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painedforever posted:Fable must have been successful when it came out, right? There was a lot of hype, and it did well enough to spawn sequels. But what was good about it? The graphics weren't bad, but they weren't that good for the time, were they? Or was it the gameplay? For a lot of people (myself included), I guess the main appeal was that it was an accessible third-person open world sandbox in a time where there really weren’t many other games in that particular genre at all apart from Grand Theft Auto III or its spin-offs.
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Jul 24, 2022 06:11
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| # ? May 19, 2024 07:32 |
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Update 17 – How to Kill Friends and Alienate People Last time, we learned that Jack of Blades is being resurrected in the Northern Wastes, and that the Guildmaster is singularly responsible for the Guild tolerating and accepting murdering, kidnapping psychopaths. Now we’re gonna find out what we can do about it all. Scythe directed us to talk to Briar.   “Everything indicates that Jack’s new form will emerge from behind the Bronze Gate, and this structure is the key to opening it.” “It doesn’t want just any Heroes either. The first instruction calls for “The King of the Arena” no less.” “Why don’t you pay Thunder a visit? He knows the Arena inside and out. I’ve checked with the Guild and they say he’s in Knothole Glade. You’ve still got Jack’s mask haven’t you? Good. You’ll need it to trap the souls. I still can’t believe he might not be dead…Anyway, I better start researching the second inscription.”Briar teleports away. And then we get a message from an old acquaintance…  “Yes, little Hero, I’m back! And our business is not quite finished. You destroyed my sword, remember? Have you ANY idea how many centuries I spent looking for it? But it’s worth is done. Soon I will have power beyond your imagining. And you will be the first to die!”Jack will continue to pester us as a disembodied voice for till the end of the game. Now let’s head to Knothole Glade.  Click here for our canonical choices during this quest.  You’d think he might need a Hero to look into the disappearance of his youngest son though.  “Now leave us alone!”I just love the implication that Thunder is so desperate to be relevant he’s just pestering people for quests.   “I will tell you what I know. If it will get you out of my sight. We were both once called “Kings of the Arena”, but there have been many Heroes in the past who have claimed that name.” “Now go. Unless you’re here to take my soul, just as you took my sister.”The scene ends there, but Jack chimes in with a pertinent piece of advice. “Why go all the way to the Arena? You have a perfectly good soul right in front of you! And you’ve already killed his sister….hahahahahaha!”He’s right; why go all the way to the Arena when Thunder counts? Not only that, but Thunder’s been a massive jerk since we were young. Always dismissing us as a “farmboy”, his attitude never changes, even if you spare Whisper and leave him with Lady Grey. He will always be a petulant little poo poo, so why don’t we free him from his stupid attitude?  Fighting Thunder just results in a rehash of the duel for Lady Grey. No new moves, no new nothing. “Yes, my bloodthirsty friend, strike him down!” And so Thunder’s soul is ours. Briar will ask if we have “that Arena soul” yet, asking us to return to the Archon’s Shrine. Now, since the alternative quest is rather in depth, I’ll detail it for you guys rather than just summarising it; Click here for the good boy version of this quest. Good Guy Arena posted:
   How she recognises Thunder’s soul is beyond me.   “There’s always me of course, but as you can see I’m still alive, and I plan to stay that way.”HehehehehehehehahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA! “You’ll have to pay her tomb in Oakvale another visit. I know this won’t be easy, but Scarlet was always one to make sacrifices, remember?”While it doesn’t sound until you go to Oakvale to claim your mother’s soul, Jack has another sage piece of advice. “Oh, poor Scarlet…hasn’t she suffered enough? Would you really do that to your own mother? Take Briar. She is of no use to anyone.”He’s right again. We don’t know what terrible fate we’re consigning these souls to, and we want to feed our own mother to it? That’s a terrible thing to do. Even in death, she could suffer something like the Soul Cairn from Skyrim. And then there’s Briar herself. She’s been an enormous twit to us from the start of our adventure. She was worse than Thunder; he just dismissed our talents, while she told us to clean the kitchens and even suggested we take up begging. The only thing that’s kept us from killing her all this time is plot railroading.   Briar’s boss pattern is that she’ll split into several separate forms. Only one is the real Briar, and the rest are meant to distract you while she powers up for an attack. The easiest way to neuter her is to use Slow Time, which gives you plenty of time to just eliminate the clones and find the real Briar without getting hit.   Once you hit the real one, you have a set amount of time to wail on her before she pulls off the same trick. Rinse and repeat until she’s dead.  Briar’s soul is claimed. Now let me go over the sequence to take our mother’s soul; Doing This to your Poor Mother posted:
