Fable

Moby ID: 1893
Windows Specs
Included in See Also

Description official descriptions

Fable is a classical puzzle-solving graphic adventure with hand-drawn backgrounds. The hero Quickthorpe is a young man who must leave his home village and travel through four fantasy worlds, each dedicated to a particular element. The goal of the journey is to find four mystic gemstones in order to learn about the secrets of an extinct race known as Mecubarz, and help his people with this knowledge. Interaction with the environment is done by clicking on an object and selecting available actions. Puzzles are for the most part inventory-based. Wrong choices may lead to the hero's death and a premature end of the game.

Spellings

  • פייבל - Hebrew spelling

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

32 People (30 developers, 2 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 65% (based on 18 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 26 ratings with 1 reviews)

Undeveloped game

The Good
There isn't much that can be said in the defense of Fable, the only positive point is the truly beautiful hand drawn background and characters, which still look very well fifteen years after the release of the game.

The British narrator was also a nice addition as he sometimes contribute to the amusing side of the game.

The Bad
The back story of Fable is pretty good and manage to arouse my interest with its combination of sci-fi and fantasy. The problem is that the story end with the intro, there is no cut scenes as you pass your way between the different levels. For the duration of the game you will meet about three people that the protagonist could have a meaningful conversion with and all but one wouldn't further the story with new information. And even when you meet the arch-villain, Ismail, he will reveal you very few new details that are easily missed if you will not choose the correct line in the conversation, in fact the whole scene is easy to miss as it isn't require in order to complete the game.

The interface is also problematic, the icon for "use" and "give" is the same and thus make it easy to get confuse between the two verbs. It's also tedious to drop items back to the inventory after you finished using them.

In some place when you die the game would automatically restore you to the last point where you were but in other cases nothing would happened and the game would simply continue and you will need to exit the game on your own and load a saved game. This flaw is especially annoying as this is the second release of the game (Its was re-release with a different ending) and so one could expect that the creators would bother to fix this major flaw.

The Bottom Line
Fable is a bad game and you shouldn't waste your time playing it. However I think if the creators would spend more time in development, specially on the plot and interface, this could have been a good.

Windows · by Ingsoc (1366) · 2011

Discussion

Subject By Date
I need some walkthrough-like help: can't give the statuette Nowhere Girl (8680) Sep 7, 2019

Trivia

Ending (Spoiler!)

The original ending to this game was that the story was the delusions of a lunatic in an asylum. The original release of the game had this ending. A new version was later released that featured a more satisfying ending.

Packaging

The box looked like an old book.

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz

Analytics

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Fable II
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Fable III
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Fable: Anniversary
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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1893
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Istari.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Crawly, Patrick Bregger.

Game added July 10, 2000. Last modified January 22, 2024.