15 Years Ago, Fable 3 Ended One Of Gaming’s Most Fascinating Trilogies
King and country.
From Metroid Prime to Gears and Dark Souls, the video game industry loves its trilogies. Three has always been the golden number, but it’s rare to see a trilogy where each game doesn’t just feel completely different, but looks completely different too. Fable is one such example, a trilogy of RPGs so absurdly ambitious that it was arguably a serious fault. At the time, this led to some divisive fan reactions, especially to Fable 3, which diverged the hardest from the original game’s “formula.” But looking back on the whole thing 15 years later, the Fable games feel almost quaint, a throwback to a time when games shot for the moon and landed in some wild places.
By far the most interesting thing about the Fable games is their setting in the fantasy world of Albion. While you control heroic characters, the entire trilogy is arguably more about Albion itself, how it grows and changes with your decisions, and how the power of authoritarians molds it. In each Fable game, you get to see a different era of Albion: the first game is set in its medieval age, the second in its Renaissance, and the third in the Industrial Revolution.
That put Fable 3 in a fascinating place we hadn’t seen much of in fantasy RPGs, showing a fantastical world going through the changes introduced by firearms, steam power, and electricity. Amid that backdrop, the game casts you as the youngest child of the Hero of Bowerstone and current King of Albion. Following the passing of your parents, you now live with your older brother Logan, who’s turning into a tyrannical king who executes citizens for minor crimes. After escaping, you help start a revolution to overthrow Logan and rule yourself.
It’s a fine story that provides real stakes, especially if you’ve played the previous two games and are invested in fighting for the very survival of Albion. And that’s where Fable 3 takes its most interesting step, by cutting the game into two halves: one where you lead the revolution, and one where you now run a threatened kingdom as an inexperienced ruler.
Fable 3 is a fascinating look at how history and time change people and places.
There are a lot of objections to be made about how Fable 3 simplified the series’ combat, or made weird changes to everything from the minimap to the leveling system. But in making the player a ruler, Fable elevated its ideas of morality and the weight of choice.
Fable has always had a satirical edge that presents the idea of moral choice as two extremes rather than shades of gray. You’re typically playing into the archetypes of a holier-than-thou goodie-goodie or a purely evil maniac, and Fable 3 is the same way. But in this case, it’s not a failing, but a fascinating exploration of the idea of good and evil applied to the morally complicated role of a monarch.
Once you overthrow Logan, you’re tasked with making crucial decisions to prepare for an imminent invasion. But those decisions are almost comical in nature; one sees you forced to choose between saving a romantic interest or a group of anonymous citizens. This plays on your sense of self as a player, versus what your interpretation would be as a ruler. If you’re just you, your citizens would probably come first. But this is a video game, so why wouldn’t you want to save your narratively important love interest?
Fable 3 tasks you with taking down a despotic ruler, then teases you with the rewards of being a despot yourself.
Fable 3 isn’t the most poignant game out there, and it doesn’t have some grand message to impart. But it’s one of the few RPGs that tries to make you think about the very nature of it being a video game, and how that lines up with (or runs against) your own morality. And if you’ve played the previous games, your familiarity with the people and locations of Albion plays into your role. Do you keep the kingdom’s jewel of Bower Lake intact, or do you turn it into a profitable mine?
Fable 3 might fail on some of its gameplay fronts, but it more than lives up to the comical moral quandaries the series was built on. Going from underdog hero in Fable 1 to literal ruler of the realm in Fable 3 feels like a natural progression. What’s most fascinating about these games is how each one takes on a different context when played separately or together, and that, more than anything else, is what cements Fable 3’s legacy.