  “But how will you know what the last inscription says now? Ahh, “The Oldest Soul”. Why, the Guildmaster would be a perfect choice, don’t you think?” I believe right now Jack is speaking for most of the player base. Had we not killed Briar, she would have told us the same information, although Jack would chime in to nominate the Guildmaster for the role. Briar would hope the Guild might deduce a suitable alternative. Scythe also takes a moment after we kill Briar to admonish us, but urges us to keep going. Anyway, let’s go to the Guild.  Guard: “And the Guildmaster’s only gone and holed himself up in the Guild Woods. We’re not supposed to let anyone near ‘im.”  Apprentice: “His soul has been trapped in the Lychfield Graveyard for centuries. Our texts suggest it should be in the Graveyard Circle, you know, where you found the tunnel to Bargate prison.” Guard: “Catching souls? Never heard such nonsense…” Apprentice: “Well, good luck, Hero!” Now, because going after Nostro is the least interesting of the two outcomes, I’ll detail it quickly and get it out of the way; The Boringest Soul posted:
Now…let’s go kill the one man that has it coming more than anyone else.  As the guard said, they’re under orders not to let anyone near the Guildmaster. You have to force your way past these guards.   Bullshit. The first thing he said to us was “You don’t look like Hero material to me”. What a lying bastard.  “Such a pity it has to end like this. Can’t you see Jack is just using you to destroy the Guild?”And what a pity that would be. The Guild of psychopaths and assholes, as created by you, Weaver, the man who killed so many in a bloody revolution just to let people be murderers if they wanted. “I can’t allow you to do this. Guards!”    The gimmick here is the Guildmaster shields himself and occasionally picks out a guard to make invincible. He will also try to heal them on occasion. As you slay the others, their numbers will dwindle and Weaver will be unable to shield them. It’s a nice metaphor for what the Guildmaster truly is; a pathetic man letting other people fight battles for him, hiding behind a veneer of philosophy. Jack has a nice little comment on the battle as it goes on; “Oh Guildmaster! Soon your health will be low…very low.”Now let’s make our dreams come true, shall we?  Why, Weaver? How have we disappointed you? If anything, our Hero is the perfect reflection of your philosophy. He is free from moral constraints, killing and saving as the mood takes him. He is neither rigidly good nor wholly evil. When you told people they could be a terror on all Albion if they wanted to, did you think they would never bite the hand that fed them? Did you think that the leopards would never eat your face despite telling them they could eat all the faces they wanted? “You have been given too much power. And it has corrupted you.”What should we have done differently? Perhaps we would have been more morally correct to encourage other people to go massacre Barrow Fields instead? Perhaps we should have told people it was okay to slay their sister for the Sword of Aeons if they felt like it? Perhaps we should have massacred half the Guild in order to shape it to our own philosophical likening? “But it isn’t too late to turn back. Stop this now, and there is still hope for you. For all of us. Please, let me teleport you to the Graveyard. Take Nostro’s soul instead!” This is just like the Trader Massacre prompt; if you’ve come this far, why bother changing your mind? Perhaps there is an infinitesimally small chance you’ve felt a pang of guilt over the Guildmaster and feel like repenting, but there’s something wrong with you if that happens. If you’re reading this LP, and you ever felt sympathy for the Guildmaster, seek help now! If you accept, he thanks you and you play out the Nostro sequence as detailed above. But we’re going to kill the bastard.     And so ends the legacy of Weaver, AKA The Guildmaster. A man so stupid, he created and raised a generation of morally compromised Heroes, believing that they would never turn on him, specifically. In Fable 2, a loading screen will tell you there is a rumour the Guildmaster died with the words “YOUR HEALTH IS LOW” cut into his forehead, performed specifically by the Hero of Oakvale. It seems even the devs agree this ending was canon. Scythe chimes in to chide you for choosing to sacrifice the Guildmaster. Remember that he supported him to become the next leader, so he’s as morally compromised as old Weaver. It really is astonishing how up their own asses these people are.        “You must face him alone. May death close his eyes to you.”If Briar was still alive, she would give us her own version of this spiel. Scythe would still be present, but just to chat with briefly before going on. Once the scene ends, Jack sends us a final message. “You’re too late, little Hero. Once more, too late. Come to the Bronze Gate, we have unfinished business….”And that is where we shall leave things for now. Join me next time, where we engage Jack of Blades in an epic fight to the death….again!
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Jul 24, 2022 23:36
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“But I sense how he fears you. Take my soul, and avenge our family once and for all. And make him pay, son.”
