Our Man in Japan -- Fe Bu Ru
DeanRaker - Columns - Comments - 10/04/04
Fable has a pretty barebones protagonist who seems be mostly there so players can identify as him: which is fine, but while I think other developers have done a fantastic job with the tradition of the silent protagonist that makes them seem a natural part of the plot, Fable's guy seems to just be watching everything happen in the snore that is Fable's main storyline. I just mentioned this, but Tatsu took it home a lot more than I'd like to. I do agree that Chrono Cross used a particular feature of the Japanese language (that there's no need for pronouns, or indeed to identify who, what, where or what time you are talking about in a sentence) to new levels of subtleness in developing the mute Serge that I'm not sure translated in the English version. I don't think, as the Consumate Square Whore put it, 'That Square set the ultimate ultimatum for all others who would dare use the device.' Sometimes I wonder if I walked into his room unannounced I'd find his pants down, tissues nearby and a picture of Square president Yoichi Wada mounted near his bed.
But then, following up that line about the two different traditions of innovation, we got into one of our biggest disagreements. When I again teased North American magazines and sources for hyping Fable as some kind of console RPG revolution, or even highly innovative console RPG, Tatsu insisted that they should know better. Technically, it is new to a lot of North American console gamers, and I insisted that it is quite unreasonable to expect them to research every minor and major RPG that didn't come over. Tatsu demands this as a requirement for good journalistic integrity, otherwise, he said, you're revising definitive statements you've made when consequences are shown to differ. 'You'll end up looking like a mother who can't decide what to purchase for dinner in a supermarket,' he says. I said that its a good thing, because it will help further diverge the paths between the burgeoning North American console RPG market and the traditional one here, for greater variety for us all. In the future, console RPG won't mean primarily inspired by Japanese conventions, and I don't really care if we dominate the foreign market or not, as long as there's lots of variety. Tatsu is a typical Square Whore though and wants them to rule the world. What can I say?
But I will say this to you Petie: I think it profoundly amusing that while you hyped this game to be something of an evolution of what's already available it pails in comparison to some much older console RPGs. I can not only get married, but have children in many RPGs over here and the requirements and the consequences for doing so in a great many of them are quite a bit deeper than what you've got here. In many places they make rather dramatic differences in the plot as well. While In Fable, my love doesn't seem to cross the boundaries of the main plot. Oh yeah, I could be gay if I wanted to before too. Err, I mean, I've had the choice before! The choice! Only offered the choice!
All the choices for communication with NPCs are fantastic, and go well beyond different levels of talk. Its true that its a little more rare to see ideas beyond dialogue branches, but I've had those before too. And in those games, the more you used them, they evolved into higher and more subtle levels of communication, like showing uncertainty or holding your tongue to an inflammatory remark.
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