Apart from sounding like some kind of vulgar nickname for a body part, Fable II’s Knothole Island is going to be a downloadable addition that will hit XBox Live tomorrow. It offers extra areas to explore, along with some new sidequests to garner some more fame. Who knows, maybe there will be property there, as well.
One thing that it’s going to have is lots of lame. Why? It seems that one of the developers is hinting that Knothole Island is going to have a resurrection shrine, and that perhaps you will be able to reverse a couple of erm, choices from late in the game.
This brings me to one of my main quibbles about Fable II. But alas, there are spoilers. So only continue if you don’t care.
Perhaps my primary beef with Fable II is that unlike an RPG like Mass Effect, there were no consequences for nearly any decision you made. Villagers hate you for killing everybody? Do some dances, and it’s all good. The actual main quest, likewise, left little to no decision-making to be had, and as a result, you never truly felt like you were affecting the world.
Until the end of the game. The only decision that had any kind of gravity behind it is the one you make with the prophetess, who allows you to choose to save everyone killed by the bad guy, but leave your family and dog dead. Or, you could choose to bring back your family and dog, but everyone killed by the bad guy stays dead. Finally, you could choose just to get rich, and screw all of them. This decision affected the world when all was said and done, and it was the only decision to do so.
If Knothole Island actually does allow you to reverse these effects and resurrect your family/dog, then I’m going to be a little upset. Essentially, it robs the game of any real consequence. Terribly disappointed in Lionhead if this is true.
What about you guy? Fair/foul, what?
Source- Lionhead Blog
Fair? Foul? Neither, really. I wasn’t really all that excited about Fable II in the first place. Fable broke new ground by making small consequences for your actions (i.e. appearance changes) but that was last-gen. Fable II could have done so much more. This DLC just continues the trend of same old, same old. I’m not saying it’s going to be bad, I just doubt it’ll be anything new.
Idk…I myself enjoyed it. And the only thing you really have to compare it to is Mass Effect (and maybe Fallout 3?). I think as an RPG on 360, developers are really limited on what they can do. But maybe they didn’t even take full advantage of what they could do. Obviously there will never be WoW: 360, so I guess we will have to deal with this quality. It would also help if good ol’ Peter kept his mouth shut up until about a month before the game came out. He ruined it for himself.
Haha, good point there about Peter. I really wish that guy wouldn’t run his mouth off so much. He kept making the game sound so big, and while it wasn’t bad and had its enjoyable moments, it just didn’t carry the weight that some of the other modern RPGs do.
BTW, what was everyone’s dog’s name? Mine was Megatron.
Fido McFlip Flip. Actually, I still haven’t played it, but I agree that changing those decisions is lame.
This just seems a little odd, given the fervor with which ol’ Pete touted the whole single save slot, make your bed and lie in it concept. Granted, the concept does ring pretty hollow already when a few jigs can effectively erase an NPC’s memories of the slaughter of their friends and neighbors, so maybe it’s not that extreme a departure.
In reality, though, it’s probably more like a calculated marketing decision to boost DLC sales. Definitely lame.