No country for old men

ah stranger danger

Ok, when I was reviewing Claymore, my problem was my total lack of emotion that I felt from the series as a whole; it was good, just not profound. So I figured, for the summer I’d better review something that got a real emotional response out of me, and that tends to happen if a movie is really popular but isn’t really good (it being good requires me to like it, clichéd egomaniacs joke there). So, as the title indicates, I’m going to be attacking one of the most popular films of the last few years, “No Country for Old Men”. No Country for Old Men, a 2007 film made by the Cohen brothers, it guys who made Fargo.

The movie takes place in Texas where a hunter/cowboy person named Llewelyn Moss who comes across a botched drug deal, and finds two millions dollars. However, the mafia finds out who he is and send a man named Chigurh to kill him, (yes it’s a play off sugar), who is the poster boy for disturbing serial killers, but nobody seems to be able to catch on. Chigurh tracks Moss while mowing down all of the Mexican gangsters who get in his way with a shot gun that has a silencer on it (did I mention this movie takes place in 1980), eventually fighting moss with shot guns in the middle of a city, where nobody seems to notice. And then another operative shows up to make a deal with moss, and then Chigurh some how he knows where he lives and kills him and…ok no this stuff is absurd. The plot is just nonsensical violence, broken up by long scenes of people staring at things. But the plot is nothing more than a series of fights and Chigurh implausibly avoiding getting caught.

Now the film is cinematically impressive, and I think that is the main reason why this was so well accepted. If you look at it from a fully cinematic viewpoint, this thing will blow your mind, and most of the praise for this film comes, justifiably, from the extremely high quality of the film. The landscape shots are mind-blowing, and the editing ins profound, the props look and feel realistic in the characters hands, and the audio effects are superb, giving the effect that you are actually at these locations feeling what the characters feel. In fact, it reminded me of “The Shining”, in the sense that the tension and the emotions comes from the feeling that you are present at the location. And it has that same great quality of the tension being in the atmosphere of the scene, rather than any particular event, like the first coin toss scene in the film, all of the emotion is in what will happen next, and the expectations and eventually defying the viewers expectations. They both also have a talent for generating a lot of fear and suspense in fairly normal situations, without a climax (shut up Freud), and still be horrifying. Like the scene in “The Shining” where the boy I standing by the forbidden hotel room and is considering opening it but doesn’t? Even when the boy eventually chooses the anti climatic solution and doesn’t open the door, the tension is still there, and the scene is still far more suspenseful than any actual monster hunt, and that is because it taps into some very inner primal fears. Very few American movie goings have actually been chased by a monster or been chased by a psychotic hit man, but many of us know the primal fear of what is on the other side of a creepy door into the scary room, or been alone in a passage way when you suddenly feel a sense of fear, or have run into a really creepy guy at work. When the movie choices showing suspense in simplicity, it is brilliant. However, the effect is ruined by the sheer absurdity of the evens that occur. Does nobody in this city know how to use a phone, when you see a shotgun fight in a hotel room, police do something about it. It wastes its best quality in its absurdity, and just becomes a well-made action movie. One thing the movie does deserve massive credit for is that it has a total lack of background music. None, the entire movie goes without any background music at all, which gives it massive kudo points in the grand scheme of things. Now, I’m not against background music as an idea, and I think it can be used to great affect (The Shining again). But I like movies experimenting with new things, and in terms of drama, I think the lack of background music worked almost entirely in this movie. And lets be honest, technically speaking, this is nothing short of a masterpiece. However, that doesn’t excuse the actual biggest fault of the movie, and that’s well…the story.