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I... actually like this bit? Being able to kill the people that annoyed the poo poo out of you is an actual 'evil' choice with merit and reason behind it. I also like how they make the Guildmaster's end utterly pathetic in all aspects. Briar Rose and Thunder at least make a fight of it, the Guildmaster is just shown to be the ultimate hypocrite.
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Jul 25, 2022 01:02
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Comrade Koba posted:For a lot of people (myself included), I guess the main appeal was that it was an accessible third-person open world sandbox in a time where there really weren’t many other games in that particular genre at all apart from Grand Theft Auto III or its spin-offs. I think this is how I felt about it. I liked RPGs, even though I never did any tabletop. I'd played a bit of Baldur's Gate 2, and a bit of Icewind Dale 2, but I guess I didn't really like the version of D&D they were modelled on. Neverwinter Nights was pretty good, and I played that so much. The original campaign... I never got around to getting the expansions until I bought the Enhanced Edition... which I didn't play because it feels very janky. Fable looked like it'd be fun, and you could play an RPG in which you could build up a character the way you wanted, and not be constrained by "Classes" or "Dice-rolls" and what-have-you. LJN92 posted:Update 17 – How to Kill Friends and Alienate People Are you getting EVIL POINTS (tm) for any of this, or have we moved past that?
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Jul 25, 2022 07:35
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painedforever posted:Are you getting EVIL POINTS (tm) for any of this, or have we moved past that? Yes, we're still getting evil points. It's something like 180 for every, uh, "friend" we kill. Technically speaking you could call these less than optimal decisions, as there's no functional reward, but how could I not kill all the people who have annoyed us to date?
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Jul 25, 2022 08:20
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painedforever posted:I think this is how I felt about it. I liked RPGs, even though I never did any tabletop. I'd played a bit of Baldur's Gate 2, and a bit of Icewind Dale 2, but I guess I didn't really like the version of D&D they were modelled on. Neverwinter Nights was pretty good, and I played that so much. The original campaign... I never got around to getting the expansions until I bought the Enhanced Edition... which I didn't play because it feels very janky. I think another thing to keep in mind about this is that Fable was initially marketed as a console release. It wasn't ported to PC until a year after release and only (IIRC) because they desperately needed the money. While RPG:s like Baldur's Gate and Fallout were available for PC players, console players who were looking for an RPG experience that wasn't a JRPG didn't have much luck. I guess there was the Xbox port of Morrowind that came out in 2002, but I can't recall much else. Comrade Koba fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 08:46
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painedforever posted:Fable looked like it'd be fun, and you could play an RPG in which you could build up a character the way you wanted, and not be constrained by "Classes" or "Dice-rolls" and what-have-you.
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Jul 25, 2022 15:50
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Sylphosaurus posted:I'd like to add that the thought behind Fable is really good. Having a protagonist that physically changes depending on how you choose to level your character is a great idea and I wish that this would have been used in more games. I feel that the development team at Lionhead learned a lot from this game and changed a lot of things for the better in the sequel. Unfortunately this was mostly tossed to the wayside when Fable 3 came around, but that's a whole other matter. It 's an interesting idea, but in terms of wanting to have your character the way you wanted them (the quintessential part of any RPG), it tended to place limitations on how you played the game. If you favored melee builds, your character would always come out a musclebound hulk. In theory it's realistic, but then, some people probably just didn't like the fact that their character would end up monstrously muscly, and might avoid melee to avoid making their character look weird. Then there's Will, which would give your character glowing lines all over their body. Not even really necessary, and lots of people might just not like having it at all. Also, you could end up with all potential effects at once if you just maxed out everything, resulting in a huge, musclebound glowing hulk. Some people might enjoy the idea, but it's also a drag on anyone that doesn't like it. LJN92 fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 22:59
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Update 18 – Fabled End It is time to stop Jack of Blades once and for all….for the second time. Click here to watch Jack die again.  This place is known as “Archon’s Folly”. The Archons were the ancient rulers of the Old Kingdom, FYI.  That’s Jack talking, sounding even more growly and demonic than usual. “It’s been a long wait…but I knew you’d free me eventually. Yes, always the puppet. Don’t you ever get tired of having your strings pulled? I am no mortal man. The gods and demons you fear and worship are as nothing to me.”    Yup, Jack’s a dragon now.  While he’s seated here, you can attack him, with either ranged or melee. If you’re up close, he’ll try to bite you. If you hang back, he’ll slam the ground and send out a shockwave as pictured above. The only way to avoid it is to reach the high ground behind you to your left and right.  When Jack has had enough of sitting on the ground, he’ll take flight. Sometimes this involves him hovering and shooting fireballs like above. When he’s there, you can hit him with ranged attacks. “All this heat, all these flames…it’s just like the day Oakvale burned!” Sometimes after taking off, Jack will summon allies. Minions and Summoners. “Fool! I have existed for millenia! You can’t possibly comprehend what I am!” Sometimes Jack will choose to strafe you from above with a stream of fire. You can’t hit him while he’s doing this. He’ll often kill his own allies too, like this Summoner here. “Have you any idea how small you are to me now?” “Albion will burn! Everything you’ve ever done has been for nothing!” “Don’t you realise!? I could never have left this place without YOUR help! Haaahahahaha!”Ironic last words, Jack.     