S.T.A.G.E. said:
Then pray tell...what soul did it have? Anything lacking personal identity or focus that is so believable it hooks you in lacks a soul (especially after three iterations). If I was to recreate Fable, I would keep the good vs bad gimmick in the vein of the original Mass Effect but make the game more mature in its overal plot and your capacity to affect the story. The most revolutionary thing Fable could do to affect the RPG world is make a living world that organically changes based on your direct intervention. I always wanted Fable to find a true soul because the first was so promising, but for me there was never anything that could live up to the promise of the first. The first felt like a good start to an incomplete work of art. Enough to hook me for the sequel, if this makes any sense. They should also take some hints from Grimms-like tales to show the dark/grey/ light yet fantastical take on the world in which they exist. It doesnt matter if you're king or a pauper, there needs to be a draw.
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I missed the original convo or whatever there was going on here but I got caught on this.
It's incredibly weird that you're saying Fable lacks personal identity. Fable, as a franchise, has several issues that can be easily pointed out (the RPG mechanics it works on are made-up and often unbalanced, the binarity nature of several of its choices, or how easily the game's progression can be broken in favour of the player, plus, sure, whatever promises Molyneux made that never came up to fruition), but lack of identity? What? If anything, Fable is probably one of the most charming RPGs out there, lingering within its nature of a...well, children story (hence the name Fable) while also dealing on themes and story that works on fantasy. It's even more awkward when you promose that Fable should take any cues at all from Mass Effect; a game that started suffering a crisis of identity so big it never really understood whether it wanted to be a sci-fi RPG, a shooter, some space-mountain driving simulator or an interactive adventure with choices to be made and some gunplay in the middle. Bear in mind, despite all these problems with Mass Effect, namely lack of focus, Mass Effect has charm of its own. It's the same principle applied to Fable, and based on several replies in this thread you're alone suggesting that Fable lacks soul (but somehow has to take cues from Mass Effect, a game that does have the same issues you are highlighting from Fable).
I'm not sure what "mature" thing you want from the franchise, but I'm fairly sure you're using that word incorrectly, because a mature nature lies inside the franchise already. Fable is a game that hides its mature nature beneath the aspect of a children book/story (which, coincidentally, is also part of the charm). That's the point of Fable, not unlike the tales of Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel, where things are explained in a childish manner but the things that happen in them are dark in nature, and often deal with double-meanings that fly past the children but the adults are capable of connecting with them. Let's not forget Fable 1 is the game where your father is brutally murdered, your mother spends years being tortured, and your sister gets fucked by Destiny and has to become the catalyst for things to come, or Fable 2, where you're forced to either leave a young girl be transformed into an old geezer or sacrifice your youthness instead to save her because you were tricked by a so-labeled "hero" into undergoing that, who profits from your efforts. These games have the incidents displayed in a lighthearted manner, because it never loses its identity of a child book story; but to say these games lack in mature decisions and themes is missing the point entirely of everything that transpires in them.
Focus? Sure, Fable should find some focus. Rebalancing several aspects of the mechanics? Sure, Fable should do that. Find a soul? Fable has always had it. There's no reason to ask for something that's already there. Copying Mass Effect's "mature" plot and "decisions" doesn't suddenly give the game a "true soul" like you call it. If anything being overreliant on what other games do makes it lose its soul even more, not unlike certain japanese franchises who have the need to emulate whatever the west does and as a consequence, most of them sell their original soul in the process.
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