The film, based upon a book of the same name, is a film trying to be a deconstruction of the typical western, as well as the clichéd Hollywood format, by showing that life isn’t fair and evil triumphs over good. Now, I think that is a good message, it is easy to get disgusted with he sappy, corny, and sickenly clichéd happy endings that always seem to come out in Hollywood movies. Now I don’t object to happy endings, but I do get sick with the extremely implausible happy endings, where everything works out in an utterly implausible manner (Disney is particularly guilty of this). One of my top dislikes of films that are painfully optimistic or painfully idealistic (I don’t mind idealism, but it has to be contrasted with reality for me to take it seriously, Pan’s Labyrinth did this very well) without a sense of realism. Sappy, overly sweet endings in particular are a personal pet hatred of mine (again, Slumdog pulled this off well by making the characters earn their happy ending), cause its sappy, cliché, and horribly false. However, and I’m sure you can see what I’m building up to, some films go too far in the other direction, in trying to show how dark, unfair, and unjust the world is, they make everything so absurdly horrible and life so dismal that it just comes off as absurd, cause people realize that it isn’t accurate. Anything by Frank Miller (Sin City, I’m looking at you), suffers from this, as well as racism and crappy writing, because the violence, sex, drugs and cursing is so gratuitous and over the top, that it is just as unrealistic as a description of the Native Americans and English settles living happy idealistic lives. The trap that film makers fall into, and No Country for Old Men is a painful example of this, is that it is so absurdly dark and cynical, that its message of “this is the harsh reality” comes off as just silly rather than moving, most likely because the directors are desperate to show off the unfair nature of the world they just go straight into the realm of impossibility. Cynical works can be effective, if they feel like they could actually happen, “Song of Ice and Fire” is a good example of this cause dark as the world may be, its feels like a retelling of Historical England, which was pretty dark. But the most cynical, dark and idealistically shattering thing I’ve ever seen was in a work that contained no blood, no cursing, no fighting and no sex. The English TV show, “Yes Minister” and its sequel Series “Yes Prime Minister” depict a far darker reality than the over the top violence of “No Country for Old Men”. Both shows are basically dramas about how politics actually work in England, with the weak willed but idealistic minister Hacker butting heads with the cynical and corrupt secretary Sir Humphrey. Within the show, many good ideas and competent solutions to the nations various problems are proposed, but are shot down, delayed, or tainted by the inefficient, back biting, and corrupt British Government (this corrupt isn’t limited to Britain, France and the US are shown quite negatively as well). The show very accurately shows why blind idealism doesn’t work so well in the real world, and it does this so effectively cause it feels real. The reason why it is so chilling is because you know, that to an extent, the politics of the show are real, and the way politics works is real. The cynicism, the corruption, the incompetence and the nepotism all take place in our own government; the show just displays how it works. “No Country for Old Men” makes the claim it isn’t a typical Hollywood movie, but in a sense it is, the plot armor is instead protecting the villain instead of the hero. Chigurh by rights should have been killed or caught long before the ending. I mean, in the opening he kills a cop with a pair of hand-cuffs, and a random man on the street, and considering his name and appearance, not to mention the body trail he leaves behind, he shouldn’t be that hard to track. I mean, now inept to the police have to be to not notice two shot gun fights in the middle of a city and a motel? And then he comes backs to the motel, and murders another man; does anybody go outside their houses in this town? Not to mention his seeming omnipotence, always knowing where his enemy is, such as the second assassin who appears with a lot of build up, and is then quickly killed off (just like how Halloran is killed off in the Shinning after a massive build up, which I thought was great), but Chigurh somehow both knows he is in town, and where he is staying. Not to mention how a guy with a shotgun fighting men with machineguns never seems to get hit by any bullets.