I believe this is Scythe talking, although his voice sounds off.  “Can you hear me? It is vital you cast the Mask away!” “Wear me…and the world will bow at your feet….” “Listen to me! Destroy the Mask! Now!” “Wear me….and you shall be immortal….” “Destroy it!”We’re being offered untold power in exchange for…well, seemingly nothing. What a sweet deal, yeah? Obviously we don’t give a poo poo about karma points, so we’ll jump at the opportunity to have the power of the gods. …is what I’d say if this offer wasn’t the biggest load of bullshit I’d ever heard.    After resisting its hypnotic power, our Hero hurls the mask into the lava, where it disappears.  “The day the Hero of Oakvale slew the dragon Jack of Blades. The day the strange creature behind the mask was finally banished from this world.”The Guildmaster narrates regardless of his existence, FYI.    The credits play over a panning shot of all the fresco scenes. These include the ones we’ve seen in game and those that only unlock in the Chamber of Fate. The game is well and truly over. But first, you’ll be wanting to know what happens if we take up Jack’s mask on its “offers”, yes? The Evil Ending posted:
The after game applies to good characters too. You pick up where you left off, and can go complete any sidequests you wish, or maybe just gently caress around until you get bored. There’s one thing I want to show off before we end. I mentioned the “Treasure Clues”, which the Guildmaster told us lead to some great treasure. Let’s finally find out what that is, shall we? To get the treasure, you will need to find all six treasure clues. They are; -Treasure Clue 1, found by completing the “Bounty Hunter” quest. -Treasure Clue 2, found by completing “Lost Trader”. -Treasure Clue 3, found by killing all of Twinblade’s assassins. -Treasure Clue 4, win the Archery Contest in Knothole Glade. -Treasure Clue 5, found effortlessly at Orchard Farm. -Treasure Clue 6, found in a chest behind the windmill at Windmill Hill. Supposedly it’s possible to find the treasure without the clues, but it will be less powerful. Which you will find very amusing given what I’m about to tell you.  This is the location you need to be to find the treasure. Between this stack of hay bales and the barn at Orchard Farm.  Yeah, that’s right, the big reward is a joke item. Lovely. The frying pan has a base attack rating of 100. It is not a secretly powerful weapon, it’s just bad. Now, it does come with 5 free augment slots, meaning you can tailor make the weapon as you please. You could load it up with health or mana augments in order to supercharge those stats. However, it will never make for a good melee weapon, as not even five sharpening augments will give it an attack rating comparable to our better weapons. As I mentioned, supposedly digging up the Frying Pan before you have the clues means it comes out with an attack rating of 0 and one less augment slot. Just to waste your time I guess. Final Insights At the end of my two other completed LPs, I shared what I knew about how and why those games came to be. Fortunately, Fable isn’t an obscure JRPG, so there’s plenty of information on its development. It’s all there to be found on the internet, but I’ll still share with you the gist and comment on it personally. Way, waaaaay back in 1985, Simon and Dene Carter decided they wanted to make a roleplaying game “like no other”. They would gradually brainstorm and put together ideas, gradually forming their own company called “Big Blue Box Studios”. The earliest idea for what would become “Fable” was a game called “WishWorld”. This was to be an extremely ambitious game where you could alter the world according to your own whimsy. In Dene Carter’s own words; "Imagine playing a 3D Zelda, where the world is constantly changing for you, and where your actions alter the world for other players at the same time." It was supposed to centre around a “wizard’s university”, where magical individuals of all sorts would gather to enhance their abilities and go on to do as they pleased. Sounds familiar, no? The brothers worked with Peter Molyneux, the infamous “hype man” for Fable while working at Bullfrog Studious, which was prior to forming their own company. He made a suggestion that would gear their development towards what Fable ended up being; "Peter’s suggestion was that we focus on one wizard, Merlin, but allow players to make any kind of Merlin they want. We liked some aspects of that idea and decided to push it a little further, making it into a game where players could become any kind of heroic archetype they wanted. We had initially wanted to stay away from a morphing character as we didn’t want to cannibalise the unique selling point of Black and White, Lionhead’s first game, but Peter gave us his blessing.” -Dene Carter In essence, our one “Merlin” is the protagonist of Fable. This is where the game transformed from being about a complete freestyle experience to being about one man. Development of “Fable” continued, being called “Project EGO” for a while, and Big Blue Box would merge with Lionhead Studios during this period. Eventually the game would be renamed, released, and that’s that. I can only imagine, given how much the game changed in scope and design over the years, as well as the constantly changing situation behind its development, that this is why we got such a two-headed game, so to speak. Fable is trying to be two things at once; a completely freeform RPG where you can do whatever you want, but also a game about a single “Merlin” with story beats that must happen. They’re awkward ideas to reconcile. Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t flaws that are independent of this, but I think the sudden change of keel forms the crux of the issue. I still kind of like Fable, despite all the picking at its flaws I’ve done. There’s a lot I would change about it in a perfect world, but hindsight is 20/20, and I can’t say for sure if I’d do any better under the same development constraints. Anyway, the LP is over. Thank you for reading.
