Once known as "Project Ego", Fable has been one of the most anticipated Xbox games since the system launched almost three years ago. The project is under the leadership of innovator Peter Molyneux, who is responsible, amongst others, for the PC hit Black & White, which, like Fable, challenges players to solve problems by being either good or bad. Indeed, he is arguably the creator of the God sim genre, being the brainchild behind classics of old Populous and Powermonger. Before release, Fable allegedly would let players live life as a warrior how they wanted, either by being a hero, or a villain. While this is essentially true, Fable doesn't deliver nearly as much freedom as people had originally expected and fails to live up to the massive hype that surrounded it. Does this make it a bad game, though? Not at all...

The story begins by putting you in control of a child, who eventually becomes a battle-hardened warrior by the end of the game. This is a great set up, as it introduces you to the way the game will work and lets you get used to it in your own time. You stand in front of your father as he talks to you about your sister and getting her a birthday gift, which you haven't yet done. Problem is, you're broke, but your dad promises that he'll give you one gold piece for each good deed you do. Now, in the world of Fable, everybody seems to see everything. Do something wrong and everybody will know and the same goes for good deeds. The game's basic controls are introduced here and are quite simple, especially if you're an avid player of third person action games. The only exception is the right analog stick, which, when pushed up or down, zooms the camera in and out, as well as the black and white buttons being used to draw weapons.

From this point you can go and do your deeds, or explore the area around you. You'll see a large amount of casual civilians you can interact with, which is where most of your good or evil deeds will come from. My first interaction (well, technically second, as the first was when my foot made a large impact on a nearby chicken) was with a man and a woman behind a house. The two were flirting with each other innocently until I discovered the man was actually married to another woman. He then asked me to keep it quiet, which in return would earn me a gold piece. I told him I wouldn't do that and would tell people, to which he replied with a plea not to tell his wife. I then punched him in the face and ran away, only later to tell his wife about it and then go back to him to gloat about it. [Remind me never to confide a secret in you!! Ed]. This is the best part of Fable, the interaction with the civilians and the choices you can make. Yes, you have the ability to hurt anybody at anytime but be prepared to pay the price. If you can get away with it though, well then you're obviously going to be playing the game down the path of a villain.

I won't spoil what happens next but the boy will soon find himself at the Hero's Guild, where he spends the next 15 or so years of his life. After arriving here and meeting some people, the game skips to the teenage years of his life at which point you are taught the basics of combat. You continue training here into your adulthood while learning about melee attacks and weapons, both close combat and ranged, and will power, otherwise known as magic. This whole ordeal takes about an hour or so to complete, depending on how much time you spend exploring. Now an adult, you're free to roam the world and go on quests, all of which are given to you at the Hero's Guild. From this point in the game you're about 10 hours from the end if you just do all the quests straight through. There are various side quests to go on but they don't actually add a lot to the game; however, die-hard players will be able to squeeze about 20 or even 30 hours out of the game if they do absolutely everything there is to do.

As you adventure out into the world, you'll be able to find various collectibles such as keys, clothing, special demon doors and quests, or cards with hairstyles or tattoos on them, which are used at shops to change your appearance. While changing your appearance doesn't affect the story or gameplay much, it does however vastly change how civilians will react to you. Walk around in nothing but your underwear and you're sure to get some laughs, or wear very heavy armour and people may actually cower before you. As you progress you can even begin interacting with people via a command menu, which holds actions such as laugh, gloat, flirt, burp, fart and a whole lot more. Commands can also be issued from here to get people to follow you or to wait, but don't expect everybody to just get up and do so. You can even pull out trophies acquired from your adventures and show them off to the villagers; in fact, Fable has made a mini-game out of it, as it keeps track of how many people you were able to show a trophy to within a certain time limit. How you interact with people and what quests you take ultimately determine your character's alignment with good or evil, as well as how he looks in the end.

Whilst you have control of his hair, tattoos and clothing, you do not have control of a variety his other features. Over time you will develop scars, evil red eyes and even horns if you play towards the dark side and people will even run when they look at you walking towards them with a hunch. Being a good guy will give your character a heavenly aura and the villagers may even follow you around and clap as you pass by. The civilians even call out nicknames to you, which you can either earn or purchase. Though some people will not like the idea of buying yourself a nickname, not everybody will enjoy being called Chicken Chaser as they walk by and will be glad they can change it to something else. On that note, you can also buy yourself a new alignment at a few points in the game by simply going to a specific temple and devoting yourself to the gods of good or evil and donating some money (which you'll have plenty of by that point). This kind of ruins Fable in a few ways, as instead of playing through the game a second time as good or evil to see the other endings, you can simply reload a previous save point and switch your alignment to see a new ending. Other things ruin the chance of you playing through the game again as well, like being able to continue your game once you finish it and fully explore the world to its ultimate potential.

