I managed to put around 90 minutes into this last night and here are my impressions so far... The first thing I will note is that it doesn't seem a vibrant as Fable II but not being very far in this could change. One of the things I liked about Fable II was its use of bright colours as too many game this generation have been a combination of nothing more than Grey and Brown, so far its been quite dark. While I am on colours I may as well talk about graphics and overall they feel a bit meh. I have notice screen tearing on a number of occasions and sometimes the blur makes it feel like my eyes are completely out of focus. The characters are nothing special and I don't think I have come across a single point yet where the mouths actually move in time with the voices. They seem to have used a few generic mouth shapes and just dumped the voices on top, leading to points where the mouths don't even move when they talk. Another massive annoyance I found last night was that they seem to have mapped 2 things to the start button. Not only does it bring up the menu but it also moves you back and forth to your 'base' area. Trying to save the game last night took me around 5 minutes as I only got it to bring up the menu twice and the first time it told me I couldn't save. Interacting with towns folk is a complete bore. You have to press A to do anything with them which fades the screen and then pulls it up again with you standing with them. When you want to finish and go back to wandering you have to press B which does the same thing, screen fades and then comes back with you being free to roam. Overall this feels very clunky. I was asked to spread money around the poor last night in some mountain village but got bored and gave up. If the first 90 minutes are anything to go by then I won't be digging up anything unless I REALLY have to. Every time the dog found something and I chose to dig I had to sit through a 10 second scene of my character shovelling dirt. Seeing as the dig spots are not too far between this ended up being very boring and felt like they had just put it in to waste my time. I don't remember it taking that long in Fable II but its been a while since I last played it so I could be mistaken. As I am not very far in I haven't done too much as far as the story goes so I can't really comment on it overall but it seems your typical kill the bad king plot. I feel I need more time with it before I can say whether its worth playing or not but so far I can say that the graphics are probably 3 or 4 years behind everything else and time didn't simply disappear as I was playing it.
I moderately enjoyed Fable II so I'm disappointed by much of what you've mentioned. I'm waiting for the game to come to PC (guess I'm a sucker). The vibrant colours of the second did make it stand out from other games and went really well with the art style. It's a shame they've toned this down. From videos of the game I've watched it seems really easy. Fable II was easy enough, I hope this isn't the case. Let me know what you think about the difficulty as you get further in, Grim.
I never said anything about load times... I did however install it before I even started to play it, cant stand the 360's noise levels otherwise. It took about 10 minutes to install and the loads don't seem too bad at all, maybe 5-15 seconds between areas depending on size.
I thought this base area delay thing might be about load times. Sounds somewhat clunky then. Gt5 is a pain for clunkiness too, drives me mad at times.
What happens is when you press start you are instantly transported back to your base to change weapons, clothing etc (you can't do any of this in the field from what I have seen so far). Then you press start when you are finished and you go back to the exact spot you were standing in the area you left. The big trouble is that start also brings up the main menu to do things like save and I can't work out how to get it to differentiate between the two. Last night I spent 5 minutes going back and forth between my base before I managed to get it to give me the data options. EDIT: Seems I am not the only one, googled it and found this on another forum. Someone then suggests there is something in the base area that allows you to save so I will look into that.
Wanted to buy this game when It came out but I was put off by the price (£39.99) especially considering it took me 10 hours or so to complete Fable II. I was wondering if it would be better to rent it for a few nights or to buy it outright for about £25? considering what people on this site are saying about it I would guess going for the rental option would be best?
I have officially given up with Fable III. Tried to play some more last night but 5 minutes in realised I was just bored and wasting my time. The combat is repetitive and boring, interacting with people is slow and cumbersome, the graphics are from 2006 and the story is about as interesting as one of Monsly's haircuts.
Based On this analysis , I've decided to save my money and Invest in the Housing market and Banking sector Instead.
@grim: Isn't what you described true for all Fable games? I'd heard the third one was better but your summary doesn't inspire confidence.
Peter hypes up his own games more than anyone else, shame that 9.99992364 times out of 10 they don't live up to his promises. Neither Black and White nor Fable have lived up to his promises really and being the only 2 real franchises that Lionhead has it makes them a bit naff in my books. Peter delivered a lot more back it the Bullfrog days.
I thought Black and White had promise, but I suppose that was mainly because I could tell my monkey man to shit all over my villagers. Are the graphics really that bad?
To me it looks like launch title quality stuff with too much blur that puts my eyes out of focus and screen tearing from time to time. Nothing special at all really.
I remember Black and White being conceptually kind of interesting, but nothing in the game really worked very well. The creature AI was sketchy, and the gesture detection for casting spells was broken. The Fable games have been more of the same, with a lot of promise but somewhat disappointing delivery.