Small and has a few problems, but its still a very good game.
You play as a young boy in the world of Albion. Today is your sister's birthday, but you were to busy daydreaming and forgot to get her a gift. ( Shame..:P ) You father will give you one gold coin for for each good deed you do. After being the good little boy you were ( if you choose so....) you then go to your sister. While talking, bandits come and raid your town, Oakvale. After hours of chaos, it lays in ruins. Your mother and sister are kidnapped, and your father is killed. Then a hero comes and brings you to a new place, soon to be your new home. The Hero's Guild. you will engage in training to become a mighty warrior ( or Mage, or ranger. ) and fight for vengence. While the story is serviceable, its nothing extraodniary. But its decent enough.
Probably the first thing you will notice are the graphics. The game looks very good for an Xbox title. Technical wise, its pretty good. You'll notice some glitchs in animation every once in a while, but its not bad enough to distract you. Artisticly, the game shines. Wonderful designs, and just a look that you can really mistake. It looks great!
The sound is better then the graphics! Fable has a great soundtrack. From its opening theme, to the first song you hear when you enter Albion, all bring a feeling to you.... Some are beautiful, some are moving, some are chilling. They fit the mood of each area. Full orcestra and choir. Its excellent. Unlike Microsoft's other highly hyped RPG, Sudeki, Fable has great voice acting. The voices are athentic and have that british accent, without being cheesy. ( We al remember the Geman trader from Sudeki, dont we? :P ) Magic sounds powerful. When you use lightning strike, you can almost hear the pain... The only real fault with the sound is when your in combat, the voices are often repeated frequently. For example, guards might say,"It's just a flesh wound," when they get hit by an enemy. You will hear them say it many many times in just a single battle. That can get alittle annoying. ( Imagine, "It's just a flesh wound," Over and over and over.......) Other then that, the sound is flawless.
The games melee combat is great. Blocking is simple, swing your weapon is easy, and dodging is easy as well....Maybe to easy. You can block almost everything an enemy throws at your making combat pretty simple. Magic and ranged combat is more tricky. Not because of any sort of technique you'll need, its because of the lock-on. How does lock-on make it tricky? The lock-on does its job, it does lock on....Problem is, it'll often lock on to friendlys/towns people. If your not in a mission, its not much of a problem. But if you are in a mission that requires you to protect a trader for example the tagetring system may lock on to someone you need to protect. If you can overcome these faults, it plays fine. The game has a big Good/evil system. Almost everything you do affects your good/evil status. This status affects your apperence and your reputation. What makes this exciting is that people will react to your differently. With a high good rating people will clap and cheer when they see you in their town. If your known for being evil, they will run in fear. You can spend a couple of hours just playing around with the AI this way. While there is no real consequence for being good or evil, its fun. Another cool thing about Fable is that you can do almost anything you want to. Want to flirt with women? Go ahead (in the game i mean!! ) Want to kill anyone? By all means, Oakvale awaits your arrival... You can get married, buy a house, kick chickens, kill anyone, get tattoes, buy food, etc..... This can also extend the games replay value which is good, because the game itself is far to short. Playing the whole game, completeting every quest, could be beaten in 12-14 hours. Maybe even less. Online would have REALLY helped.
Despite these problems, Fable is still a great experence. It may be short and easy, and may not be as deep as other RPG's.....but its fun, open-ended, eays to get into, very immersive, and you can spend hours toying with the townspeople. A game worth picking up.