Dear Internet,
You are
probably wondering what the previous non-entry post was about. I said I was going to tell you, and now I
am. Are you ready for it? Sitting down?
Oh, you do not have a butt to sit on?
Fine. "Fable III" is
artificially lengthened. It has so much
artificial lengthening that streaming it to an audience is pointless because it
is boring to watch. I did not stream it
because if it was myself watching someone else play, I would not last five
minutes. Let us start with the overworld. The land is big, or in the least it feels big
because you cannot see it. There is no
mini-map when playing in the game, so you have no way of knowing how far you
are away from let us say a store without memorizing the entire town
layout. Since there is not even an
accurate map that the player can refer to, one has trouble even memorizing the
town layout to begin with. When I travel
to a new town, I do not even try to learn the layout because it all feels for
naught. The closest thing that the game
does have for a town map is found in the Hero Sanctuary, something I will get
back to. In the Sanctuary, there is a
map of all the different main towns and places that the player can go to. Each place can be selected and a crude
stylized map appears. It is not a 1:1
map but a sort of you-get-the-idea map.
It can show you that the stall you are looking for is on the other side
of the town, but not precisely where it is.
So, when I had to look for a single jewelry stall amongst a collection of
stalls, I had to trial and error it until I realized that the stall I was
looking for was not even on the same level but up a few stairs. The game becomes heavily reliant upon the
golden trail dust that I already mentioned was buggy, sometimes completely
disappearing.
Another
thing that makes the game add fake length is the random enemies that pop up as
you travel. While every game that has an
open world has random enemies on trails, which include wolves, skeletons, and
highwaymen in "Fable III," this game makes it all the more annoying. As I said previously that enemies are not
lootable making them only bags of EXP, they become increasingly annoying
because unless the EXP they give are proportionally worth it they only act as
potholes and speed bumps as you travel. The
game tricks you into fighting every enemy that passes you when you can run
right past them a good deal of the time.
Wolves are a laughable lot that execute the intelligence of a Chihuahua. One time I was able to walk out of one's line
of attack three straight times until I got bored of waiting for it to attack
and killed it. Note that I did not say
dodge, I said walk. You can tell it is
about to attack so early that walking to the side is just as easy as dodging. Highwaymen are just damage sponges which juts
take time of an ad nauseum pattern of magic button twice then dodge. Experience can be gained much more easily in
other ways, so there is little point in utilizing random enemies for grinding. All this does is point out how easy the game
is and pointless the random enemy spawn is.
 |
| I could not answer him. |
There
is no difficulty slider or choice, and after nine hours I have not died once. Now you might say, "BeepBoop, you have
been playing games for a while so you know how to manage resources and tactics
that video games utilize and are used to it." Well, Internet, you are wrong, and when did
you start talking? Have you been taking
lessons from Dr. Sbaitso? "Fable
III" allows four items at a time. You
have a food item slot, a health potion slot, a slot for a slow down potion
(which I only say because nothing else has attempted to replace it), and a slot
for summoning black ghost things (which I only say for the same reason again). So far I have only used health items about 15
times at most. Most of those times I
probably did not even need the heath boost.
I am sure because the game has no health bar. The game lets you know you are getting
damaged but not exactly how bad off you are.
The screen gets grey at a certain point and the usable items in the
lower corner of the screen get red, but there is no way of knowing if you are
two hits away from death or ten. And
since there is no health bar, you have no idea how effective that health item
was that you just consumed in any numerical quantity. Instead, you scratch your head wondering if
the screen got a little more color than three seconds ago. If a player is colorblind, they are really in trouble in
knowing if they are in trouble.
A few
other things make this game longer than it should be by just the sheer number
of times it occurs is digging. Many
times you have to dig something up, but after the 30th time I really wanted a
skip button to get through the animation.
Talking to people is annoying because you hold a button to make a better
interaction than if you did not. It is
the same case as the digging animation.
After a while, you just do not care.
The only reason I do talk to people is because a successful conversation
nets you experience. If you want people
to be your friend, however, you need to go on fetch or delivery quests. The game does nothing to hide this horrible
game mechanic by actually calling them "fetch" quests. When is there going to be a game where I can
make someone else go get something for me to be MY friend? Then there are the loading screens. Dear space elevators! The load screens occur so many times because
of the constant quick traveling that I want to strangle that damn chicken.
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| Get ready to do this a lot. |
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| "The Poultry of Patience" or the "Chicken of Limbo" |
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| This was right after I tickled her into loving my character. |
I will
finish for today on the worst thing that makes this game so pointlessly long. The Sanctuary is some sort of magical place
that the player can instantly go to access the game's maps, the wardrobe collected,
the skill or upgrade tree, achievements, mission trophies, etc. Basically, it is where nearly everything can
be managed from. It is the replacement of
the pause menu and inventory screens.
There is no menu for the most part in "Fable III" because the
Santuary attempts to do away with it.
Past Fable games had bad menu screens from what I remember, always
taking a bit too long to load from what I recall, but this takes it to new
lows. It is like taking everything about
a menu screen and making it physical.
Want to look at the game's poor map.
Hit the Sanctuary button (Pause), walk forward, then select the scale
model of the world. Want to look at your
available wardrobe? Pause, then either
walk to the clothes room or press a quick button, then walk around and select
from a few manikins. While at first,
this constant shuffling might seem minor, eventually it becomes a grating experience
that would be better if it was an emotionless menu screen. It's all part of "Fable III"'s
attempt to get rid of the User Interface.
There is a reason that games use a Heads Up Display and categorize items. It is to display information, information
that "Fable III" thinks you do not want or need to know. For example, if you want to know how many
diamonds, jewelry, or wedding rings you have, you need to go to a pawn shop and
try to sell them. That is like having to
go to a bank to find out what is in your wallet.
Hopefully,
tomorrow will be better.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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