Now people mention that he is like some kind of unstoppable force or deity, but the thing is, it feels cheap. The man is a hired hit man by a gang sent to retrieve money, that man being the symbolic incarnation of fate just seems petty. And in the film he gets called out for being a human being near the end. So the whole angle of painting him as some sort of angle of Death just doesn’t feel right, he is clearly a human and clearly a sociopath, not some person who ought to maintain judgment over life and death. And its not even random chance, cause despite his flipping a coin, he is the one who chooses who has to get that choice. And the whole concept of him being some sort of force of nature falls flat when he is killing Mexican gangsters for cash. The whole concepts has been done before and done better. Take the classic Swedish film “Seventh Seal”, which his about the man who plays chess with death. He is also running away from an unstoppably dark antagonist who is the metaphorical representation of death and inevitability. However, it has a context, the knight has played chess with death and is targeted for death, and it takes place during the time of the Black Death. And there is this whole theme about fate vs. faith vs. despair, so it’s all part of the story. In “No Country for Old Men”, the whole “unbeatably avatar of death” angle feels out of place, cause it has no real part of the story. The protagonist is marked for death but apart from materialistic money dealings…um, why? Why is fate against this guy, he hasn’t really done anything that seems to justify the fates aligning against him, and it doesn’t seem to mesh well with the whole story, cause it doesn’t relate.

In short, while the movie is impressive, it ruins all of its best moments just by not being well written. The best parts of the movie are I admit, but, there are only a few scenes where both the technological genius combines with actual good writing. The best example of course, are at the end, and are both massive spoilers, even more so than everything else I’ve said, so if you ever plan of watching the movie and care about these sort of things, then stop reading now, leave the blog alone, then come back when you finished. For you people, my final words are going to be “It isn’t at all worth the hype, and suffers from some truly painful writing, but is certainly worth watching simply for the quality of the film itself alone. I wouldn’t put it on any “best movies list”, but it does deserve some of its praise for the technical achievements, and all of the actors, but in the end, just watch Fargo”

For those of you who’ve seen it, or don’t care about spoilers, here are the two scenes that I think actually deserve praise. The most shocking of course is that the main character dies…off screen. The last scene we see him in is seeing the Mexican Gangsters (opposed to Chigurh) coming to his door and his preparing himself for a fight. Then we cut away, and when we cut back Chigurh finds Moss’ corpse surrounded by dead gangsters, and then moves on. Basically, its like the film just skipped over the massive fight where the main character brings down like half the gang before being shot and mortally wounded, having a brief flashback to his wife or something, then with his last dying strength unleashing his full fury upon the remaining gangsters and dies looking up at the sky taking about yada yada yada we’ve all been here before. It’s a standard cliché in action movie, and the fact that the movie actually skipped it actually legitimately shocked me. Up until now, while there were a few “oh, didn’t see that coming” moments, this was the only time I actually was pretty shocked, cause we’ve grown to expect the main character dying in a final blaze of shotgun cocking (shut up Freud) glory, that the final 20 mins of the film being nothing but a long shooting happy moment is kinda taken for granted, so I will give the film points for simply skipping over all of that and spending the final 20 mins of the film doing something a bit more plot related, not to mention how much that shocked the audience. It also kinda makes a point on how the final explosive final, isn’t actually that needed in a film, by not showing it, the entire concept is kinda made to look silly and unneeded, so kudos to the film for spending its ending on something more time worthy. And in that, we get the second good part of the film, the final 20 mins. Now these aren’t actually good, just unlike the rest of the film, something is keeping your attention apart from the film quality and the actors, and is the first time Chigurh gets any real humanization in his confrontation with the wife where somebody finally calls him out for being a psycho. And then getting hit by a car, which is the only time the world actually seems remotely unfair (the other driver doesn’t seem eager to talk to him through, normally the driver is worried bout the whole insurance angle), and the symbolism made sense, cross roads being the crossroads of life ect ect. But these too scenes don’t make up for the movie as a whole. In the end…wait I already told you what I thought. Oh fine. Worth watching, but shockingly forgettable.

From
EE

Remake, EvilElitest's review on Fable Lost Chapters

What if marriage was this easy in real life?

