Fable: the Lost Chapters is one of the worst games ever made

Started by the_antithesis, February 15, 2013, 11:52:17 AM

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the_antithesis

Fable: the Lost Chapters is one of the worst games ever made. Why? Because it fucking sucks. That's why. This isn't rocket science.

The real problem is one of it's core features: the NPCs. I fucking hate every single one of them. They keep getting in the way. During combat. When you're just walking around.

I should back up and take a breath.

Fable is a game designed by utter tits at Lionhead Studios. Supposedly it was going to have the choices a player make have real consequences with an emphasis on the NPCs around you reacting to your actions in a real way to make the game more compelling. They way they went about doing this had the exact opposite effect.

I remember old games, like say Zelda II: the Adventures of Link where the villagers were annoying because they all said the same line of dialog over and over but you had to talk to everyone to find the guy who gave you the one piece of relevant information. This method was functional, I suppose, but boring as hell and frustrating when you talk to the guy who says "I know nothing" for the nine hundredth time.

Fable one ups this by having the NPCs speak endlessly repeated lines of dialog with some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard ever. Many of these lines are "humorous" such as the mimsy in the guild dining hall who says "I'd like a beer... with an umbrella in it." Ho ho, my sides. One bitch kept making a comment about the guildmaster as he was taking me through the tutorial. It seems that the NPCs will trigger a line if something is within a certain radius of them. This became surreal when I was doing the archery tutorial and the bitch walked right up behind me and spouted this line about the guildmaster. Shut up, bitch. You're lousing up my aim.

The core of this shit is a moral choice system where you get good points for doing good things, and awesome points for doing bad things. I really haven't picked this shit apart very carefully, because who would. But in practice it's fucking stupid. My first real world quest was to go to a picnic area and remove those pesky wasps. They turned out to be giant wasps and had already killed six people. So I defeat them and the game has to indicate that I've gains a positive reputation with the people, so they one who weren't dead start applauding. It was rather surreal and unnatural. I completed a quest for a farmer and his fat wife later and he also suddenly applauded me for a job well done. Fable's fantasy realm of Albion resides somewhere within the uncanny valley.

Another stupid part of the game is the ability to seduce and marry these NPCs. This sounded like a feature I would let atrophy, so I decided to use the flirt button on every female NPC for the hell of it. So as I passed this one chick I go to hit the flirt button but accidentally hit the laugh button which just makes the idiot player character laugh at fucking nothing. but then the chick and two other NPCs that were close enough turned toward me and laughed. It was unnatural and unnerving. Like I'd entered valley of the damned.

This shit is also buggy as hell. After I reloaded a save, I had inexplicably gained the nickname of "chicken chaser" and there are about two dozen unfunny lines the NPCs spout off as you wander around trying to figure out how to accomplish anything. This must be a bug, but I never chased chickens or hit a chicken or anything during play. But I did find a shop where you can buy titles and "Chicken Chaser" and "Arse Face" are two you can buy if you wish to have unfunny dialog shouted at you all damn day.

But the breaking point for me is the combat, which suck a fat one and then sleeps on the wet patch. At first glance it seems to be perfectly functional. Melee, arrows, magic wahey. The problem is the fucking NPCs. They are fucking everywhere, like lice. The target lockon system is supposed to target bad guys, which glow red, before targeting others which glow purple or green, but I would be walking through the woods and happen upon a villager getting his ass kicked by one of those wasps and I would accidentally start attacking him. This came to a head a few minutes ago when I was doing a quest where I have to stand in one place and kill all the respawning baddies until they stop respawning. But they gave me "help" in the form of a rival NPC WHO KEPT GETTING IN THE FUCKING WAY. I tried to use the target lock to be a tad more effective than dicing empty air while an enemy hit me again and I use up all my health potions and resurrection points (read: lives). But then I wound up zapping my partner with lightning and I just couldn't get that shit to stop targeting her, so I rage uninstalled and decided there were better things to do with my time, like nailing my scrotum to a coffee table. The combat was going to be a large percentage of the game as the forest area, after I went up a level, was populated with a bunch of bandits so I couldn't take four steps without agroing something. It was ridiculous. And there were more wandering friendly NPCs, too. I imagine in a few levels this forest was going to be like a packed mosh pit.

