About the game
Fable III is a 2010 action role-playing game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360 and Windows. It is the third game in the Fable series. You play the Royal Hero, who must overthrow the king of Albion, your brother, by forming alliances and building support for a revolution. After a successful revolt, you become monarch and have to defend Albion from a great evil. The voice cast includes Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Naomie Harris, Michael Fassbender, Zoe Wanamaker, Bernard Hill, Nicholas Hoult, John Cleese and Jonathan Ross.
The Royal Hero has a melee attack, a ranged attack and magic, each of which you can customise and charge up, and weapons change shape with your actions. A morality system splits most choices into good and evil, mostly through dialogue branches, side quests and crimes. A pet dog finds treasure, warns of enemies and helps in fights. In place of a pause menu you walk through the Sanctuary, a hub where you reach weapons, costumes, achievements, saves, the map and settings.
Gold matters, especially in the second half, when you must raise about 6.5 million gold before war begins. You can pawn items, buy low and sell high as prices move, buy nearly every shop and home for passive income every five minutes, take jobs that play as mini-games, and form relationships, marry and have children.
The story is set on the continent of Albion 50 years after Fable II, when the kingdom is entering an industrial age. Logan, your brother, has become a tyrant. You flee with Sir Walter Beck and Jasper, meet Theresa the Seeress, gather allies among the Dwellers, the Royal Army and the Bowerstone Resistance, and go into exile in the desert land of Aurora. There you learn that Logan acted because of a creature called the Crawler. You overthrow him, take the throne and face a choice about his fate, then have a year to raise the money to build an army against the Crawler.
Peter Molyneux said he thought a third game in a series was hard to get right, and that the idea was to let the player overthrow the tyrant and then rule, so that the consequences of being good or evil, cruel or kind, affect a whole country. He cited rebels and monarchs, modern and historic, as the inspiration. Lionhead said the game has over 47 hours of recorded speech, about 460,000 recorded words written by three writers and voiced by more than 80 actors.
The Xbox 360 standard edition has the disc and manual. The Limited Collector's Edition adds a new in-game quest, Fable III playing cards, a Guild Seal coin with a good and an evil side, a Boxer dog breed, two outfits, a faux book, a new region and a new weapon. Pre-orders at participating stores carried codes for a special weapon, tattoos and a villager transferred from the Villager Maker. A limited edition wireless controller came out on 5 October 2010 with a tattoo code.
Reviews were generally positive, and Metacritic gave the Xbox 360 version 80. IGN gave 8.5 out of 10 for its monarch section, combat and world, and criticised the slow start and bugs. GameSpot gave 7.5, citing technical problems and simplified gameplay. The Windows version, released in May 2011 with a Hardcore mode and 3D support, was received more mixed. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences nominated it for Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year at the 14th awards.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 80 out of 100 (Xbox 360). Metacritic 75 out of 100 (PC). Individual reviews: IGN 8.5/10, GameSpot 7.5/10, Game Informer 9/10, Eurogamer 8/10, GameTrailers 8.9/10, Edge 7/10, Computer and Video Games 9.2/10, Joystiq 4/5.
Extra content
Traitor's Keep added 10 achievements, and Microsoft released further add-ons such as dyes, hairstyles and quests. Microsoft stopped selling Xbox 360 games and add-ons on 29 July 2024.
- Traitor's Keep: 10 more achievements worth 250 gamerscore.
Good to know
- The Xbox 360 list has 60 achievements worth 1,250 gamerscore, and the 10 Traitor's Keep achievements are worth 250 of that.
- Pre-order copies carried codes for a special weapon, tattoos and a Villager Maker transfer.
- Three tie-in books came with DLC codes: The Balverine Order (Shardborne sword), Edge of the World, and Blood Ties (dye pack).
- Gold earned in the Windows Phone game Fable: Coin Golf could be moved into Fable III.
- There is a limited edition Fable III wireless controller with a tattoo code, released 5 October 2010.
- The Windows version, released in May 2011, adds a Hardcore mode and 3D support not in the Xbox 360 version.
Made by
Producer Jeremie Texier, Designer Peter Molyneux, Designer Josh Atkins, Writer Mark Llabres Hill, Composer Russell Shaw, Programmer Guillaume Portes, Programmer Simon Carter, Artist John McCormack, Artist Simon Jaques.