Fable:Lost Chapters, Wasted Time

Well, as most of you know Fable II, the sequel to the popular game Fable, has been released, and in the next few weeks everybody who’s anybody will be commenting on it. So I’m stuck in a bit of a pickle. I’ve only recently gotten Fable II, and I haven’t been able to test it out. So while I want to contribute to the newest fad, I realize that until I finish the game I’m not going to be able to offer an opinion that is actually worth anything. And lets be honest, when everybody is talking about a game, who is going to care what I say when you can listen to Game Informer suck up to Lionhead Studios about how this game is the most revolutionary and immersive RPG in the world for anyone who has never played Elder Scrolls, Neverwinter nights, Torment or Baldur’s Gate. So I, as per norm, will do the most annoying thing possible and take the half way stance. I’ll be on the Fable bandwagon by reviewing the series, but in order to be original and creative (if doing something everybody else did years ago is creative) I’ll review the first game instead. Actually, this isn’t that bad as far as my ideas go, because it not only will remind the people playing the sequel how the first game worked out (or, more accurately, didn’t), it also will let the people who actually had some common sense and avoided the first game to see how it turned out now that everybody is talking about the sequel.

Ok, now as most of you noticed, my description of the series isn’t very flattering. If you haven’t noticed, seriously, you need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I admit, I’m being kinda overly hostile, Fable II hasn’t done anything yet to deserve my wrath, so I really shouldn’t mock it as much, through the first game certainly deserves all the mocking I can give it. Now before we start, I want to address an issue that apparently comes up whenever somebody reviews Fable, “Project Ego”. Basically when the game was first being developed, that apparently famous game designer Peter Douglas Molyneux made a lot of fancy promises, and when Fable didn’t deliver, a lot of gamers got upset and dubbed the game “Project Ego”. Now personally, I don’t see why this was such a big deal, because quite frankly, I expect game designers to exagerate the good qualities of their game, and I’m of the opinion that one should never listen to what designer says about their game. Even if you ignore their monetary self interest in getting you pumped up, they also wouldn’t be making the game if they didn’t think it was the best thing in the history of ever, as only a few game designers have what we call modesty. So I don’t feel that angry when the developers claim that their game allows you to plan murders like no murder simulator ever has before, and it turns out that you are only able to plan virtual assault. What gets me pissed off through is when reviewers who aren’t in the pocket of the gaming companies (they exist) declare the game the best RPG in the history of EvaR, and seem unable to notice the flaws in the game. While I don’t think Fable should be burned at the stake, the way it is so overrated is really annoying.

Fable tries to be the most immersive video game in the world; you can buy your own house, get married, customize your character’s dress, alter your appearance, and choose to be good or evil, etc. A new RPG that goes into uncharted territory, bravely exploring the unknown, challenging the limits of the RPG world by….doing exactly what Elder Scrolls, Baldur’s Gate, and Neverwinter Nights did. Fable’s premise is declared as revolutionary, but it really doesn’t do anything that other games haven’t done before. Now, a game doesn’t have to bring about a new age in gaming to be good, it could take a new spin on things, present an old format in a unique manner, or in the still developing concept of immersive game worlds, it could just try to expand upon the concepts used in later games. But Fable doesn’t do that, any good things that come out of the game (and there are some) are overshadowed by the massive lack of originality. Sticking to a format is fine, but you have to at least expand upon the format, not just blatently copy and reuse it. David Edding’s books may be full of clichés but he makes sure he tells the story well and uses the format in a mature and original manner, while Fable is a bit more like Eragon, which just blatantly rips off other works and doesn’t add anything. It’s like that rip off of “Rear window”, “Disturbia” it just doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and no matter how good your premise is, if you just rehash what other people have done better you’re still just a hack. Alright, I’ve made several accusations, and much as I really do want to claim its bad and leave it at that, I am somewhat obligated to go into detail on the matter.

