Fable -- Initial Impressions.

I'm finally getting around to playing Fable. It was a game I was interested in when it released in September of 2004 for the Xbox.  I didn't get around to it for a few reasons. I was busy playing other games at the time. It was essentially the kickoff for that holiday season and the must play games flooded out for the next few months. Couple that with some criticisms by key people in comparison to the overwhelming hype the game had been getting and it fell by the wayside.  I forgot about it. I noticed it on store shelves for $19 by summer 2005 and snatched up. I attempted to play it but its strange save system wasn't going to work well with my Xbox's sketchy Thompson drive. I would be risking losing large chunks of effort put into the game. So it remained shelved. Enter the Xbox 360 and its backwards compatibility list. Fable made the list and now I can finally play through the game and test out how well the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility functions. I've spent a few hours messing around and have played through my childhood and teenage years into adulthood where the game proper starts. Your childhood and teenage years offer up the initial setting and act as nothing more than an elaborate training section to familiarize yourself with how the game plays. Fable was sold as an action RPG that will change the direction of the genre forevermore. A game where your every little choice mattered. Where you would have an unprecedented level of freedom. I don't know about any of that at this point. I do know that the game is a mixed bag visually. The game is pretty by Xbox standards. The art style however is weird to me. I don't exactly know why. It's decidedly western in approach. Maybe it will become clear what's off about it to me as I play through the game. The game also relies heavily on British voice actors. That can go either way and it's too early to tell which way it's going to actually go. I haven't gotten a true taste of the combat engine at this point because the time spent thus far has essentially just been on learning the how of it all and not so much the practice of it. What has been presented of the story teases at a potentially dark and mean tale. Hopefully that turns out to be true. We'll see how it goes.