Despite my earlier skepticism, I encouraged P to pick up Fable 2, as it’s probably the only Western RPG passing near the Xbox 360 any time soon. Even though I had just gotten around to getting a second-hand copy of Assassin’s Creed (more on that later), I sat through the intro and some exploration of the earlier parts of the game.
It looks wildly huge. Yes, it’s more constrained than Oblivion in some ways, but the character interactions are much richer, which is in some ways the Holy Grail of role-playing games (at least in my mind). Character interaction is measured on a number of different dimensions which interact to cause different reactions from NPCs.
Fable 2 focuses (much like its predecessor, I gather) on the role of heroes in the game world. As such, the player’s avatar is a force for much change in the world. This allows the game to explain the reason that the co-op mode inserts the second player as a Henchman bound to the camera of the primary character instead of as a free agent all their own.
That’s not to say that a Henchman can’t make their own mark on the world. An article on Games Radar describes a very scary event that I couldn’t do justice in a simple summary. What an impact! While some things may be considered sacred, none of them are protected.
While nowhere on the same scale, I created an interesting result last night. I was chasing an achievement that you unlock by having sex with multiple partners. I had obtained the consent of a barmaid, but all the other women in town were only interested in marriage. Eventually, I bored of this and out of spite at my latest rejection, I took the barmaid to the bedroom of the house belonging to the woman that had turned me down and enjoyed relations.
Once we were done, we went downstairs all aglow, while the lady of the house ran to report our lewdness to the town guards. Needless to say, I legged it. We’ll see how I’m viewed next time I’m in town.
Update: I turns out the guards wanted me for trespassing. I’m disappointed; it seems a bit… pedestrian in comparison.