Fable was one of the most anticipated games of 2004, sadly because it received such hype the final product that was released September 14th left players asking things like ‘Why didn't they put so-so' or ‘What happened to this', and so on which made players focusing on what could have been rather on what they have.

Fable is an Action/Adventure-RPG developed by Lion Head of Black and White fame, and was published by Microsoft. You start out as a boy who is preparing for his sister's birthday since you forgot her present. You gain coins to buy her a present depending if you are doing good deeds or bad deeds. After you get her a present and go to see her, bandits attack your village as you are hiding on the farm making you one of the three survivors of the massacre; the other two are your mother who was away at the moment but later on gets captured, and your sister who was grabbed by one of the bandits. Then you are taken to the Guild of Heroes, there you pass your training which should take about 20 or so minutes, afterwards your adventure begins.

One of the main focuses on Fable is the choice of to be evil or to be good, the choices you are given are very clear on whether they are for good, or for evil so there are no gray area choices on which they are neither evil or good. This is one of the downfalls of the games that you have to choose between evil or good and just can't stay neutral in fact they push you to be good, because if you kill monsters or bandits which you are mainly going to face, they give you good points. So if you just want to stay strictly evil, you won't go much far in the game, if at all.

Aging is the main reason this game got so much attention. Your character starts as a child, then goes to his teens, and finally to adulthood. You will go by the child and teen years in about 40~50 minutes, a message will pop-up asking you if you want to advance on your teen years and afterwards, to your adulthood. One of the downsides to the game is that your character ages rapidly, it usually takes about 1~2 hours to get to the late 30's, early 40's. So you in the end you are older than your mother by 10 or so years. Of course there are ways to reverse the aging process such as donating a lot of money to the light temple if your evil or sacrificing someone in the temple of evil while your actually good. Unfortunately you can only do it once, and it's not permanent so there is no real point to it.

The battle system on Fable is very unique and easy, actually depending on how you fight is how many scars your character is going to have. If you are one of those people who hardly blocks, and gets hit a lot you will notice your character have scars all over his body and face. This is a very unique and cool concept that helps the game's overall experience and feel. There is a downside to Fable's battle system though, which would be the lock-on system. Its very hard to pin-point one specific enemy admits many with the lock-on system on Fable, this sometimes gets irritating, especially if you're doing an escort mission.

In Fable, you can customize your character in many different ways aside from the ones I've already said. One of them being that you can choose the hairstyle and beard, if you want one, of your character from the choice of many by going to a barber shop or talking to one of the merchants, the same if you want to get a tattoo on the body or face; this can change on how people will react to your character since some haircuts or tattoos can make you more scary looking, or more attractive. Other ways are such as eating a lot of meat and use a great sword a lot, then your character is going to have big arms, or if you use magic many times rapidly, your skin turns blue and your hair white, or if you eat a lot then your character is going to get fat. There are limits to how much you can customize your character though, you can't choose the gender of your character, you can't give him a different face or skin, and you can't choose how his height; so you will have to work with what you get.

The RPG elements of Fable are a bit few, but do help with the experience of the game. In the game you gain experience orbs, unlike normal RPGs you use the experience orbs to level up a skill or gain a spell rather than leveling up. There are 4 different types of experience orbs, there is the strength orbs which you use for Health, Toughness, and Physique; there is also the skill orbs which you use for Speed, Dextery, and Guile; there are will orbs which you use to gain spells or your Magic Power; and finally general orbs which are for everything. Sadly though you can't become just a wizard or warrior or thief, because in the end you'll need all of this skills to beat the game. Meaning, even if you don't want to, you are bound to get white hair. Another RPG element in Fable is the ability to get married; every time you get married you get money, how much money you get depends on who you are marrying; you can also get married to either a man or a woman. Your wife/husband(s) also after a period of time starts to give you presents, like armor, food, and weapons. You can have one wife/husband in each town so in total you can have about 4 wives/husbands at the same time, and before some ask, yes you can have sex with them.

One of the major let-downs of Fable is that the world of it is small; also you can't venture of the side of the path because you can only keep going along the path which ruins some of the freedom feeling of the game. Another major let-down is that the game is very short; most players will probably beat it in two or three days. Also most of the choices you make aren't going to change the game's story at all; the only choice that actually makes a difference on the game is at the end. You can probably get all the hidden weapons, keys, ect; that Fable has in about the first time you play and beat it. Of course most people will play again to see what would happened if they make a different choice, or how will their character look if they blocked more, or got hit more, things like that.

All in all Fable is a great game with good graphics, open-ended story, and a good concept, sadly though some things could have been better and there is no multiplayer, but that does not make the game any less fun that it is. So if you're willing to spend $49.99 at EB and have an X-Box, I suggest you get this game, also you can check more information on Fable-game.com or on lionhead.com. 8/10