Fable feels like the spiritual succesor, in terms of it’s combat dymanics, to The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Seriously? Yes.
I believe that it’s not honest to submit a review of a game before you’ve completed it, and indeed, messed around in it’s virtual world for awhile. However, I wanted to get some of my initial thoughts on Fable out into the open before beginning that undertaking. Below, you’ll find comments on various game elements.
Graphics
Very nice. There is a nice, soft glow that surrounds white objects (shirts, walls, etc.)., simliar to the glow effect in Tron 2.0 (PC). The character effects are great - scars, tattoos, hair styles - all are fluid, and believeable. Monsters appear scary enough, and combat animations are very fluid, and believeable. There are a few problems however: Pop-in and out occur quite often: objects can appear and disappear as your view frustum (the area the camera is pointing at) swings around In one memorable instance, the whole area in front of me appeared as a green ramp until I got close enough, at which time it morphed into the canyon I was supposed to walk through. The camera itself fails non-gracefully: that is, if an object gets in your way, you simply can’t see until you move. There is no fogging, or automatic camera movement. Clipping, which does occur, is not too bad.
Sound Effects
Top-notch. If your character runs along the edge of a path, you’ll hear the different footfall sounds as each foot strikes grass, then the path, then the grass… The surround feeling is very well done - several times I used the positional audio to help me in battle. Trust me - you’re going to love the audio in Fable. Did I mention that Danny Elfman wrote the music to the opening cinematic?
Music
Outstanding! Really great. I was humming the tunes the very day I bought that game. My wife loves them, too. Oakvale is especially pleasing. if you have a good Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound system, you are going to love the way the music flows around you.
Controls
Great! Lionhead made two control decision that bug me though: 1) You have to hold a button down to run, and 2) you can’t look around easily. Holding down a button to run is so early nineties - Make the default be run, and hold it down to walk! In fact, the only reason to walk is so when you’re being sneaky, which is engaged with another button! The other gripe has to do with looking around: it’s a beautiful game world, but you can’t see very much of it in your normal camera view. Your camera looks down on your character, about 30 degrees off the ground. Want to put the camera at your player’s head, and then look around? Sorry, you can can’t! The only way to look around is to aim with your bow.
Combat
This is really where Fable shines. If you’ve played The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time on the N64 (or Gamecube), you’ll be right at home, due to the ‘lock on’ system. In fact, I found the game fairly easy. Your character always flows from move to move accurately - no sudden changes in pose. You have real control over how you hit, and who: you can actually fight multiple opponents well, which was something you couldn’t do in Ocarina of Time. The spells are so easy to use, and find, that you’ll find yourself switching between and using them on a regular basis. Have you played The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind? Remember how awful it is to try to find spells? Fable is SO much better at it… You’ll find yourself wandering around looking for monsters to fight just because it’s so much fun.
You’ll find that when you ‘lock on’, you sometimes lose who you’re locked on to. In Ocarina, your lock worked no matter where you moved to. In Fable, be aware that you will have to re-establish the lock if you’re no longer pointing at your target. Also, because it feels like it automtically locks on to a new target when your old one is destroyed, be careful you don’t lock on to a villager, and take him out (which I feel is a programming error). This happened to me often, since they walk right into battles all the time.
Story / Suspension Of Disbelief
Great! I won’t spoil it for you, but its believeable, modern, and exiting. It is short; I’m nearing what I believe to be the end of the game in just 20 hours, even after doing all of the side quests! I don’t have any problem believing the story. The marital system adds nothing to the story, and might even strain credulity, though. At least, it did for me. I talk about that more below…
The story is presented in tableu form - you can go back to the Chamber of Fate at any time and see the murals that are used to tell your story during the cinematics.
What I really like about this game is that is indeed a Fable about one guy - it’s not about the fate of the earth, the galaxy, or the universe. It’s like living a Grimms fairy tale.
Hype Review
Of all of the pre-release hype dedicated to Fable, the part we seemed to hear the most about was in relation to the free-form nature of the game. Seen the trailer? Good or evil, impenitent, or gracious, make your own way in the world, and see how it reacts to you. That’s great in theory, but Fable’s implementation doesn’t work - not in terms of how it was programmed (it seems to work fine) - the problem is that it’s just not any fun. It turns out that I didn’t buy the game to get virtual girls to fall in love with me, nor am I really interested in playing a madman who slays entire villages. Whenever a game comes out that has these kinds of options, they are by definition limiting the amount of content you can access as you turn down a certain path. Sure, you can play the game again, but that’s a silly way to promote replayability.
About marriages: they are expensive both to obtain and maintain, and provide nothing to you at the end. Why are they here? Just to provide a bullet point on the back of the box, I suspect. Maybe to suck sixteen-year olds into buying it? To get the ‘M’ rating? Sigh.
And what happened to that whole ‘the world responds to you’ thing? Sure, the people do, but I never changed the world, both in look, or in what peoples are where.
Worth Purchasing?
I’m not sure yet. Certainly, rent it, and enjoy it! It is very fun and worthwhile, but it’s so short… Because you can do practically everything in one play-through, without missing hardly anything, it seems to have limited replayability. But, wow, am I enjoying it! 
Conclusion
All in all, having recited my First Thoughts for this game, I doubt that I will write a review any fuller than this. This is the first of the XBox-generation of games that I will sell back. I can’t seem to find any replayability in it, other than the wait-a-year-and-replay-it kind. That aside, you should definitely obtain a copy, and play it through.
