Fable II - your tales from Albion!

[unimatrix7]

Actually reading the old things that were said, it is supposed to be a side quest where you go in to the woods and a shadowy figures give you the option of becoming horribly scarred or a girl becoming horribly scarred, or something to that affect. Just got back from the Spire and still nada, not major but I am kind of curious about that particular side quest.

And dare I say, I actually care about my dog. While on the spire I missed my dog greatly, and when I got back it was a joy to see him again. At one point in the Howling Halls I thought I had lost him because I could not find him anywhere, I was actually a bit worried. Not to fear though, the lovable scamp was finishing off a Balverine for me that I had left for dead, but he wasn't quite dead.

So far I'm still loving it. Got married, got frustrated with her, had a friend come in and murder my wife.

I think now I'm going to focus on purchasing some more stuff, maybe try a job. I still have to find the third hero though, so I don't know if I shall do that first or fiddle about some more.

Ah, I know the one you're talking about. I'd read a bit about it as well but so far I haven't found it - and I'm up to the same bit you are, searching for the third Hero.

And I, too, am a fan of my canine companion and definitely missed him on the Spire.

 

[firehawk12]

Holy fuck, the Spire... now that's a way to make the choices meaningful.

 

[TheMurph]

Yeah, the Spire made if difficult to be good and still do what you needed to do.

 

[unimatrix7]

In the Spire, I...

Spoiler: o hi

- Happily obeyed the Commandant all 3 times.
- Planned on not giving the slaves any food, but changed my mind after about a minute. I fed a few of them before (I think) I ran out of experience and ended up being punished by the Commandant.
- Killed that dude...the guy I met at the docks. I kind of wish I didn't, just to see what happened.

Edited to add: I just finished the main plot! Freaking awesome.

 

[mrcoaster]

Seems like everybody on my friends list is playing Fable II right now. Definitely want to get it, but I probably won't be getting it for a while yet.

 

[Jim Steele]

20 hours in as of last night, absolutely loving it. It's so good to be pleasantly surprised by a game I've been waiting for as opposed to mildly disappointed, and wonderful to see Molyneux finally delivering again.

The combat is brilliant. Dropping a time control spell before dealing out combos aplenty, then instantly whipping out a pistol to shoot the last standing bandit in the face while my dog tears the throats out of my downed opponents... sublime.

The story is enchanting, as is the world of Albion and the people in it. The voice acting is superb and...

It's just a wonderful, wonderful game. Well worth the £40 and I can't wait to do another playthrough. I've bought so much property that I'm earning 5000 gold every 5 mins.

Me and a mate of mine are routinely enjoying the co-op, I'm a good bit ahead of him in the main story so I've had a lot of fun replaying old missions with him and seeing what he does differently.

It's not a perfect piece of software though. Menus are often laggy, and the inventory system needs some refining. Not experienced any major bugs or anything though.

The job minigames (for jobs that don't involve combat) are incredibly repetitive (possibly by design, Molyneux did say he wanted you to work). However, they are strangely addictive. I can't bring myself to quit a wood chopping session until I've made at least 5,000.

Lastly, my biggest gripe with the game: the camera in co-op. I can understand having a fixed camera for couch co-op, but there's no need for it on LIVE play, where both parties will by definition have their own screen. I don't know what the thinking was behind making internet co-op EXACTLY the same as couch co-op, but it's stupid.

But, all in all, best RPG since Morrowind in my humble opinion onions.

 

[firehawk12]

I think they implemented online co-op based on local co-op tech because they couldn't figure out a way to do it otherwise.
One thing is that unlike a game like GTA4, the game loads between screens so I suppose it's a question of what you do if one person leaves the area while another person is still around.

 

[Jim Steele]

I think they implemented online co-op based on local co-op tech because they couldn't figure out a way to do it otherwise.

They couldn't figure out a way to give each player their own camera? No, I don't believe that for a second. The code is already there for camera control. If anything, it would be harder to do it they way they've done it.