Seriously, I cannot recommend this game to anyone who isn't an indecisive suicidal that need to be nudged in a certain direction. The combat is weak with a buggy target locking system and the whole game is undone by its core feature, the NPCs. They do not seem more realistic than in older RPGs. They seem less realistic, actually. And the ability to be a bastard with the poor controls just means it's too easy to accidentally do something bad and ruin your attempt at the good ending. Because you will play as either going for the good or bad ending. That's what these moral choices always boil down to. "Play the game twice, fuckhead," it says. It's a way for the developer to pretend the game is twice as long so you get your money's worth. But it's not twice as long. It's just the same thing happening more than once.

This tangent bears scrutiny. The recent Zero Punctuation on The Cave and the accompanying text column touches on this, but I think we can expand on this.

Moral choice systems were used quite a bit last decade in games like Fable, Bioshock, Infamous, etc. It came from the noble idea that the player's actions should have consequences because in games like Half-Life, you can shoot people who are supposed to be your friends and the game would still try to push you as the new jesus. The problem is that not how they work in practice. In practice they are just playing the game twice to get both the good and bad endings because otherwise it locks out half the content, or at least it locks out half the ending content.

Recently, there seems to be a streamlining of this system where instead of every action you take during the game leads up to a final result where accidentally helping an old lady across the street can jeopardize your bad ending run, the ending comes down to a final choice at the very end, as in the case of The Cave and Bastian, and in both cases there isn't a checkpoint right before the ending so you have to play through the whole game, or the final level twice to get both endings. This makes the gameplay padding all the more obvious. Play the game twice to tick a different box at the end, you sod.

Maybe moral choice systems were never intended to bring a richer experience to the player but to arbitrarily pad out gameplay by simply requiring the player play the game again. On the whole, it just leads to a lackluster experience for the player with the moral choice being mostly ignored by the player, as in Bioshock where no one really cared if they murdered little girls or not, or it becomes and embuggerance, as in Fable where in attempting to reinforce the moral choice aspect, it creates an uneasy sense that this world and the people in it are not quite right. In trying to make them behave more human, they come off as less human.

Getting back to Fable, even if they had pulled off this moral choice and the NPC reaction thing I doubt if I would have liked it because the environments are too tight and it becomes a clusterfuck when trying to fight anything. Friendly NPCs keep getting in the way. That should be the tagline on the box. If I actually cared about them, I could call it frustrating. But since I don't care about those little ones and zeroes, the whole point gets filed down.

Hydra009

#1
Quote from: "the_antithesis"Moral choice systems were used quite a bit last decade in games like Fable, Bioshock, Infamous, etc. It came from the noble idea that the player's actions should have consequences because in games like Half-Life, you can shoot people who are supposed to be your friends and the game would still try to push you as the new jesus. The problem is that not how they work in practice. In practice they are just playing the game twice to get both the good and bad endings because otherwise it locks out half the content, or at least it locks out half the ending content.

Recently, there seems to be a streamlining of this system where instead of every action you take during the game leads up to a final result where accidentally helping an old lady across the street can jeopardize your bad ending run, the ending comes down to a final choice at the very end, as in the case of The Cave and Bastian, and in both cases there isn't a checkpoint right before the ending so you have to play through the whole game, or the final level twice to get both endings. This makes the gameplay padding all the more obvious. Play the game twice to tick a different box at the end, you sod.
I agree.  I can't think of any games that really pull off the ol' karma meter successfully.  Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR are probably the best examples I've played (most of the rest you get to "choose" between being Jesus or being a baby-kicking sociopath) and even there they don't work out very well.  You basically just get to decide which ending you want and which party members you want to keep or get rid of.  You never really get the chance to make a nuanced character and have the NPCs respond to that semi-realistically.  Or make moral choices that really amount to much.

