- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
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The TLDR version?
Microsoft fucked it up. As they do- with everting they touch. They’re the Disney of gaming.
IDK, they’ve done a pretty good job with Age of Empires, and Minecraft is still incredibly popular, and perhaps more popular since Microsoft bought them (IIRC, crossplay was added when Bedrock was released). I’ve heard they’re pretty hands off with the studios the buy, so if games suck, blame the studio. Activision Blizzard was already going downhill from a respecting the player standpoint before Microsoft bought them, and 343 really was never as good as OG Bungie.
If we’re comparing to Disney, that honor goes to EA. They’re the kings of dumbing games down and manipulating players into paying a ton for mediocre content.
I remember being so excited for fable 3 only to find it was not at all like 1 or 2.
This game could have been so good. It had the basis for it, the world was small but they filled it with tons small details, the story was short but tight and unique, it was shining with the fable-style personality with the philosophy of letting you make the small changes you wanted to make to the world and your character.
But then someone (probably a boss from Microsoft) came and said fuck you! and locked up a ton for areas behind DLCs, limited development time, and injected it full of brain-dead AAA game bullshit that didn’t fit the game.
Spoilers:
Every time I am reminded of this one scene in the story where you learn the terrible secret of the kingdom, ending up fleeing into the desert. The tone of desert theme becomes harrowing and empty as you aimlessly wander through the barren wasteland, guiding along your even more helpless companion. In this hopeless situation you come to understand why your beloved kingdom has betrayed what it used to stand for, why it has fallen to tyranny.
As someone who loved the Fable franchise, this is what it was like to play Fable 3.
The thing in the desert and the subsequent kingdom management arc are weirdly one of my most fondly remembered plot twists in gaming, although that probably has as much to do with how limited my gaming experience was when I first played it.
I remember playing the first two and loving them. When the third came out, I heard it wasn’t even good, so I never played.
Honestly, I like it a lot. Interesting characters and its fun to change a whole world as a king. It is indeed worse than II but I still enjoy it.
The money=morality messaging was pretty off-putting.
What was the message? Excessive taxation increases suffering. Try to find a balance or don’t. Seems like a typical medieval setup.
Yeah off-putting, but I feel like it made sense: when you are King/Queen you can do selfless things for little personal gain, or you can do selfish things for great monetary gain.
Or you can buy up a bunch of real estate, get filthy rich off of rents, and finance the morally good decisions out of your own pocket, trivially breaking the core conflict of the end of the game. Seriously, I did this by accident. I just figured it would be a good idea to hoard a shitload of gold just in case, and it turned out that I was right.
Yeah, I think it maybe have been a bit of capitalist realism leaking to it. Kind of a piece of Cyber Punk 2077 problem for me. Like they have just a little hints or theming of corrupt landlords and corporations, but no meaningful resistance or alternatives to the system.
I didn’t go far into it. I remember it had a rather boring start.
Also I was already a bit pissed at those few doors in Fable 2 that mostly only opened in co-op (except one or two) and had weird stuff hidden behind them that I wanted to see, and I got to one again in 3. It’s a minor thing but it may have played a part in the “fuck that game” sentiment.
Seriously, talk about tacking on and forcing a multiplayer mode into a game that is absolutely not made for it.
My wife and enjoyed the cooperative greatly but soooo much went wrong