It was a design decision, clearly.

One thing is that unlike a game like GTA4, the game loads between screens so I suppose it's a question of what you do if one person leaves the area while another person is still around.

The chars are tethered together anyway, so what's the difference? Keep the tether, ditch the joint camera. Right now, the henchman can't initiate travel to another region, and can't go more than about 30 feet away from the host. Simply unlocking the camera won't cause any problems with this design.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I think they implemented online co-op based on local co-op tech because they couldn't figure out a way to do it otherwise.

They couldn't figure out a way to give each player their own camera? No, I don't believe that for a second. The code is already there for camera control. If anything, it would be harder to do it they way they've done it.

It was a design decision, clearly.

One thing is that unlike a game like GTA4, the game loads between screens so I suppose it's a question of what you do if one person leaves the area while another person is still around.

The chars are tethered together anyway, so what's the difference? Keep the tether, ditch the joint camera. Right now, the henchman can't initiate travel to another region, and can't go more than about 30 feet away from the host. Simply unlocking the camera won't cause any problems with this design.

I would imagine that even if the they kept the tether and let each player get half of the screen with their own camera control the engine wasn't designed for it, and most likely couldn't run it at playable frame rates. It would have to render twice as much, even if it's at a reduced resolution.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, my guess is that they got local co-op working fine and it was just easier to shoe-horn online co-op into that rather to try to muck around with the engine.

Anyway, I think the bigger innovation is the whole "Massively Online Single Player" orb system. I kind of wish all games were like that, so you could see what people playing the game are doing... makes a solitary experience seemed like a shared experience for some reason.

 

[Jim Steele]

I think they implemented online co-op based on local co-op tech because they couldn't figure out a way to do it otherwise.

They couldn't figure out a way to give each player their own camera? No, I don't believe that for a second. The code is already there for camera control. If anything, it would be harder to do it they way they've done it.

It was a design decision, clearly.

One thing is that unlike a game like GTA4, the game loads between screens so I suppose it's a question of what you do if one person leaves the area while another person is still around.

The chars are tethered together anyway, so what's the difference? Keep the tether, ditch the joint camera. Right now, the henchman can't initiate travel to another region, and can't go more than about 30 feet away from the host. Simply unlocking the camera won't cause any problems with this design.

I would imagine that even if the they kept the tether and let each player get half of the screen with their own camera control the engine wasn't designed for it, and most likely couldn't run it at playable frame rates. It would have to render twice as much, even if it's at a reduced resolution.

No no no, I'm not talking about the couch co-op. The unified camera is very understandable and entirely welcome when you have to share a screen.

But there is absolutely no need for it over LIVE, where both players will prerequisitely have their own hardware and display.

It's certainly not a gamebreaker, don't get me wrong. Considering it's my biggest and pretty much ONLY gripe with the game, I don't think I could be any more pleased with it. It just strikes me as an odd design decision as well as an annoyance.

Yeah, my guess is that they got local co-op working fine and it was just easier to shoe-horn online co-op into that rather to try to muck around with the engine.

An automatic camera that's synced over LIVE would surely have been more work to implement than simply allowing each player to control their own view like in single player. It's another stream of positioning data for a start.

 

[CommodoreKong]

They couldn't figure out a way to give each player their own camera? No, I don't believe that for a second. The code is already there for camera control. If anything, it would be harder to do it they way they've done it.

It was a design decision, clearly.

The chars are tethered together anyway, so what's the difference? Keep the tether, ditch the joint camera. Right now, the henchman can't initiate travel to another region, and can't go more than about 30 feet away from the host. Simply unlocking the camera won't cause any problems with this design.

I would imagine that even if the they kept the tether and let each player get half of the screen with their own camera control the engine wasn't designed for it, and most likely couldn't run it at playable frame rates. It would have to render twice as much, even if it's at a reduced resolution.

No no no, I'm not talking about the couch co-op. The unified camera is very understandable and entirely welcome when you have to share a screen.