Let's say you're interrogating a prisoner.  You get the "choice" to torture the prisoner or ask politely.  If you opt for torture, you get a couple dark side points and you lose some rep with your good-aligned party member.  Then on to the next scene.  If you ask politely, you get a couple light side points and you gain some rep with your good-aligned party member.  Then on to the next scene.  See any real difference there?  I sure don't.

Too binary.  Too shallow.  And players simply game the system, picking whatever moral path gives them the greatest rewards.

BarkAtTheMoon

Guess what, anti. Fable: TLC is arguably the best of the series. 3 is generally considered much worse.
"When you landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, 'Well done.' It's just a polite thing to do." - Eddie Izzard

BarkAtTheMoon

Quote from: "Hydra009"
Quote from: "the_antithesis"Moral choice systems were used quite a bit last decade in games like Fable, Bioshock, Infamous, etc. It came from the noble idea that the player's actions should have consequences because in games like Half-Life, you can shoot people who are supposed to be your friends and the game would still try to push you as the new jesus. The problem is that not how they work in practice. In practice they are just playing the game twice to get both the good and bad endings because otherwise it locks out half the content, or at least it locks out half the ending content.

Recently, there seems to be a streamlining of this system where instead of every action you take during the game leads up to a final result where accidentally helping an old lady across the street can jeopardize your bad ending run, the ending comes down to a final choice at the very end, as in the case of The Cave and Bastian, and in both cases there isn't a checkpoint right before the ending so you have to play through the whole game, or the final level twice to get both endings. This makes the gameplay padding all the more obvious. Play the game twice to tick a different box at the end, you sod.
I agree.  I can't think of any games that really pull off the ol' karma meter successfully.  Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR are probably the best examples I've played (most of the rest you get to "choose" between being Jesus or being a baby-kicking sociopath) and even there they don't work out very well.  You basically just get to decide which ending you want and which party members you want to keep or get rid of.  You never really get the chance to make a nuanced character and have the NPCs respond to that semi-realistically.  Or make moral choices that really amount to much.

Let's say you're interrogating a prisoner.  You get the "choice" to torture the prisoner or ask politely.  If you opt for torture, you get a couple dark side points and you lose some rep with your good-aligned party member.  Then on to the next scene.  If you ask politely, you get a couple light side points and you gain some rep with your good-aligned party member.  Then on to the next scene.  See any real difference there?  I sure don't.

Too binary.  Too shallow.  And players simply game the system, picking whatever moral path gives them the greatest rewards.

Infamous wasn't too bad about it. The people acted differently towards you and you got different powers depending on your karma level. Overall it didn't make much of a difference, but it was fun being able to light all the citizens up if you wanted being evil for cheap XP.
"When you landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, 'Well done.' It's just a polite thing to do." - Eddie Izzard

Nonsensei

I very much enjoyed The original fable. Never got to play 2 and 3 was horrible.
And on the wings of a dream so far beyond reality
All alone in desperation now the time has come
Lost inside you\'ll never find, lost within my own mind
Day after day this misery must go on

BarkAtTheMoon

Same, Nonsensei. TLC was decent, though it does take a while to get into it, which anti apparently never made it to that point. Fuck Microsoft for making 2 Xbox exclusive (Hey assholes! You make Windows, too! WTF excuse was there for no PC release?). And 3 did blow. The combat system was atrocious.

I hate this recent trend of RPG games dumbing down the combat and speeding it up to appeal to ADHD teenagers who play FPS. Dragon Age 2 is another good example of that. It just takes combat strategy and nuance out of the game and turns it into button mashers.
"When you landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, 'Well done.' It's just a polite thing to do." - Eddie Izzard

the_antithesis

Quote from: "BarkAtTheMoon"Same, Nonsensei. TLC was decent, though it does take a while to get into it, which anti apparently never made it to that point.

Christ, you're not kidding. The opening tutorial sections drag on and on. Watching your character grow from a small boy with Down's syndrome to an adult with an inner ear infection is arduous. There was really no point to those openings except to try and get you to care about your character or his sister or, well, anything. Giving me the option to faff about at the guild before moving on to the next stage was a bit annoying. Fetch quest ahoy. I kind of wish there was a better way to interact with the people of the world, but fetch quests are at least functional if uninteresting. Find four apples for the cook so she can bake a pie for the guildmaster.

