This is my answer to "What game do you want remade with today's graphics?"... Every. Single. Time.
With all the hype recently surrounding the announcement of Fable 4, I decided reinstalling Fable: The Lost Chapters (10th anniversary edition) and playing it for a review was a good idea to remember why we are all so excited. Turns out for entertainment purposes it was great, but for a man with limited time, not so good.
 Say what you want, Jack of Blades is one of the greatest gaming baddies ever.
I remember the first Fable being a great epic RPG with a massive world to explore and generally run amok in, and for one of the first times ever for me, it wasn’t just nostalgia.
Sure, on the 360 or the Xbox One the game is a bit clunky and glitchy, but it couldn’t take away from the fact that even after 13 years, Fable is still a joy to play. The game is set in a world called Albion, with a patchwork of towns dotted all over the map and masses of lawless areas in between, based loosely on medieval England. You play as The Hero of Oakvale (as you become known), from his early childhood days up to adulthood.  "UNLIMITED POWER!!!"
After a vicious bandit raid on your home village, where it appears your whole family has been slain, you are discovered by Maze, one of the greatest and well known Heroes in all the land, he takes you under his wing and has you trained to join the ranks of the Heroes Guild. After which you really begin your epic journey, taking quests and finding the truth behind… well, everything.
Visually, Fable is quite dated, but when it was originally released in 2004 it looked pretty good, hell I still think it’s alright even with today’s standards. But the biggest draw card for Fable to me and a lot of gamers I’ve spoken to over the years, was the 'Alignment Factor', you could choose to be Good, Evil or somewhere in between, based on quest choices, actions, interactions, the way you dress and what you eat and drink.  Being evil is just so much more fun!
Be completely good and you’ll have a halo and butterflies around you while NPCs flock to your presence, pick Evil and you’ll grow devil horns and have flies buzzing around your head as you watch the villagers run screaming in fear after just a glance at you.. We all can imagine which way I always went.
Combat is nice and easy, though the auto aim can be a bit of a pain at times. You had three options to dispatch your foes: melee (Swords – both one and two handed, War Hammers and Maces), ranged (Bow & Arrow and Crossbow, both you never need to worry about ammunition) and spells (way too many to mention, but the one that looked like Force Lightning was my favourite). After defeating each enemy you are awarded XP, used to increase your stats and to learn and master spells.  He was talking shit about my Mum... seriously.
To say that I love this game would be a massive understatement. Fable has given me so many awesomesauce memories over the years, it is a game that no matter how good current titles get, every year or so I will dig Fable: The Lost Chapters out from wherever I've placed it and spend the next month, wringing the shit out of it, until I've completed every main and side quest, own every weapon, armour set and every property available, proclaiming myself: the Emperor of Albion.
Extremely long story short, while yes I am very excited for the eventual release of Fable 4, I will always crawl back to The Lost Chapters, as if it were my mistress that I couldn't let go.
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