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Jul 26, 2022 21:02
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Thanks for this blast from the past. I remember using the frying pan with XP augments to turbolevel back when or something like that. Also did they ever fix the silly way supply and demand worked? I think I remember selling a bunch of augments at once, which raised supply and caused the price to crash. Then I bought them back, causing the price to spike back up. Rinse, repeat, all the money.
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Jul 27, 2022 01:48
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Thanks for the LP! I played this game on a friend's XBox back in college, but never got particularly far, so it's been fun seeing the rest of it. I can't fault the game for lack of ambition; the game has all kinds of features and mechanics. The trouble, as it often is in games, seems to have been uniting and polishing all of those into a cohesive whole. The marriage mechanic really betrays this, IMO, what with how incomplete and ultimately inconsequential it is.
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Jul 27, 2022 02:06
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Hey-sus Kristos, that's a bit abrupt, innit? Does Jack have a backstory? I don't remember if that came up at all. At least we've got a backstory for the game itself, and, wow, 1985? Really? Talk about your development hell. The original idea is... well, I can see it being very interesting back in the early days of gaming. It does seem to form the basis of every modern MMO now, doesn't it? So, it was a great idea in that it seems to have resonated with a lot of people, it just got muddled when they made Fable.
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Jul 27, 2022 05:06
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painedforever posted:Does Jack have a backstory? I don't remember if that came up at all. I mentioned it in the thread, but Jack's backstory is only elaborated on outside of the games. On the "Tales of Albion" website (now gone, so the wiki is all you can look at), and I think in some books that were made, but I'm not sure. Either way, it's not terribly in depth; he's just some supernatural being from "The Void" who used to work with a Queen and Knight of Blades to subjugate Albion and generally be evil. There's also the fact that the Sword of Aeons was originally stolen from Jack by the first Archon of the Old Kingdom, named William Black. Black was alluded to in various materials (including the Snowspire Oracle) and confirmed long after the games conclusion to be our good friend Scythe. Kind of a missed opportunity to make Scythe more relevant, but hey.
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Jul 27, 2022 05:34
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I don't know if the weapon's attack also affects the potency of your spells (Unless it was stated somewhere in the LP at some point. If it was, I apologize, I must've missed it), but back in the day I would make the Frying Pan my "magic weapon" with 5 mana augments. The mana regen on that is just nuts and allowed me to toss spells nilly-willy. Either way, great job on the LP! Are you considering LP'ing Fable 2/3 at any point?
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Jul 28, 2022 05:04
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Sketchie posted:Either way, great job on the LP! Are you considering LP'ing Fable 2/3 at any point? I have/am considering it. The only sticking point is Fable 2. It never came out properly on PC for whatever reason, so my options for LPing it are limited. I have the original on 360, but I doubt my 360 or its controllers still work, nor would I know much about recording off it. I have two options for the PC; -The Xenia Emulator can be used to play Fable 2, but it's pretty janky, at least on my laptop. I could just go ahead with it, but it might make several parts of the game come out looking real weird. -According to some Reddit threads you can play Fable 2 on some kind of Cloud Gaming server. I don't really know if this works, and even if it does, there's some talk of needing a VPN (which I don't have), and I have no idea if it will run any better than Xenia. I also don't know much about Xbox Game Passes. Would I be able to use one to get the game and all its DLC, or would I have to pay for the DLC separately? So yeah, some help/advice would make it easier for me to figure out my best option right now.
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Jul 28, 2022 07:01
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