Morality in video games has always been rather limited, usually boiling down to a pretty clear cut choice between good and evil at the end of a game. With Fable II, Lionhead is looking to make moral choices more ambiguous, and making the consequences of players’ decisions have a large impact not only on their character, but the game world and its population. A fancy morality system is no good to you if there isn’t a decent game underneath, and fortunately, Fable II is rather good.

Fable II starts up some 500 years after the original game. The sun has long since set on the age of heroes, though their memory lives on in far-fetched stories and folk tales. The story begins when you’re just a homeless child living on the streets of Bowerstone with your older sister, Rose, who wishes for a better life. The purchase of a magical music box results in a series of events that lead to the discovery of your status as descendents of heroes. A cruel twist of fate steers you onto the path of vengeance, where you must find and recruit three other hero descendents to help you stop the ultimate evil which is threatening the world of Albion.

Albion has changed quite a lot in the gap between games, going from a light-hearted medieval place to a dark and dreary eighteenth century world. Many locations from the original game remain, some prosperous like Bowerstone, while others deserted or flooded like Oakvale. The size of the maps has increased substantially, and players are now free to roam much more of the landscape. It’s not a seamless world though – you’ll constantly be treated to loading screens when traversing between towns (and within the larger towns), giving travel an unsatisfying, disjointed feeling similar to the original Fable. Being able to veer off the beaten track does make it a little better, since there is plenty of treasure to be found, but it still feels too restricted.

Interacting with the citizens of Albion is a hollow experience. Characters from the main quest will often bark out orders or tell you their plight, and you’ll rarely have the opportunity to provide input, which is limited basically to approval or disapproval. Development of the characters from the main plot is decidedly limited, since the story focuses more on the direct consequences of your actions. Interactions with regular folks are limited to gestures and expressions which show your feelings towards them. It leaves you feeling a little detached from the rest of the world, and becomes rather ludicrous when the story develops the expectation that you should feel attached to your family, whose existence arises out of a large number of flirt gestures and unprotected coitus, and costs gold.

Most of your time in Fable II is going to be spent performing quests, whether they’re related to the central story or not. Story quests are broken up into three chains which take place one after the other. Unlike the original game, you don’t get any gold for these quests – they exist purely to move the story along. Some quests in the storyline will have renown requirements, which basically means you need to run along and do some non-story quests in exchange for a bit of fame. Most of these quests require the player to fetch an item, free a person or kill some monsters, but some can be pretty amusing. One quest has you rescuing a pair of brothers who have read from the Normanomicon, the Book of the Really Dead, which released a bunch of hollow men, while another has you dashing across Albion finding the body parts of a major character from the first game so that a love-stricken scientist can revive them in a nod to Frankenstein.

Accompanying you on your quests is a faithful canine companion. The dog detects nearby enemies and treasures and, after a little training, can perform a few tricks. He’s not a clever mutt – he’ll often dash off without you and get the snot kicked out of him, but he’ll make up for it with a few silly antics. The dog’s never a nuisance, but the game again expects you to build a rapport with him that just wasn’t there for me.


To be successful on your quests, you’re going to need to know how to fight – something Fable II handles rather well. The mucky combat system of the original game has been replaced with a simpler single button approach. Players have one button for melee attacks, one for ranged attacks and one for magic (will) attacks. Each attack earns experience points, some for the specific type of attack used, as well as general experience. These points then can be spent on skills in each area, which not only give you extra abilities and skill bonuses, but also alter your appearance. Combat is pretty fast paced and demands use of all three skills to keep you on your toes. The new moves you earn serve to make combat even more satisfying. The only problem with combat is that it is a bit too easy – death is a rare occurrence resulting in no real punishment beyond a couple of scars and some lost experience.

One can also shirk of the responsibilities of being a hero and doing quests to lead a simpler life, performing odd jobs such as bartending, woodcutting and smithing to earn a living, and starting a family. These odd jobs are simple rhythm based mini-games, but can earn some pretty substantial dough after a few levels. You can invest your money into real estate – if you can enter a building, you can buy it. Houses can be lived in and rented out, and you can improve them by fitting them out with new furniture. Your businesses can be improved with your continued patronage. You’ll receive your cut of profits and the rent every five minutes, whether you’re playing the game or not. This kind of undermines the in-game economy, as you’ll earn a lot of money rather quickly when you’re not playing. There are a few other side tasks, like hunting down abusive stone gargoyles and demon doors, which should extend your play beyond the 15 or so hours needed to finish the story.

Just about everything you do in Fable II has some lasting effect on the world of Albion, right from the beginning of the game. Moral decisions made in quests will have positive and negative effects on the world when time is skipped forward with the story. One example happens right at the start of the game when you help a police officer collect warrants for some criminals – you can either hand him the warrants to bring them in, or give them to one of the criminals to be burned up. That part of town will prosper if the criminals are caught, but will suffer if they remain at large.

Choices are still pretty much black and white, but some quests make it a little more ambiguous as to which is the right thing to do. Apart from a doozy at the end of the game, there are usually only ever two options to choose from, with no real allowance for a moral grey area. Being evil does tend to be a lot easier than being good, and it can be a lot of fun to steal money from shops, make fun of people and murder the innocent. Another morality element has been added in the form of purity and corruption. Being kind to your tenants and customers by lowering prices will lead to purity, but bleeding everybody dry will corrupt your hero. It’s possible to be an evil but kind hero, or a good yet greedy one. Your choices, both moral and skill based, will affect both your hero’s and dog’s appearance greatly.

As immersive and fun as Fable II is, some parts of the game feel noticeably rushed. The best example of this is the game’s cooperative play, which was added in a day one patch. Initially planned to be a full co-operative mode where players could bring their heroes into each other’s games, players take control of a pre-made nameless hero with none of the experience or abilities they have in their own game. The game is also very glitchy; crashes and stalls happen more than they should, and many players have reported save corruption after playing cooperatively.

Fable II is one of the most engrossing action/adventure games on the Xbox 360. A greater number of choices that have real consequences, and more side quests and mini-games make for a more compelling and immersive experience than the original game. Yet Fable II has some rather unfortunate problems; the story and characters feel underdone, the interactions with regular people feel hollow, and the game is quite buggy. Even with those issues, once you sink your teeth into the world of Albion, you won’t want to let go in a hurry.