Bah.

The whole opening could have been broken down to a single cutscene and a single tutorial level so I could get cracking on getting bored with doing the quests in the world instead of being bored before I even start the game proper.

the_antithesis

OK, so I didn't rage uninstall like I said I did, but I'm uninstalling it right now. Why? Because arena combat is the worst thing in the fucking world and manitory arena combat needs to be murdered and then its corpse raped by a troop of red-assed baboons.

I swear to fucking christ, the combat in this game is fucking horrible. I could ignore it if the fighting has context, like I'm walking down a path and there's a monster in the way and I can continue once there isn't a monster in the way. You know, the story of the ages. But getting thrown into a big room to fight wave after wave on monster for no reason other than to fight them just makes how tedious the whole thing is because monsters have stupid amounts of health and it just takes forever to get them to lie down and spray xp orbs all over the place.

I can see that they were trying for a dynamic combat with strategy and timing, but really I just wind up wailing on the enemies until my left mouse button falls off. Or my wheel mouse is about to fall off because that's the block button. The enemies attack far to frequently for me to land more than a few hits at a time, especially when a clusterfuck is around me and when I'm hitting one guy, one of his mates sneaks up behind me like a bitch and hits me. So I would actually need to constantly block during this, which is about as tedious as it sounds. There is no strategy or timing if every time you let your guard down to take a swing you get hit three fucking times before the button press to get your stupid character's guard back up is send to HR and the request forms are filed triplicate.

The controls in general are a bit of a mess. You cast magic by holding down the shift key and then pressing the left mouse button to attack. But shift is also the "suck up experience orbs" button so I would up accidentally shooting lightning at fucking nothing while a werewolf type thing clawed at my ass. Capslock is the sneak toggle, so I often accidentally would toggle stealth mode and walk depressingly slowly around the arena hoping the armed thugs who'd just been stabbing me in the chest won't notice me. Right mouse button is the run button, which is kind of slow and fuck, so walking is extra slow and fuck, but the right mouse button is also the special attack button. If you hit an enemy enough without getting hit yourself, your sword will glow purple and you'll break their defenses and cause a teeny weeny amount of damage like every other time, but at least it's not blocked and thus does fucking nothing. So I could try to make a hasty retreat and wind up using that special armor breaking attack on fucking nothing while still getting maimed by the thing I was trying to run away from. On top of this, it uses the AWSD keys for movement and Q will sheath/unsheath your sword F2 is the potion/food button but 2 is the fart button. In the heat of battle, it's piss easy to put your sword away to switch to the fists, where you cannot block and then fart when you need to get your health back up. And the camera wasn't much of a team player, mostly because I spent most of the battles next to a wall, partially because this keep fuckers from sneaking up behind me but mostly because fights inevitably wind up against a wall because attacking stuff makes you lunge forward and push your opponent back until they hit a fucking wall.

I got through five rounds of this shit and quit because I couldn't fucking take it anymore. I was just so fucking bored. Turns out, I failed the quest because of this. I could have stuck it out if there was a clear indication of how many rounds I would have to put up with this shit. But there wasn't. Turns out I would have had to fight a couple trolls in the next two rounds. I hope they didn't have multiple waves where you deal with more and more of them each wave, because a single troll can wreck my shit without even trying. That's not an exciting fight. It's a fucking chore. The whole arena thing is a fucking chore Maybe the game could have me wash dishes and mow the lawn, too. Sheesh.

Evidently, I was interested in the game a bit more than I care to admit. It kind of reminds me of various other games I had played, such as the now dead Dungeon Runners MMO. The environments are tight and not well suited to fighting stuff. But they look kind of nice and as long at you pretend not to notice that it's a series of linear paths connected like bits of string, you can fool yourself into thinking it has an expansive world to explore.