Right, let’s get started. If you haven’t played the game, well as you can expect, Spoilers below, but nothing really that astounding honestly. The story takes place in the mythical lands of Albion, where you start out as a young boy in a small village. From the get go, it is established that you can choose to be good or evil, though it’s a very simplistic kiddy sort of good and evil; beating up the little girl or returning her teddy bear, that sort of thing. You have to buy a present for your little creepy sister, and then your entire village is destroyed by bandits, and everything goes downhill from there. The hero (who if you haven’t caught on, is you) and is never named throughout the game, is taken to the “Hero’s Guild”, apparently a school for adventuring (don’t worry, I’ll address its absurdities later), and then after a few bug killing tutorials, is let out into the wild. The main feature of the game is that the world reacts to you and you can choose to be good and evil (oh yeah, there is some plot about a dragon, a magic sword, a blind girl and a fighting arena, but I honestly couldn’t care).

Well since I have a long list of complaints, let’s start with Fable’s greatest flaw; immersion. For a game that tries so hard to engage you in its world, it does a very poor job, like the fact that you can’t talk to anybody who isn’t a plot character. NPCs (Non Playable Characters) will wave vaguely and make some comments on your appearance, but the game almost glorifies how unresponsive they are. While the reactions are kinda cool at first, they quickly become annoying because they are so generic. At least when you can talk to NPCs you get to choose when you want to listen to them, but hearing “What a swell bloke” or “He is a scary one that Hero” again and again gets really annoying. This also makes the player not attached to the world, because the world is inhabited by a bunch of obviously generic people who all look and act exactly the same.

“Wait a second EE, most games have masses of emotionally dead NPCs, why is Fable at fault here?”

The thing is while plenty of other games have generic NPCs at least you can interact with them. Take Baldur’s Gate for example, the vast majority of the NPCs are nothing more than random people with the generic name “peasant” or “Guard” or “Understudy”, but despite that the player can approach them and engage them. You can learn interesting stuff from them, and they might comment upon the way you act or the things you’ve done, like how in Jade Empire you can go up to anybody and talk to them about what is going on. Even games I am normally critical of, like most JRPGs (Western elitism ahoy) at least have every random dude give you some nifty fun facts about the world. You can talk with people and have some interaction. It’s not perfect, hardly and it certainly could be improved, but at least it’s something.

Now you can use emotes to communicate with the people around you, with your character making a corresponding action, like flirt, dance, laugh, recite Shakespearian poetry etc, to which the NPCs will react. However this really doesn’t replace the ability to talk to NPCs, because their reactions are so shallow. The first time your hero flirts with a girl it is kinda funny listening to their reaction, but after the third time you’ve pretty much heard all there is. When you fart, dance or flex your muscles, every person’s reaction is pretty much the same as everyone else’s and then the NPC interaction goes from intriguing to absurdly tedious. For example, as a good person learned that making people like you increases your good points. To achieve that all I have to do is wave, dance and smile to people, and just generally act friendly. After doing this for ten minutes everyone in town bloody loved me. When I wear black clothes they hate me, but when I change to something happier, they all love me again, which means either the game can’t handle social skills, or people of Albion are more fickle than the crowd in Julius Caesar. Because it’s so easy to change people’s minds it’s not really worth it.

The worst example of this is the romance part of the game. Now I like the idea of being able to marry any person (Boy or Girl) in the entire game, it’s a nice option and I think if handled maturely it could be to a lot of fun. But because the NPC interaction is so shallow, it’s just boring. Here is how you get married.

1) Either become good looking or have a high renown

2) Walk up to a random woman, literally any women and use the flirt emote four or five times.

3) Give her a ring after buying a house and hey, you’re married.

That’s it. I got married and divorced in three different towns in ten minutes, and if I hadn’t run out of money I could have gotten married to the entire female population Bluebeard style. But at no point in this romantic process can you actually talk to your potential wife. On some level the game is remarkable realistic when it come to the post marriage relationship, the wife just stands in the house complaining about your looks and asking you to buy her stuff for. The husband just neglects her, with almost no real love between them, just like all real life marriages (joke).

