	Fable – The Lost Chapters
	Developer: Lionhead Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios Release Date: 21/10/2005 Players: 1	Words By:
It’s tough enough for me to play a game through properly once, so it has to be rather special for me to want to play it a second time. Thankfully Fable is special – a great Xbox game made even better on the PC. Fable (for those that don’t know) is third person RPG that allows you to pretty much go anywhere and do anything you like. You start in your childhood years and as the story progresses and grows so do you. One of the best features is just how YOU change to reflect your actions. Be nice and lovely to everyone and watch as you are shrouded in a white light and butterflies follow you around – decide to be evil and horns grow from your head and people run away as you approach. Yes it’s been done before, but rarely with as much style as in Fable. In true RPG style the more you do the more you grow. The more you use a particular skill the better you get and its up to you what sort of character you want to be – you can be a big burly axe wielder or a stealthy small magic user. Thanks to the game’s engine all of this progress can actually be seen even as far as your character develops some rather nasty cuts and scars. The more you eat the fatter you get and the demon drink can show some rather funny results. It’s GTA San Andreas meets Middle Earth for want of a better description. The move to the PC has allowed Fable to grow. For a start there are the graphics – it looks better than ever – very cartoon-like and kudos to Microsoft for including proper correct widescreen resolutions. At 1920 by 1200 resolution Fable looks stunning – every bit the interactive cartoon. The world of Fable is very detailed – and every inch of the PC is pushed to make the game world feel living and breathing. A special mention to the sounds – still as good as they were on the Xbox with great use of speech. At its heart Fable still is a rather linear game and if you choose just to follow the basic story then its still a short (but wonderful) experience – however you can just decide to go off and follow the many side missions or just go around and have some fun – exploring possibly the best looking RPG world yet on the PC. However in an attempt to combat people’s main complaint about the game (its length) The Lost Chapters aims to increase the games length by about a third. It adds new side quests, new locations, characters and (although I have not got there yet) there is supposed to be an extension to the main story once you have completed the original game. I must also mention just how good a job has been done with the controls for the PC version. The Xbox version felt perfect with the joypad – but with clever use of the standard FPS shooter keys and the mouse The Lost Chapters feels even more of a joy to control and the addition of a “hero” key allows for you to get a close up look at your character and the effects your decisions have made on him. It’s a small but welcome addition. Fable is still not perfect though, and some of my biggest complaints about the Xbox game are still present. Firstly the rather odd save/load mechanism. You can still not save when you want to and so you really need to set some time aside to get the most out of the game. If you quit out anytime prior to the completion of one of your missions you pretty much have to start it from the beginning and some of the missions are rather long. The second problem is that even though the game tries to portray an open sandbox world when it comes to the missions and story it is far too scripted. If you fail a task then it’s time to try again – the game makes no allowance for branching the story should you fail a mission or kill the wrong person. Its no Morrowind as far as this part of the game is concerned. However, those niggles aside it’s difficult to find fault with the game. Even those who have played the Xbox version could enjoy the game a second time now it looks better than ever. Let’s just hope by the time a sequel comes out they have allowed for the game to be even more freeform.

Best Bits
- Possibly best looking PC game yet
- A really enjoyable RPG
- Nice believable game world

Worst Bits
- Save system just does not work
- It’s not as clever as it thinks


by: dUnKle