The ability to woo chicks (or dudes) was kind of ham-handed, but I was doing it anyway. I had made some significant gains on the local barmaid, whom I wooed probably a bit more than I should because she was showing some leg. But then, she was also almost identical to the barmaid at the guild who kept tripping and dropping shit, which made me feel sorry for her. As, sweet pity. But I wasn't wooing her as much, but I think I was. It's like that episode of Friends where Chandler was seeing one of Joey's sisters but could tell them apart, so he wound up kissing one of the other ones. Hilarious. But the consequence of them using the same female voice actor for all the female NPCs and they all deliver the same goddamn lines. They keep asking me to do lunch sometime. Is this Beverly Hills?

I didn't buy a house. Well, I accidentally did once, but sold it again right away because it was in a shitty location and I wanted my money back. The only reason to buy a house is to not have to sleep in a hotel all the time or on a mat in a wooden crate with one of the kids. That's not weird, is it? I suppose I could find some entertainment from the dollhouse gameplay of decorating my house to show what a twat I am. It would also be a good use of all the money the game keeps giving me, except I wasn't getting that much money at all. Just enough to blow it all on the armor and weapons I need.

I guess the reason I didn't have a lot of money or experience is because I wasn't playing the game properly to make use of the various exploits to gain yourself a ton of both. Well, that means Lionhead failed in their stated goal of letting the player make whatever choices they want, doesn't it? If there's an obvious correct way to do things, then it's not really a choice. If I don't feel like becoming a medival fantasy slum lord or a gladiatorial combatant, forcing me to do so anyway. is just taking that choice away from me.

So, uh, yeah. I'm sure it's a great game if you're not a flipper-handed freak baby who has trouble navigating the controls and also not insecure enough to find rebinding keys to be a sign of weakness. I just found the combat to be frustratingly difficult not because it was hard, per se, but that it just took too damned long because it's a dull battle of attrition. Most RPGs are, but Fable manages to take just long enough to make it boring. I'm less worried that I won't defeat the monster than just tired of wailing on the same fucking guy(s) for the past ten minutes and want to do something fucking else. Like not play this game anymore. Ha!

SvZurich

Anti, try an X-Com game out.  The new one might be just right for you.  The original is a bit more unforgiving.
Kimberly (HSBUH) aka Baroness Sylvia endorses the Meadow Party's Bill N' Opus for the 2024 Presidential election! Or a Sanders/Warren ticket.

the_antithesis

Quote from: "drunkenshoe"So, no scrotum chin man pic?


Just for you.

the_antithesis

#10
As an aside, the question no one wanted to know the answer to, that since I was playing Fable in the first place because I didn't feel like shelling out for Kingdoms of Amalur, had my time with Fable scratch that tedious fantasy RPG itch or do I still want to play that stupid thing?

Well, I was curious enough to redownload the demo and look and see. I am pleased to report that my desire to play the full game of Amalur is diminished, but not completely gone.

Amalur is much, much better than Fable in a number of ways. For one, it didn't have a focus on trying to make you give a shit about NPCs, so they don't run their mouths all fucking day. One amusing bit in Fable where I was fighting these werewolf-like things outside a village when a group of NPCS pounded on the gates shouting the same three lines over and over while I was trying to fight. I eventually got fed up and socked one of them in the face to shut him up, but he was one of those guys with a tiny dick, so he started fighting me while monsters were fighting me. I wound up killing him and gaining the awesome points for committing a crime. It was totally worth it. Like when I accidentally killed another idiot when he walked in front of my bow while I was aiming at something. Practically assisted suicide.

Amalur still has incidental bits of dialog, but it's toned way down because it's not trying to hard to make you care. And as a result, I wind up caring a bit more. Amalur doesn't let you seduce the barmaids, though. I wish I had stuck with Fable long enough to see the whitewashed way they represent sex. I'm sure it was going to be disappointing.

[youtubehd:32l9e9zt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFrmwpSL8G0[/youtubehd:32l9e9zt]
[youtubehd:32l9e9zt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekC_MuSOzL8[/youtubehd:32l9e9zt]
Yep.

*sigh* I need to get laid.

I had noted previously that the environments seemed very tight and claustrophobic in Fable. That's because they fucking are. At least compared to Amalur they are. There's a lot more room to run around and get eaten by wolves. Amalur does feel like an MMO, what with the wide open spaces and the plants around you can harvest to make potions and such. The developer was working on an MMO for this same world before they went belly up How much of this is the MMO but in single player form is anyone's guess.

