I had originally played Fable waaaaay back in the Xbox days, but I couldn’t really remember much outside of the fact that I enjoyed the game and that I was too scared to play through as an evil character. Fast forward to today and I still don’t love playing evil characters, but this time, I knew that’s precisely what I was going to do.
The first thing I noticed with this version of the game is it feels like some sort of weird spin off of World of Warcraft. The Anniversary version has been updated but it feels very much like you’re transported into a third person over the shoulder view of running through zones like Elwynn Forest and Northshire Valley. There must have been something about that art style from back in that time.
You start off as child and immediately you’re presented with opportunities to perform good or evil acts such as returning teddy bears to kids or joining in with a bully picking on another child. There seems to be little outcome of your choices here other than a few dialogue changes between some of the characters in praising or chastising you. Shortly thereafter, however, disaster strikes and your town gets massacred before your very eyes.
As you wrap up the initial tutorial phases of the game, you are finally introduced to the world at large. You have three different combat choices available to you, be it melee, ranged, or spell, but you aren’t locked into any of them in particular and I often found myself bouncing between them depending on the situation. In the end, my character turned out to prefer melee weapons in tandem with a spell that allowed me to hit 4 times per weapon strike. This combo turns out to be lethal in later rounds and made boss fights fairly easy.
Throughout the course of the game, I tried to pick the decision paths that would send me down the evil path but ultimately it has little true impact on the game. There are some spells and items that you may not be able to access due to your alignment, but even at 100% evil rating, there was nothing inherently different in the playthrough. It was comical to watch people scream and run in horror as my character would come up to them. It wasn’t until a very specific segment of the game where I finally saw my character’s face and I realized that they were very gray in complexion (think Emperor Palpatine like skin) with glowing red eyes and horns growing out of the top of their head. It’s no wonder the townsfolk were running from me!
The gameplay itself is very straight forward and not too difficult overall and the story is compelling enough to keep you wanting to pick it up and finish it. I do think there could have been better variance in some of the side quests and that the game could have leaned in much deeper into the good vs evil narrative, but overall, if you’ve never played Fable before, this is a solid place to start.