Our Man in Japan -- Fe Bu Ru
DeanRaker - Columns - Comments - 10/04/04
Those games also offered different final conflicts and much more open-ended beginnings than your, 'open-ended, open-ended, open-ended, oops now you have to do what I tell you because you've bumped into the trigger' pace. And in those games, often my choices can be reflected upon a female avatar. In fact, that was the first thing we noticed after laughing at how a game with such ambitions begins with the number one console RPG cliche. In any number of console RPGs before I would be given choices like, 'Listen to the old man or run away?' and typically would have gotten to choose from a couple of different schools to grow up in. Indeed, what I decided to do in my childhood in those games would have a much bigger effect on me than it does in Fable.
I've seen main heroes change appearance before in response to choices, but I'll give you that: I've never seen it at this level before.
Everything else I've seen done better, Petie, and with contexts that fit better into an overarching plot, in larger worlds and longer games. Though its true not many of these games excel as much as the awesome art and musical direction in Fable does. But I wonder why is it these non-genius, non-famous game designers can implement stuff they don't brag about on systems with much less power -- you know, large worlds with lots of interaction that don't have to load their chunks for you in poorly conceived loading screens?
This only bothers me to a certain extent though. I know Peter is unlikely to know or really even care about the depth of options I have in Japanese console RPG gaming, but he should have known what he was up against on the PC tradition. And while Fable has a smoother realtime 3rd person action system than I've seen in any PC RPG not chasing after Diablo, I still can't help but feel that despite the lack of obvious interaction options, I felt more involved in Knights of the Old Republic, Betrayal at Krondor and Baldur's Gate II. (And there's no reason those types of experiences can't work on a console.) I do, in the end, prefer a more focused game like Fable to the somewhat thin and watery sprawl of an Elder Scrolls game, but there's no reason it couldn't be more epic when dozens of other have accomplished this with so much less. Its left me thinking, 'What took you so long?'
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