The interaction with other NPCs (non-playable-characters) is incredibly good fun and in the end will probably be the best and most remembered part of Fable, along with the alignment system. The main quests in the game are very clichéd and aren't exactly unique, consisting of leading certain people somewhere, rescuing people and other missions we've seen too many times before. For a game this anticipated and so long in development, players will be expecting a longer quest mode with a little more variety. However, a few times you'll get to select two versions of a quest. For instance, instead of defending a barn from bandits, you can join in and attack the barn instead. These quests help decide what alignment you take but still manage to remain linear. Let me explain what I mean; I decided I wanted to take the quest to join the bandits raiding and stealing crates from a barn but during the heist I would attack the bandits on my side and betray them. Things don't work this way however, as more bandits just ran in and acted as if nothing had ever happened and the guards still attacked me. Sure, I would have failed the quest but it would be nice to be able to make non-linear decisions like this at any point in the game to adjust alignment and add replay value and the feel of freedom to the otherwise dull quests.

The actual gameplay in Fable is quite good and usually fun. The controls are easy to use once learned and everything is easily accessible, even programmable, at all times. However, there are a few minor issues with the control layout some people may have. For instance, during battle you may get your combo multiplier up high enough to do a special attack by pushing the B button. Unfortunately, the B button is also the run button, so if you're running from enemy to enemy you'll find yourself accidentally doing this powerful attack as soon as you enter enemy range, thus wasting it. This isn't that big of a deal though as they're easy to earn back. Holding the R button gives all the buttons different commands; your D-Pad becomes your favourite civilian interactions and the A, B, Y, and X buttons are all used for your will attacks (so you may accidentally find yourself frying a poor sap with lightning when all you meant to do was belch in his face if you aren't careful).

Your will powers start off as minimal; in fact you'll only have lightning. Don't worry though, returning to the Hero's Guild allows you to level up and earn a plethora of new and unique abilities including projectile will power, surround will power and more. You can give yourself the ability to throw fire, or to put a shield around yourself. These can also be levelled up to create the ultimate magic master, but chances are you'll end up levelling your character up in all categories, which includes stealth, speed, strength, endurance, melee attacks, ranged attacks and just about anything you can think of, so don't expect to just focus on one section only as you'll probably need and end up getting all of them.

One important part of Fable is stealing, which you'll almost always end up doing even if you want to be the nicest hero you can think of. Most of your hair cards, tattoo cards and clothing end up coming from other people's houses. It doesn't affect your alignment that much, although it does give you evil points towards. If you're caught you could get in a bit of trouble with the authorities but it's easy to steal and not be seen, even during the brightest time of the day. Speaking of day, yes, the game does have time that passes by and it will become night time (which is ideal for breaking and entering), though at any point you can return to the Hero's Guild and sleep, thus switching the time of day.

One of my biggest personal disappointments with Fable is how the world is laid out and set up. It's essentially various small zones attached to very long and boring paths and they all require a harsh loading time. Walking from point to point is just boring and the environments all have steady bushes, bricks, logs and trees along them, making it impossible to venture out into the unknown or get lost. Clicking in the right analogue stick brings up a giant map of your area, too, ultimately killing all sense of exploration and the unknown. It is good to have a map and all but you don't actually even need it that much.

Graphically, Fable delivers big time. The lavish, bright colours look great and each character has a slight but subtle green or purple glow around them, which indicates their importance to you. The icing on the graphical cake however is your character himself; you'll find yourself zooming in on his face just to see what changes he's had and how he's aging. It's unfortunate there's no way to upload a picture of your character online, as you can get some spectacular looking warriors by the end of the adventure. The scenery looks good but not amazing and you'll sometimes even see pop-up (yes, I'm serious), which is quite rare in this type of game and can sometimes take you out of the experience.

The sound excels well, too, even if your character doesn't speak, because everybody else in the game does. All of your actions result in some sort of vocal reaction from whoever is around you and some of them are quite humorous to listen to. The hacking and slashing sounds are all here in full force and are fine, but what really helps the game is its epic soundtrack that always hits at the right moment and fits every scene, meshing perfectly with the game's great ambience. Repetitive vocals from the people around town is the worst thing I could say about the sound in Fable.

Epic RPG fans will jump right into the ambitious world of Fable and quickly defeat all the quests like anybody else, but what makes this experience different are the great moments you have with people around town or on one of your journeys across the world. There's plenty to explore, find, and do, which includes a couple features better suited for an online game, such as getting married or buying a house, which can be rented out. Fable's low points hurt the game quite a bit, especially the length of the game, which could be beaten in three days if you played it a decent amount. It's because of this and the poorly designed world that I would only recommend this game as a purchase if you're a true hardcore RPG nut looking for an epic feeling adventure with a great set of novelty features not found anywhere else.

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).