Seeing as most of the people died in my first playthrough of Fable III, and I wanted to actually play a murderous, thieving asshole rather than the goody-goody of my first run, add to that a sprinkling of knee-jerk reactions about the ending and I figured It deserved at least one more playthrough.
So, I created my female hero this time, shouted at the kitchen staff, killed the townspeople instead of the love-of-my life and started down the road to becoming a not-very-nice person, an anti-hero I suppose.
At the earlier stages Fable III there isn’t really much you can do in regards to being evil. When you start the game you automatically have the friendly conversation option, and the rude/funny option but not the evil one. Plus, you don’t get your weapons until you visit Brightwall Library so all you can do is fireball people. Even at this early stage of the game I felt like I was being forced to be good. Still, never-mind I knew what would happen later so just continued through the earlier parts, got my weapons from the library and I could start my campaign of evil and blood curdling terror.
Well, I couldn’t steal anything or actually be nasty to people in conversations as I hadn’t unlocked the right chests on the Path to Rule. I could kill people however, which I did. I rampaged through Brightwall killing anyone that moved, countless guards came for me of course, but they were no match for me.
Hang on! No match for me, this is the very start of the game! Surely, I shouldn’t be able to take on a whole village’s worth of guards with very little risk to my life. I didn’t get close to dying in fact, my bounty had reached 10,000 gold at this point and I handed myself in because I was getting bored. This is when I realised I had dug myself into a little hole, but this is also how I found out how the criminal justice system works in Fable III.
I had amassed a debt of 10,000 gold which at this stage of the game is an awful lot of money. I couldn’t pay the fine so I had to do community service which is performing one of the jobs available in the village, so for Brightwall it was either lute playing or pie-making, the thing is both of those jobs were still at level one so even at difficulty 10 I was still only making about 100g, and staying at level 10 is rather tricky. I also couldn’t continue questing because I needed to buy the moustache and tattoos for the mercenary quest, but when ever I performed the jobs to earn the money to buy those, it just worked off my debt. Not to mention that I had already killed the stylist and he didn’t seem to be spawning anytime soon. In fact the game appeared to stay at the same time as well. It never got dark or anything. In short, I’d buggered it up so I got rid of that character and started another one. This time knowing not to slaughter any villagers until after the Mercenary village quests.
As soon as I could, I unlocked the shop buying option on the Road to Rule, but as another of my characters had 3 million gold on them already, I was able to transfer it to this hero. It’s not entirely straight forward. I logged into my ‘rich’ character then with a second joy-pad got a second character to join on my girlfriends profile. I gifted the 3 million to him. Although you can only do this in 100,000 gold chunks so it took a while. Then I kept that new temporary character online while I re-logged in with my evil hero, and gifted the money back to her. Simple and effective, just a little time-consuming.
Anyway, I started with 3 million which makes the getting money thing so much easier. I was able to buy out the pawn shops and pubs straight away, hike up the costs and watch the money roll in. I decided not to buy every house as the repairing thing’s a bit of a pain, but I noticed that the posh houses in Millfield give you around 17,000g each every 5 minutes, at the highest rates. I figures just buying those 3 houses gave me close to 40,000 every 5 minutes. So every-one hated me, I had slaughtered villages and I had bled them dry, I was truly despised and reviled for my actions but I had over 9 million by the time the darkness was ready to attack Albion.
It's not a bad start for day one.
When I become queen, I put all 9 million back into the treasury, on the first day the vault was overflowing and I had more gold then I could possible need. So much so that I could give Albion everything it needed.
You remember me saying that I had slaughtered villages, broken windows, stole, threatened and rodeod my way around Albion. You remember that I said that everyone feared and hated me. Well apparently, when they say ‘Everyone’ has a price they included the inhabitants of Albion in that. As soon as I had put the 9 million into the treasury, my morality went straight from a deep blood-red to a celestial blue. Suddenly I was the lands saviour.
Can you imagine this in real life, Bill Gates taking a shot-gun to most of his employees blowing up buildings and performing bank robberies, but hang on he’s just donated a few million to an orphanage so we all love him now. Pfff no, sorry. I think the blood that I spilt is not washed away by a few million gold
Then again I was giving them mixed signals, killing them all, then saving them; donating the diamond and the statue to the kingdoms treasury instead of keeping it. Maybe I was acting exactly like a changed person would act. Maybe I should have killed a few people in my spare time as queen, or just raised the money by making all the evil choices. The villagers did at least still fear me, but the ending of Fable III paid no attention to what I had done in the 1st part of the game it was only based on the part where you’re ruler of Albion.
Also, there’s a pronouncement you need to make at the end on how your castle is decorated, good or evil. I’ve chosen both options in two games, and haven’t noticed any change what-so-ever. I thought at least for the evil fortress there would be burning torches, weapons, skeletons in cages. I took this opportunity to have a little search online and from the looks of it, courtesy of http://thegeekescape.com/ it’s a basic colour change.
This is not as dramatic as it could be
Oh, yeah and apparently the most evil thing you can do in Fable III is pass wind in someone’s face and ride them like a pony. 9 times out of 10 threaten will only take place once you’ve done those two things, and roar is forth. The interaction options are naff nuff said but you can see it here it’s towards the end, and no it’s not my character.
There is still more for me to do if I wanted to complete everything in the game, but there’s no real need to. The darkness has been stopped, I’ve already got my top-level weapons so they’re not going to evolve any further. I don’t need money anymore either as I have bought everything I need. I think there’s only the achievements to finish off, but I’m not an achievement hound, I can’t be bothered to chase them all down and chances are they require changes that need me to start again anyway.
After playing Fable III a few times, I don’t think I want to play it again, not for a while anyway. I’m going to go back to Fable II. There’s still a lot more in there I haven’t done, and it’s a better game.
At least I think so.
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Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin is a freelance writer, living in Derby UK with his wife and his player 3. When time allows he likes nothing more than losing himself in a multi-hour gaming session. He likes most games and will play anything but prefers MMO's, and sandbox RPG's.
