For me, though, the best reason to play again was that the first time was so long ago that I’d forgotten almost everything about it.Įverything revolves around the Hero’s Guild, where you go to pick up quests ranging from tedious beastie-bashing to epic treks across the Albion countryside. The extra Lost Chapters content, too, is worth seeing if you haven’t before. The old-fashioned looping animations date it - there’s no motion-captured fluidity here - but if you were a fan the first time around, it’s wonderful to see it looking so good. Fable’s fondness for the ridiculous yields chicken-kicking minigames, Union Jack underpants, a legendary weapon in the shape of a frying pan, gloriously eclectic accents and dialogue, and a playfully disgusting range of fart and belch emotes.įable Anniversary looks far, far better than the original Xbox version, with beautiful new textures and updated models and effects, although everyone has a bad case of the scaryfaces. The place feels alive.įable is a simple and recognisable heroic tale at heart - you go from young boy to storied warrior, leaving your mark on the land of Albion, and eventually avenging your family - but the setting and sense of humour make it much more endearing than the usual po-faced videogame fantasy. It’s easy to feel at home in this fantastical version of England’s green and pleasant land, where the countryside goes on forever and nobody is from inside the M25, and you’re greeted by cheers and applauding admirers whenever you step into the village pub for a pint. Fable didn’t invent any of these things, but it does them well and uniquely enough that it’s still fun to play today. It doesn’t play like it was made yesterday, but this is a good adaptation, even if a few annoyingly anachronistic features remain.įable has aged well, partly because some of its best ideas have since become action-RPG staples - things like real-time combat, good-evil alignment and a world that reacts to your actions.

Fable Anniversary is a reminder of the things that established one of the Xbox’s most recognisable franchises - its lovely art, silly personality and playful attitude to good and evil. Happily, though, Fable Anniversary gently retouches Lionhead’s original action-RPG without doing unspeakable violence to its memory. Now it’s got rose-tinted recollections to satisfy. When Fable first came out in 2004, it had years’ worth of far-fetched promises and frothing hype to live up to.

Fable anniversary review difficulty