#Fable anniversary gameplay series#

There are Achievements and Avatar Awards, obviously, and the high definition visuals are most noticeably better. In remaining faithful to the original, Lionhead hasn’t done much to offer content. With its evocative soundtrack and amusing voice actors, not to mention a ton of content, there’s certainly plenty of good left hiding in Fable if you can look past its unkind aging process. It’s also hard to dislike the game’s story, introducing as it does a villain yet to be topped by the series, Jack of Blades, and feeling far more fleshed out and clever than later chapters in the series. While Fable II would prove more nuanced in its approach to player choice, Fable‘s extreme take on morality carries with it a certain charm. While combat is clunky and navigating the world feels cumbersome, the joy in acquiring power, and becoming a scion of good or evil, is hard to resist.

While even back then, Lionhead’s ambitions far outpaced its capabilities, it’s still hard not to be pleased by the quirky and unique things Fable tried for its day, and it’s still a damn better game than Fable 3 ever was. As far as I can tell, Anniversary doesn’t introduce any new problems, but the experience would have been improved tremendously by the removal of old ones.įable Anniversary is not an altogether unpleasant experience. There’s something to be said for preserving the purity of a game’s original state, but after having to reload multiple checkpoints in multiple quests due to otherwise unsolvable bugs, and having my eyes struggle with a number of physics and framerate problems, I can safely say there’s a point where faithfulness can safely be ditched. In today’s world, going back to the clumsy original has a tendency to make one cringe. Even by the standards of its time, Fable was always a little sloppy, favoring its idealistic ambition of choice and personal narrative over slick, polished gameplay. Indeed, the original Fable could have done with a full-on remake that modernized everything, as this is one severely dated action-adventure, even when using a control scheme that more closely resemble Fable II. With its uncomfortably messy combat, obtuse menu system, and overall awkward controls, Fable Anniversary would have benefited from more than just a visual upgrade. While it’s certainly nostalgic to step into the Albion of yesteryear and enjoy it with an HD coat of paint, the game really hasn’t held up very well.

#Fable anniversary gameplay series#

Then again, even if it had released before now, it might not have been quite enough to make Fable Anniversary worth checking out for all but the most dedicated of series fans. Indeed, the love affair with “HD Remasters” was at its peak a few years ago, and while there’s obviously sentimental value in rereleasing Fable in 2014, the gesture feels like a remarkably late one.

With the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ushering in a brand new generation, it feels like Microsoft missed the boat with Fable Anniversary.