One thing that baffled me was the same sex marriage. I like that the option is available, although I didn’t use it, and I have to reluctantly praise the game for including it. But I have to ask, how is homosexuality viewed within the game world? I mean, in the Middle Ages it was considered a sin, and even today it isn’t accepted. I mean, in most states gay marriage isn’t legal. So I was rather curious about why it is so tolerated in the world of Fable. Apparently it’s an acceptable if taboo practice, but nobody seems to comment upon it or explain why it is so tolerated. While people take a little pressing to admit to being gay, when they come out nobody actually does anything about it and there is absolutely no mention of its effect on society. I’d expect that the world of Fable would be fundamentally different from our word, but it isn’t and thus gay marriage, in the end, seems to be just a gimmick.

Now Fable is sold on the idea that you can do pretty much anything, and act the way you want. Yeah, these are all lies. The world is like Legend of Zelda in how linear it is, but unlike Zelda it doesn’t make up for that by being creative. The entire world is just a few cities, with a few roads connecting them. You can’t randomly explore the world, or just wander around, because there is nowhere to go. Compare this to say, Morrowind where one can wander literally anywhere in the world from the get go, Fable also makes the claim that one doesn’t have to follow the main quest. One can do all the side quests, but after those are gone there really isn’t anything else to do unless you want to get married or burn a town to the ground. Now this isn’t necessarily bad, BioWare’s games are very linear, but they give you much more freedom of choice. Take Jade Empire. In every chapter before moving on to the main quest, you can do a lot of side quests within a limited area. The biggest difference between Jade Empire and Fable is that the former’s quests tend to be really in depth, like when you have to help fix the love life of the town’s local mobster, while Fable’s are really simple; go here and kill that guy.

I like in Fable how people react to your appearance, despite how shallowly it is implemented. The many different hair styles, tattoos, and clothing designs are a great idea and one of the few things that Fable has to offer that Elder Scrolls would be better off with. Ok, the most badass thing this game has to offer is the voice acting. No, I’m serious; the game has really good voice acting. This might be my inner Anglophile speaking, but the fact that most of the voice actors are British really does go a long way towards making mediocre dialogue really good. I mean I want to kidnap their voice team and force them to be the random voice actors in every game from now on. The only game who’s random people have such good voices that I can think of (and correct me if I’m wrong) is Jade Empire, which has a much smaller cast, and a little behind Baldur’s Gate, which had a more limited number of phrases. The voice acting alone almost forgives the game for all of its other faults. However, despite the great voices, the actual reactions makes it all for not, what a waste.

The absolute worst problem with the game is the alignment system, which makes every edition of D&D look as coherent and comprehendible as the legal system in Russia. Now Fable has this idea that your actions affect your appearance, so a good person will get a halo and butterflies whereas a villain will get horns and creepy skin. Once you get past the gut reaction of disdain, it’s actually quite a cool idea. I mean, imagine if your actions physically changed your appearance, how cool a concept would that be? Good and evil would be viewed in a totally different manner, and people’s way of thinking would change drastically. Even if 1% of the population in Fable had this ability it would be a very interesting feature; the idea that a person’s appearance reveals their inner soul. You could do a lot with that idea, like having a church where the “Halo people” are their saints, and people being very upfront and honest about what kind of people they are because they can’t hide it.

But despite being one of Fable’s most original ideas, they don’t do anything with it. First off, nobody else seems to change like you do, which is disappointing considering how much interaction you could have with other characters in the game. Also nobody really comments on it. Oh they will cower when they see your evil version or feel happy when they see the good you, but nobody goes “hey, that bloke looks like a demonic freak” or “Look daddy an angel.” And nobody tried to burn me at the stake, which I felt very offended by.

