crush of mine). I ultimately lost interest in watching as closely and meandered off to do other things.

I occasionally came back, popping in at random points during the game but Harry had gone the evil route and I wasn’t interested in watching him murder villagers to get the easier money. But then I’ve always been a good-aligned gamer so that’s just my own personal bias there. Ultimately, I had decided that Fable just wasn’t what I thought it was, and that while it was really pretty to look at and listen to, I didn’t care enough to keep playing it.

Still kept that Fable Day CD though. Playlist here: (link)

Baby Brother Teaches Pants about Fable 2

Fable 2 Characters Reimagined by Me! Hammer, Sparrow, Reaver, and Garth.

In 2009, I was in my second year of college at WKU. I still lived with my parents at the time because dorms scared me and they said it was cheaper this way which was fine by me. Anything to avoid communal living. After many years of me being an ass to my little brother Max, we’d finally started to find common ground when he became a teenager. I wanted to go see “kid’s” movies that I was to embarrassed to ask my friends to see with me and he was young enough that he still liked going to them. Plus, if I asked mom for cash to take Max to get dinner and go catch a movie, she’d almost always slip us $40 for the night. Score. Free junkfood PLUS entertainment for the low low cost of being nice to baby brother. Our friendship was still new and I was getting used to the concept of not screaming at him for existing, but it was working out nicely and I learned we had a lot more in common than I thought.

Most importantly and probably what made me the most excited: You could play as a girl.

I came downstairs into the basement one day after class to find him playing Fable 2 on his Xbox 360 (the one he inherited from Harry and the same one that now sits in my living room here in Oregon). I can’t quite remember what point he was in at the game, but it looked pretty, the music was nice, and the world seemed bigger than the previous Fable. I asked if I could sit in and watch and he said sure. Max spent the next hour or so showing me around Albion in Fable 2. Given that Max played a True Neutral aligned character, it was easier for me to watch this time. I was captivated by how much more there was in comparison to the first game. You could change your haircolor, there were more clothing options, more NPCs, and the world just seemed so big! Most importantly and probably what made me the most excited: You could play as a girl.

Eventually, after I kept barking requests of where to go and what to do, Max saved, quit, and said “Why don’t we set you up with your own save file and start a new game?”

I tore through the tutorial, excited that I could make good-aligned choices and help people. Max kept poking me from time to time “You can get a gold faster if you make the evil choice.” but my sensitive butt could never be mean to video game characters for my own benefit. True Good all the way babyyyy. And with the help of a new game mechanic known as “the sparkly trail” (a sparkling trail of light that leads players to the quest’s objective), I was able to make actual progress in the story instead of aimlessly wandering around wondering where the hell to go next.

As I continued through the game, I fell in love with the characters (Hammer is and always will be one of my favorite NPCs), the story, and the gameplay. It was an easy game, overall, which appealed to me as someone who gets easily discouraged when I die over and over again in video games. Rather than having to reload from a previous save, as Fable 1 did, Fable 2 implemented getting “knocked out”. If I ran out of health, rather than dying I would simply fall unconscious for a moment in-game, then pop back up with a bit less experience points than I started with and with a cool battle scar. All in all, it felt like a win win to me.

Eventually, after a couple weeks of off-and-on gameplay, I completed the main storyline of the game. Max was there for this momentous occasion, and complimented my decision to change my character’s clothing and appearance so often as all my carefully curated outfits appeared in one of the final cutscenes. And as a person who loves character customization and dress-up in video games, it thrilled me immensely to see them all on screen again.

I was ultimately hooked with the franchise and have replayed Fable 2 every year since my first playthrough.

Fable 3 and Me:

My 2013 anniversary drawing gift to my then-partner, now-spouse Jay Erskine.

Another year passed, and Fable 3 was coming out. I had moved out of my parent’s house at this point and, upon hearing that Fable 3 would only be available on the Xbox 360, decided it was time that I bought my own. Rather than buy a new one, Max suggested that I buy his used one from him since he wanted to get a new one and I gamed less than him. Fine by me! And given that I still use the same Xbox 360 today, I’d say it was a good deal.

Max showed me how to hook it up and helped me set-up my Xbox Gold account and make my very own Xbox avatar (character creation! Huzzah! My favorite thing!). Now all I had left to do was wait for the new Fable game to come out. In the meantime, I spent most of my Xbox 360 time playing Fable 2 and “Doritos Crash Course” (a Wipe-out style runner that was actually really fun to play in my spare time).

