Lionhead Studios’ 2004 role-playing game and its expansion pack are being re-released with numerous enhancements later this year.
Titled Fable Anniversary – no doubt stylized after 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary – is a high-definition re-release of both the first game in the Fable series and its 2005 expansion, Fable: The Lost Chapters. Similar to the “remake” of Halo, Fable Anniversary plays largely the same as the original release. However, all of the game’s visual assets – including the user interface – have been upgraded in order to take advantage of the Xbox 360’s hardware, the infamous load times have been reduced to a near instant, and the game’s save system has been redone. Alongside the enhanced visuals comes the ability to output the game at a resolution of 1080p, and the option of using Xbox SmartGlass integration on a mobile device to accompany gameplay.
Originally released in September 2004 for the original Xbox, Fable is a fantasy role-playing game that sees players take on the role of the Hero of Oakvale. The Hero is customizable to the player’s liking, and can shape the world of Albion with how heroic or evil he is. Fable: The Lost Chapters, released a year later, includes all of the content from the original game, as well as additional areas to explore and quests to complete.
Fable Anniversary will be released by Microsoft Studios this holiday season exclusively for Xbox 360.
I own the original game but could never get into it – the original Xbox version seemed kind of clunky when I tried to play it, so if this one has been updated enough, it might be worth trying to get into it again.
I tried to get into Fable several times, all with the Xbox original. :/ I don’t think I’ll bother with this, though. The game never drew me in at all. Just updating the UI and graphics won’t save it from being utterly boring for me. The story never left me with any impression that I needed to finish it, not a single character was memorable, and I think I remember the moral decisions being so laughably black and white that they weren’t very realistic or fun.
I didn’t get very far, but it did have a really generic feeling to it when I tried to play it. But the gameplay was just so clunky that I never really got to see if they did anything with the plot or moral decisions.
It might have just felt generic since I (and you, maybe?) had already played games with some sort of good/evil binary mechanic so going back to Fable which is one that I feel really brought the duality idea back into the spotlight felt really underwhelming. I imagine the later ones are better and I still want to pick up Fable 3 one of these days, but I think the only people who’ll buy and enjoy this re-release are people who played Fable when it first came out and enjoyed it. I just don’t feel like it holds a whole lot for the rest of us.