But there are bigger problems with the logic of the alignment system itself. One questionable feature is that killing a trader costs you 12 evil points, while killing a farmer cost more? Are farmers more pure than merchants? Is growing food some holy task, while peddling merchandise is somehow evil? And if that’s the case, how is killing the bandit chief after he surrenders more evil than killing a single farmer? I mean, I can see it being evil, but wouldn’t it be less evil than murdering an innocent farmer? Or why is stealing an apple worth eight evil points, but assaulting somebody is worth only two evil points? Bloody hell, how does that make any sense? Also why is divorce evil? Can somebody please explain how realizing that a marriage isn’t going to work and leaving your wife evil? Many of my friends’ parents are divorced, some of my grandparents are divorced, and none of them are evil. And here is the kicker, divorcing your wife earns you more evil points than killing her? Who says video games undermine society’ morals.

Another gripe I have with this system is the fact that killing bandits is considered good. Yeah, it sounds nice, but think about it for a second. Saving merchants? Ok, that’s good. Protecting a village from an attack? Good. Stopping bandits from threatening others? Ok. But why would killing them in self defense be good or evil? Here is an example. My evil character was walking down the road when he ran across some traders, and killed them for no logical reason. Then he was suddenly attacked by a dozen bandits, and after he finished them off, he found he actually had more good points than before the massacre. By the time he got strong enough to wipe whole villages off the map, he had killed so many monsters that it took ages to get him his horns, and then I had to literally run through bands of enemies to avoid losing them. It was really silly when I wanted to do non evil quests, and kept getting good points. When you’re getting paid to kill people, is it really good that you saved the farm, since you were only in it for the money? The “good” thing would be refusing money and saving people for its own sake, but apparently I was good even though I was obviously in it for the money.

The Fable morality system is simplistic and immature. They reduce good and evil to basic numbers, and completely ignore the subtly of human interactions, making playing good for its own sake somewhat unrewarding. I mean, in well constructed morality game, like Jade Empire or Baldur’s Gate, there is a reason to be evil as it’s much more profitable, but I prefer to play good in those games because I actually feel guilty when I hurt the people in those game, because they are so well developed. However in Fable the characters are so lifeless and unappealing that slaughtering them all like McDonald’s chickens is actually enjoyable and I feel no pangs of guilt when I take them to the temple of Skorn to be slaughtered.

It is not a smart idea to make good and evil have equal value in the context of a point system. The nature of good and evil is much too complex to be represented by a such a simplistic construct and it misses the whole point of why players choose to be either good or evil in a video game. For me I like to be good because I want the challenge of being held to a higher standard, and I like to be evil because I enjoy the chaotic thrill of having no standards. Evil people can be expected to do good things pretty often, because it’s in their interest to do them, it furthers their evil plans and it sets up the evil things that they do later to be even more dramatically evil. So by making good and evil a question of numbers it turns morality into a dull two dimensional Sunday sermon and thus really not worth paying attention too.

Bioware uses a number scale in their games, but they handle it in a more mature way, where the numbers aren’t the motivation for change, it’s the reaction of the supporting characters to your good or evil acts. Being evil isn’t about being a serial killer, its about being smart and thinking of number one, but being good honestly feels more satisfying in Bioware games because the NPCs and the world itself are more responsive to you. In Baldur’s Gate, I gain something from being evil more than just “evil points” but I actually feel bad about myself in the process.

Fable was sold on the idea that it was “non linear”, where you free to effect the game as you please, where the plot is determined wholely by your actions. What a load of bull! Fable is one of the most linear Western RPG I’ve ever played. The “choices” you make are essentially the same, you can either kick the puppy or give all your money to the puppy. The game promises a totally difference experience every time you play, but when I played my second evil game, it was exactly the same except the peasants cowered instead of clapping. Hell, even the “Good only” and “Evil only” benefits are exactly the same. While I didn’t get the holy sword thing in my evil file, I just got the evil giant uber-weapon, so it was all-good. I couldn’t do the saving the merchant quest, but I just did the exact opposite and killed a bunch. And while I couldn’t use the good guy spells, I could use the evil ones that were mostly exactly the same but glowed red instead of blue. And the plot is exactly the same no matter what you do. Apart from good and evil points, there is literally no bloody difference if I save my sister or let her die (spoilers, or wait too late).

