One of my favorite elements of a good role-playing game is a good morality system. Whether this takes the form of something as simple as the binary renegade/paragon system of Mass Effect or the more nuanced system of a game such as Baldur’s Gate III, which emphasizes consequences rather than judgement, systems like these can elevate your standard RPG. A morality mechanic allows players to craft and tinker with their character beyond the creation screen and–when it’s done well–allows for true, dynamic role-playing.
But while the aforementioned games allow players to create characters with an “evil” alignment, no RPG has allowed players to be quite as evil as Fable 2.
The original Fable released in 2004 and built its foundation on letting players craft their character based on the choices they made. Gone were the menu-based skill trees and character builds; instead, they were traded for a system in which your character underwent physical transformations to reflect whether they were good or evil. If you were good and did heroic deeds, you manifested a halo, and people would cheer as you walked by. If you were evil, your character would sprout horns and citizens would run away in fear. It was a more literal morality system compared to what existed at the time, and took advantage of Fable’s whimsical fantasy setting.
In 2009, Lionhead Studios followed up the game with Fable II. Set 500 years after the original game, Fable II saw Albion enter the colonial age. This setting allowed the sequel to expand on ideas that were first presented in the original, and allowed players to explore an entirely new method of being truly evil: participating in capitalism.
Fable II features an expanded real-estate system in which players can buy property and rent it out when they’re not living in it. While most players utilize this system to buy a single home in one area of the game before eventually moving to a different part of the world, the game has no limits to the amount of property one can buy. So if you’re so inclined, you can roleplay as a landlord and own multiple properties across the in-game world. The game doesn’t warn players against buying property and charging citizens rent, but if you do happen to hit a certain threshold, you will actually earn evil karma in the game’s morality system.
In what is a remarkably thoughtful inclusion by Lionhead, Fable II actually views you as an enemy of Albion if you monopolize its housing market to your will. Without saying it outright, the game emphasizes that necessities such as housing are a basic human right.
That’s the beauty of the Fable series. While most morality systems at the time, such as in games like Knights of the Old Republic, provided players with very obvious good and evil choices, the Fable series interjects ambitious and thoughtful ideologies into its games. The game then takes those core ideas and weaves them into mechanics that are never made entirely clear to the player, allowing them to discover them on their own.
Fable III took the idea of being evil in non-traditional ways and expanded it into a full title. The follow-up told the story of a descendant of the player-character that plans a revolution to overthrow a tyrant king. The game didn’t end there though, as once the player took up the crown, they were forced to make difficult decisions about the kingdom that weren’t always clear-cut good or evil.
And now the series looks to return to tradition with the newest Fable installment developed by Playground Games. From what we’ve seen so far, it seems like the developer is looking to carry the series’ tradition forward in new and exciting ways, such as featuring completely unique NPCs, the return of a real-estate system, and a world that looks to fully react to every decision you make. While the Fable series may have not had the most deep or complex RPG system, it made up for in unique takes that allowed its players to truly role-play their characters in ways not seen in many mainstream video games at that time.
