Look beyond this stuff, however, and it’s surprising how little depth the core RPG gameplay contains. Sure you can get married and set up home with a girl in every town. Sure, you can spend your time in the towns, using Fable’s still enjoyable expressions system to impress the girls with your biceps or pantomime chuffs. An oversupply of health and resurrection potions makes things artificially easy even more so than in the deathless Fable 2. Your enemies are dumb, predictable and lacking in variety, with little strategy beyond surrounding you and stomping you into the ground. The combat-heavy gameplay has its share of problems too. Fable Anniversary gives us small chunks of dungeon or open wilderness – often just a few branching paths to follow – strung together by artificial gates and irritating map/loading screens. Nowadays we’re used to open fantasy worlds of incredible depth, with endless scope for exploration. In fact, what’s shocking about Fable Anniversary is how badly dated it seems. Admittedly, Fable failed to deliver on some of its promises (remember all the stuff about acorns sprouting into trees?) but at the time it seemed amazing.
Here was an action RPG where you would age and where you’d scar, where you’d grow mighty, muscular or fat depending on your actions. Do evil, hurting people and spreading violence and destruction as you went, and you’d look twisted and demonic, inspiring fear and loathing in the general population. Work for good, help people and build a reputation as a hero, and you would shine with virtuous energy, the people hailing you everywhere you went. Here was an RPG built around simple mechanics, where your protagonist could be changed by his experience of the world, and the world could be changed by your protagonist.
When the original Fable was released in 2004 it seemed revolutionary. Here’s the problem: Fable Anniversary reveals that while Fable is still a fine game, it simply hasn’t worn that well. At other times, well, when it doesn’t work it all backfires, with a remake that makes you wonder if a game you thought of as a timeless classic ever deserved that kind of acclaim.
Sometimes these work brilliantly, like Sony’s HD rereleases of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, or Nintendo’s Wii U remake of Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Here we go, then, with the celebratory reissues, the remakes, the HD remasters. We’re a society that thrives on nostalgia, so it’s only natural that games should go the same way as films and music.