The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

The following contains Fable 2 spoilers. Like, I talk about every major plot point. So… keep that in mind.

The game was great. I never played the original Fable to compare it to, but damn, this was a great little game. Perhaps not QUITE as super as Molyneux would have you believe. But this is a game everyone with a 360 needs to play. Hell, if you don’t want to do sidequests? The main quest is fairly short, I’m sure you could rent it beat it over a weekend and still have a great experience.
The thing that really quite shocked me about the game, though, was how much I cared about what was going on. There were several points in the game that gave me serious emotional hits, and I want to talk about them, which is why this is so spoiler-y.
The beginning, sure, has a hit right up front with the death of your sister you’ve been running around with thus far. Her voice actor is great (all the voice actors in the game are, really) and you really feel close to her by the time you get to that point. But still, you expect a tragic beginning to get you into your life of heroing, so that one doesn’t leave you with much. Still, it’s done well.
The point where it first really hit me was when I was forced to be taken as basically a slave and waste 10 years of my life just to rescue this guy I was told I needed, but didn’t know what for. That really upset me, not only because it did a good job of making you make choices during this time so you could feel oppressed, but because, dammit, that’s ten years! I had a lesbian wife! I was a real-estate investor! I had an in-game life, and throwing it all away for some guy I didn’t even know seemed horrible. I left that quest thinking that, if I was really my character, the quest would end the moment I got free. Fuck this hero stuff. I think the fact that that was my first reaction to it means something. I mean, the game is created for you to go on adventures, and the game managed to create an emotional situation where I didn’t want to sacrifice anything anymore. I didn’t want to adventure anymore. That’s skillful shit.
Of course, I continued because I wanted to beat the game. The game just kept bringing the hits after that. The side quests continued to be funny and touching, but the main quest kept being emotional and depressing. I had to recruit the final “hero” who is an evil dick. A charismatic, funny evil dick. You know, one of those truly evil people that just entertain you to listen to? Yeah. But first I had to go on a quest to talk to this shadow council, and they were going to sap the life force from the person who held this evil seal that I was tricked into carrying, just to keep this dick alive for another hundred years or whatever. I could have pawned it off onto an innocent and have her life force taken, but dammit, I’m not going to do that shit. So I got old. Granted, I looked good with grey hair. Distinguished. But that made me angry, too. And when I walked back to him to start the end game… well, he kept killing artists making portraits each time I visited him, and this final time, Barnum, an NPC you have many quests with throughout the game and who is very entertaining, was taking his picture. And he kills him too. It made me pissed. It really annoyed me I couldn’t murder this person because of the quest. I was seriously, seriously angry at that moment.
The final hits come in the very end game, of course. Lucien, the bad guy, tells me he personally murdered my wife. It shocked me that this affected me. Your family is not especially robust. They don’t have an interesting personality, from what I can see. Still, I went back to her over and over throughout the course of the game for a roll in the hay to refill my health, and she kept giving me experience potions. I was glad I got married, and then, once again, this stupid-ass quest kept me from being there to stop people. It hurt. And of course, finally, he shoots the dog, which is the last fucking straw. You get closer to that dog than ANYONE in the game. It is so charismatic, cute, and useful. If the game wanted me to hate the bad guy, it did a damn good job.
In the end game, you’re forced to pick one of three fates. To revive all the people murdered by Lucien, except your family and loved ones, to revive just your family and loved ones (including your dog, of course) or get really wealthy. Obviously I’m never going to pick the riches, but dammit, I really debated picking Love. I was planning on picking Love. But the game really put me in an emotional state where I had to think about things. I deserved to have my family back, but so did everyone else in the world, and I couldn’t deny that to them. The point is, though, I made the choice with my heart. Bravo, game. Seriously. That means you did a spectacular job.

Still, when it puts you back into the game afterwards, and my dog wasn’t there beside me… man.

The point of all this is, even if the game does have some flaws (huge-ass load times, fairly linear when sort of advertised as otherwise, really kind of annoying interacting with people through expressions system) it does an amazingly good job of emotionally involving you in your decisions, if you let it. Gaming needs way, way more games that do that. Fable II will probably not get game of the year from anyone, but it deserves a lot of praise, in my book.