Now being linear isn’t in itself bad. I like Baldur’s Gate more than Elder Scrolls, because it compensates for its lack of freedom with a really astounding story. Fable’s plot, on the other hand, is cliché and reads like fan fiction, there is nothing there that you haven’t seen before. A weak story line is OK for a game like Oblivion, because of the immensity and overwhelming detail of its world. Fable’s world, in comparison, is very small, very generic and very controlled and doesn’t feel at all engaging.

Ok, time to give Fable some credit here; the game actually isn’t totally bad. It’s just over hyped. If I had to give Fable a “score” I’d give it a 73, like a test grade. It had all the proper requirements, but no real depth and sloppy management. What Fable does have is a great sense of humor. The game is almost worth playing simply to listen to the NPC comments (at least until they get old) and read the in game books, because they are really very clever. Sadly, like most of the games elements, for all the good clever humor, there is a lot of bad crass humor that weights it down (basically it’s a bit like Harold and Kumar), but I’ve heard that Fable II avoids this. There are other cool ideas, but most of them are so minor. I like the fact that you can age, something almost no RPG has every gotten around to doing. I also like how you can regain your youth using the temples. But that’s undermined by the fact that you only age when you level up, which is a horrible mechanic. I mean first off it doesn’t make any bloody sense because I can walk around without leveling up for a real life year without aging a day, then age 4 decades in 1 minute. Secondly it punishes you for getting more powerful, which is a moronic concept.

Right, so I think the Demon Doors are the only good idea in Fable that is actually implemented properly. For those of you who don’t know, Demon Doors are basically giant faces in doors that keep you from entering certain caves unless you perform a task for them. For example one of them won’t let you in unless you defeat a certain amount of monsters, another will only let fat people in, another will only let somebody who’s slept with a few dozen women in etc. Their voices are great and very funny, particularly the one with a fetish for fat people and they were the only reason I felt obligated to finish the game twice in order to open them all. I really do look forward to them in Fable II.

Um, the monsters are actually pretty cool. Balverines, Trolls, Nymphs, and Hobbes are actually pretty cool, both in their appearance and mannerisms, but that really is all there is to them. They don’t have any real detail, background or content other than “random enemy” which is really annoying when it comes to nymphs and Hobbes, who are clearly intelligent and could be really interesting parts of the game but instead are just random monsters, which is really disappointing. As for graphics, I normally don’t give a damn about the graphics, so I don’t have much to say about Fable’s. Generally speaking they are serviceable, not spectacular. The weapons I have to say are really cool looking. Ok the way they are all out of proportion isn’t great, but that doesn’t change the fact they are really cool in design. I have a weapons fetish I admit, but I think they did a great job with the maces/hammers, and a remarkable job with the cleavers and the weird great swords. My only weapon complaints are that the crossbows are creepy looking, and finally….the katana. Now I’m not saying it doesn’t look cool, because it does, but that thing isn’t a katana. It doesn’t even resemble one. Did they just call it one for the ninja crowd? Weird. Anyways, good weapons and I like the augmentation system.

Alright, here is my Conclusion. Despite the game’s many, and I mean, many faults, it can be kinda fun. It does what it is suppose to and lets you manage your character within a limited scope. While it fails to reach almost all of its expectations (voice acting being the exception), it never falls to the level “bad”, except for NPC reaction. An appealing part of Fable is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously as a game. Now I’m reluctant to allow its sense of humor to be an excuse for its flaws, namely because it wasn’t advertised as a parody game like Bard’s Tale, but was instead was sold as the best RPG. But its humor does make you forgive some of its failings. If I had to sum this review up in one sentence, I’d say “Fails to live up to its hype, but is fun in small doses”.

from

EE