The environments are kind of pretty but arrows are still a bit worthless as you can't shoot something unless it's depressingly close to melee range. Who've thought Minecraft would have better archery than two RPGs? Although Fable allowed you to get a headshot which pops the enemy's head off like a dandilion in a spout of blood from the neck and then it rolls merrily around. I can appreciate that.

Combat in Amalur is similar but different. The main thing is it uses different keys for stuff which takes a bit of getting used to. It otherwise seems to work more or less the same, if a bit more responsive. I would get my ass handed to me in my hat in fable when I accidentally hit Q and put away my sword and then I would hit Q again but my character refused to get his weapon out while he was busy getting his face pounded into gravy. I didn't seem to have this problem in Amalur, but you have no reason to hit anything with a bare fist, so that's not an option. Otherwise, I can't see any appreciable difference between the fighting. There probably is more to it. It looks like Amalur doesn't have the bad guys spam you with attacks so you never get much of a chance to hit back, but I could be wrong. It might do that to you later in the game, unlike Fable which had enemies do that at the early levels.

I'm also pleased to report that Amalur does give your character emotions during the dialogs after all. I met some character who made some kind of startling revelation and my character's eye became very wide in a poor imitation of shock. She otherwise had the same blank expression she always does. Hilarious.

The main thing about Kingdoms of Amalur is that I am still intrigued by the plot and would like to see where it goes without just reading it on GameFAQ. I'd like to know why my character has no fate and, indeed, has the ability to change fate. It was kind of unnerving when the fortune teller near the beginning of the game was telling me this with strong language that suggested that he thought I was an unnatural aberration and an affront to the gods and was mulling over his chances against me should he decided to try to kill me. I'd kind of like to see where they went with this. It's stupid, but it held my interest. So take that for what it's worth.

Fable, on the other hand, just didn't interest me. I really couldn't tell you what the overarching plot was other than I was sent to do quests that I'd rather someone else did while I sexed up the barmaid. Oh, there was something about my sister who's not a blind nutcase who, I guess kills people and some reason why my whole village was killed just to find me and I'm a chose one sort of cunt or something. It all seemed rather distant when I'm trying to figure out where to sleep for the night or wishing the quests I didn't want would just go away. I guess I didn't care much for the plot. It was being doled out in small bites between random fetch quests and flirting with every character in town. Frankly, seemed a bit more generic than Amalur's anti-fate intrigue.

But Amalur didn't have sex in it.

[youtubehd:32l9e9zt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fqQcEDVgok[/youtubehd:32l9e9zt]

Instead it had woo. Woo with vigor.

SvZurich

Yep, X-Com might be more your speed.  Appease governments, kill aliens, capture aliens and cut them open, salvage tech, or go for overkill.  Train troops and keep them alive so they can grow.  Consider teaching your troops to become psychic.  Use the aliens' tech against them.  Upgrade and research.  Save civilians or blow off alien attacks.

Not sure if the new X-Com game has base invasions.  Now those were fun back in the day!  :D  Taught me the value of restarting and building choke-points near entries.  :D
Kimberly (HSBUH) aka Baroness Sylvia endorses the Meadow Party's Bill N' Opus for the 2024 Presidential election! Or a Sanders/Warren ticket.

the_antithesis

I dunno. Isn't that a strategy game? My approach to strategy is to take a hammer and wail on the disk until it declares me the winner. Kind of sucks if it was a download.

I really don't get along well with strategy games, based on my past experience with Chess and Warhammer Fantasy Battle where I would suck balls through a coffee stirstick.

SvZurich

It's a tactical game, and you head up the secret organization that hopes to save the world from goddamn aliens and traitorous governments who sell humanity out!  :D
Kimberly (HSBUH) aka Baroness Sylvia endorses the Meadow Party's Bill N' Opus for the 2024 Presidential election! Or a Sanders/Warren ticket.

the_antithesis

There's a difference between strategy and tactics?