But there is absolutely no need for it over LIVE, where both players will prerequisitely have their own hardware and display.

It's certainly not a gamebreaker, don't get me wrong. Considering it's my biggest and pretty much ONLY gripe with the game, I don't think I could be any more pleased with it. It just strikes me as an odd design decision as well as an annoyance.

Oh I see, I've only played local co-op so I had no idea it was also like that online. Hopefully they'll change it in a patch.

 

[Garrett]

I'm a few hours in and enjoying the game quite a bit. Most of that time has been spent working on my wood chopping skills and trying to see if I could get a three way going. The dog is pretty cool. It makes the dig feature something I'm actually using this time around unlike when I played the first game. Combat is also pretty fun. I like the way you can quickly transition from ranged to melee and then to using magic.

I have a few minor nitpicks about the game so far. Mostly with respect to context sensitive menus. For instance, a couple of women kept following me after I left town. I got jumped by bandits, but couldn't pick up the experience orbs after killing them. Instead, the social menu kept popping up. Other times when I want to interact directly with someone, I end up having to bring up the social menu separately, as well. The d-pad doesn't always seem to bring up the appropriate commands for what's going on.

The map in game leaves a lot to be desired, as others have mentioned. A mini-map would be a huge help. Right now, I just pick a quest or job wherever I want to go, and just follow the sparkly trail, but I don't like having to rely on that so much.

 

[Jim Steele]

I got jumped by bandits, but couldn't pick up the experience orbs after killing them. Instead, the social menu kept popping up.

Are you sure you were pressing the right button? It's the right trigger to collect orbs, the right bumper for the expression menu.

 

[Garrett]

I got jumped by bandits, but couldn't pick up the experience orbs after killing them. Instead, the social menu kept popping up.

Are you sure you were pressing the right button? It's the right trigger to collect orbs, the right bumper for the expression menu.

That's probably it. Guess it's my fault for trying to start up a game so late.

 

[unimatrix7]

Anyway, I think the bigger innovation is the whole "Massively Online Single Player" orb system. I kind of wish all games were like that, so you could see what people playing the game are doing... makes a solitary experience seemed like a shared experience for some reason.

Abso-fucking-lutely. Not enough has been said about this, and most reviews haven't even mentioned it. IMO, it's a hugely important feature that could be rolled out to a lot of games in a lot of different genres.

 

[firehawk12]

I just wanted to say that the ending choice is pretty awesome and I'm definitely happy with my experience.

And, while I'm still skeptical about the Doll Catcher achievement, the fact that you can get achievements just by hanging out with people is pretty awesome.
I got all the collectathon achievements from random strangers who were helping people.

 

[TheMurph]

Had to stop playing the game for awhile, finally got back to it and got to beat it. Overall I enjoyed the game, my only gripe was that while the ending was theatrically good, I felt that the final combat should have been a little bit more epic. I can't wait for the third Fable.

One question for others that have played it, on couch coop how do you get the exp and money you earn while playing with somebody else to save on your game? My wife has been playing in my world to gather some exp and gold, but when she loads her game it isn't there. She selects her profile and her save, but no dice. I'm probably missing it.

 

[firehawk12]

Not Fable 3, but...

http://kotaku.com/5097723/first-fable-ii-premium-dlc-revealed

I find it kind of hilarious that this came so much sooner than the GTA4 DLC. Still, instant buy for me.

 

[JonathonWally]

Right now I'm still working on getting the last few achievements in game. Besides the co-op stuff I just need to get my own doll first.

The game was really awesome and I like how you have to life with all your choices and can't play with saves to undo any of them.

Fantastic game and maybe the most beautiful graphics I've ever seen. The lighting technique blows me away.

I just wish I didn't chose that one spire ending as my first. but I didn't look up the consquences. Not too much of a big deal I spose. Though I wonder if it'll give me trouble with that one demon door.

And who else got spooked by that one demon door?