When Fable 3 finally did come out, the first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that THE HERO TALKED, was that I had the wrong TV for this game. All of the text was tiny and there was no way to make it bigger in the settings. It was decidedly set-up for the newer flat screen TVs and not my ancient box TV I’d inherited from my folks. So although I couldn’t read most of the words and undiagnosed ADHD prevented me from processing most of what the characters were saying without readable subtitles, I pressed on.

Throughout my first playthrough, I found things I liked and things I didn’t like. It was very evident from early on in Fable 3 that this wasn’t as visually interesting to me as Fable 2 was. Fable 3 seemed a bit dingier in its colors and had a bit less cartoonishness in its design choices. I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t as excited by it. But that didn’t make it a bad game. Art is subjective after all. This was made up for by the smoother combat mechanics. It felt a lot more fun to fight and had more interesting moves that characters could do. But other parts of the gameplay felt like steps in directions that I wasn’t into at all (having to hold NPCs hands for escort quests squicks me to this day as someone who doesn’t like physical touch with strangers). Still, the fact color customization options were a great addition and the multiplayer options were very fun.

All that said, while Fable 3 wasn’t my favorite Fable game, I liked it more than Fable 1 and still play it once every year or so. Usually when I’m finished with Fable 2 and still have the itch to play more.

That said… my last playthrough of Fable 3, my spouse convinced me to end my 100% playthrough by leveling up my evil weapon to maximum by killing 100 nobles in the game. I did this, felt terrible after, and have been too sad to replay it since.

Thanks Jay. Turd.

What I love, what I hate, and what I hope for the future

The Fable 4 Promo Image from the trailer.

As someone who has very little physical and monetary power in real life, there’s something so satisfactory about going into a world where I can make good choices, help as many people as possible, and use my money and power to make life easier for people. One of the first things I love doing in Fable 2 is buying all of the houses in the poorer regions and setting the rent to as low as I can and if possible, I make housing free. I do the same in Fable 3. I love the freedom to travel wherever I want, do whatever I want, and help people along the way. To be able to save the world and return everyone’s loved ones killed by the big bad back from the dead (Fable 2), to be able to vanquish evil and save the kingdom without having to enslave or hurt anyone to do so (Fable 3). It just feels good to have the power to make a change, even if it’s in a video game. The fact that you can be queer in Fable 2 and 3 (not sure about 1 as I’ve only played it once and never ended up getting married) was also really formative for me as a closeted queer at the time. It was nice to experiment in-game and not be judged about it. Ultimately, I guess my power fantasy is just being able to be myself unapologetically and help as many people as I can while doing it.

The Fable franchise isn’t perfect though. Fable 2 is particularly problematic in its usage of Romani racial slurs to describe the group of wanderers who settle in Bower Lake. The black and white moral choices in all games is also something that I tend to groan at when I play through the games again. I specifically hate that being fat is seen as an immoral choice while being skinny is a moral choice. Most NPCs also find being fat to be “unattractive” and they will comment rude things at a plus-size character throughout the game. It can be very triggering to me, a fat person, when I’ve spent most of my gameplay saving people’s lives only to have someone say that I look disgusting. Additionally, in Fable 1 & 2, being “good” will give a player blonde hair, while being “evil” will give a character darker hair. Big no thank you. In Fable 2 & 3, you are given the ability to have black hairstyles but not given the ability to play a black or POC character. It’s appropriative and not a good look for the game. And while many people might disagree with me on this one given that the hero characters in the franchise are meant to be related by blood, I absolutely think choosing skin tone should be a feature in these games. There’s a time jump of over 500 years, there’s no real excuse for the lack of skin tone options.

In an ideal world, the devs of Fable 4 won’t repeat these problematic choices. For a game that is all about making choices, the first big thing that I hope Fable 4 implements is character customization options. Allow players the ability to really put themself in the game. Allow a world where any person from any background can be the main character. I’d also take a good hard look at the morality system in-game and be really mindful of what choices are black and white and which ones are shades of gray. Body types, hair color, skin tone, etc are not something that morals have an impact on. And while I think it would be fine to have some kind of a system where someone might find someone wearing a “green hat” or something more attractive, it should never be based on a physical trait.

It’s 2022 now, there’s no real excuse not to hire a diverse team to work on the upcoming game and definitely no reason not to hire a Sensitivity Reader (is there a video game equivalent of this title?) to make sure that this new game is the best it can be. I truly hope that as the new team of devs move forward with the development of Fable 4, they keep in mind that the world shouldn’t be broken down into “blonde good, black bad”, “fat ugly, skinny pretty”, etc. That in this kind of a game where choices are key, the devs themselves can choose not to bring the pain of the real world’s crappy superficial views and problematic tropes into Albion.

Whether a player wants to take over the world or save it, can we leave real life prejudice out of it? Please?