Working Title 11.09.10: Working Rant: Fable 3 and Force Unleashed 2

Posted by Jordan Williams on 11.09.2010

Are Force Unleashed 2 and Fable 3 shining examples of how to ruin a game by messing with a process that works? 411's Jordan Williams takes a look in the latest Working Title!

Welcome to the #1 column to think that maybe JUST MAYBE this whole Kinect and PS Move thing is such a bad idea, WORKING TITLE. So after a week of both of these systems being out, the general feeling across the board seems to be that they are both...alright. Not groundbreaking by any means of good enough to lead anyone to believe that the next group of games will be JUST for motion consoles. But everyone seems to be enjoying it, and maybe that will show Sony and Microsoft that this might work as they intended it to...an add-on for the current consoles instead a new full blown product.

But that is a rant for another time, namely when more (better) games have been released for the respective motion consoles.

Today's rant however is going to be just for two games in question. Usually when I rant about a game (or games) I tend to finish them and let them stew in my mind for a bit, but this time both of the games are just...well...not pissing me off, but annoying me to the point where they deserve to get called on the bullshit right away. Of course one of these games is guiltier of it than the others, but it's still right up there.

Fable 3 and Force Unleashed 2.


I don't even have a witty intro for this one so much. These games fucked up. They both had winning formulas and tried to do SOMETHING with both and instead screwed the pooch. I don't know what they were going for...but...well.

They dun goofed.


Working Rant: Fable 3 and Force Unleashed 2



Fable 3

We all know that one of the golden rules of gaming is to never EVER trust Molyneaux. He is a great guy and all be he tends to love to promise the world on every game he makes and they always just seem to under deliver. This time around with Fable 3 Molly did not say too much about what is going on in the game itself. He didn't promise the world like he has done with other games, in fact the only thing he did promise was that the game was going to be a bit more streamlined this time...which to many, including myself, is the problem this time.


Fable 1 was a decent game.

Fable 2 was a good game.

By logic, this was setting up Fable 3 to be a great game, and Molyneaux's first. But instead they got so hung up on fixing what isn't broken that they went on to break the parts of the game everyone LIKED. Fable always had big personality going for it, even though your Hero never talked, you never felt like it was just a boring Silent Protagonist like always. You could customize him to fit the way you wanted to play and then all of the personality would show through by the way you interacted with the people in the world. This was beyond the simple "Bad guys kill innocent people. Good guys don't" rule that you see in many Western RPGs but in how you actually interact with the NPCs. Do a nice little dance or show of a trophy and they like you more. However if you go around giving people the bird and farting in their general direction they tend to hate you. This whole idea of how you play, how you act, and how other people SEE you factoring into how you shape your hero and the world around is was something that was getting better with each Fable Game, it was something that worked. You had a clear cut way of telling what the fuck was going on in your game, even if the menus wanted to fight you every step of the way.

Which is why it just BAFFLES me that for Fable 3, which is arguably the most ambitious of the three games would take the route of NO resistance and just scrap all of that. Your hero is now as generic as ever since they actually gave him a voice and personality (how ass backwards is that?)
And it just seems like instead of controlling the world and the hero around you...you are just going through the paces. All of those wonderful interactions you have with tons of villagers who would crowd around you and rejoice when you came to town, instead now every interaction are a 1 on 1. On top of that all of those lovely interactions you got to choose from? Nothing. They are there but now the game just gives you an interaction it sees fit. So the game that was all about choice all of the sudden feels like it is just holding your hand and making every decision for you.

It even goes deeper than just the simple interaction stuff, even the combat and general gameplay just feels like they took out all of the parts you REALLY liked and instead just gave you what they thought you wanted. There is no real reason to use magic, guns, or weapons over another. Since you do not level up traditionally there is no real boost behind trying to create a mage or a gunslinger. In other the other games you got experience based on what you used and HOW you played, it molded your character.

But apparently they didn't want you doing that anymore.

You will level up the way we want you to. Sure, we give you the OPTION of upgrading this and that on the Road to Rule, but we also give you so many Guild Seals that if you don't buy everything you are a fucking pudsucker. How about that story, huh?

How about all of the other stuff that was fixed, huh?

Health bar? Don't worry about that. We will tell you when you want to heal.

Got some new clothes or something? We will tell you when and how to wear them.

How about your dog? Remember how he was kind of cute and had some minor uses in the first game? Well now he's just there to go HEY, DIG UP THIS CONDOM. I mean you COULD use him for the breadcrumb trail that he is meant to be but that thing is so fucked up beyond repair that there is no point on even TRYING to use it. Same for the menu.

Oh wait. There is no menu.

Because for some reason Lions Gate couldn't get A FUCKING PAUSE SCREEN MENU right, they decided to instead make the 'pause screen' a room in which you manually have move you character to all of the options and settings. Now on the bright side this doesn't seem to take up much time because there really isn't a load time for it, but then again what does this accomplish that a simple menu could not have? Why try so hard to 'streamline' a game but then tack on one of the chunkiest...things...ever.

That is not to say that some of the stuff they 'fixed' didn't work out well. I do like the fact that the job-minigames seem to give you a lot more money right away and that house buying is a lot simpler than last time. But overall the entire game just feels like someone looked at Fable 2, something that had a winning formula and then decided to change it up to keep us on our toes. In the end what we got was a game that feels half done. They put work into it, they really did, but when you take out all of the skill building elements, the stats, the leveling, and a majority of the choices you are able to make and then tried to pass it off as better than the second.

I am a large supporter of "If it's not broken, don't fix it" and it seems like Lionhead did the exact opposite, they fixed all of the stuff that didn't need fixing and broke the stuff we actually liked.

This game is definitely going to be nominated for "Biggest Letdown of 2010" in the year end awards.


Force Unleashed 2

From a game that was poised to have a great sequel to a game that just didn't need one at all. Force Unleashed was a pretty nifty game. Sure, it pissed off some of the Star Wars purists with certain portrayals in the last game, but up until the final boss the story actually made sense, it fit into the universe and it could've easily stood up in the canon (as it rightfully does). The ending was a great ending and it set up A New Hope near PERFECTLY.

So why in the fresh fuck did they fuck it all up with this sequel?

I know the easy answer here is "It sold a lot of money". But although I tend to take the side of the business vs. the hobby in the end I chalk this up to what BioShock 2 did.

A sequel wasn't needed, especially for a game that was meant to be the 'go-between' between two GIANT movie franchises. What we ended up getting was a sloppy, buggy, rushed cash-in that FELT like a cash-in. The best thing Force Unleashed 1 had going for it was that it stood on its own as a Star Wars story. It wasn't a cash in for a new movie or a toy like so many other Star Wars based things. It had the feel of a summer blockbuster without actually having one attached to it.

But this...this just feels like a cash-in of the highest degree. ESPECIALLY if you pay attention to the story.

If Force Unleashed sold so well and was such a good success for them why didn't they just go ahead and make a new Force Unleashed with a new cast and new settings? It's not like there isn't a metric FUCKTON of timelines and stories in the Star Wars Universe you can't pull from. How about that Old Republic everyone loves so much? How about some of that Extended Universe stuff that had awesome people like Beldorian.

Who is Beldorian you ask?

He's a Jedi.

A HUTT JEDI.

YES. THEY HAVE FUCKING HUTT JEDIS

I'd GLADLY pay for a game that had me fighting a Hutt Jedi or ANY of the other crazy awesome shit they have done with the Star Wars Universe. But instead all we got was Force Unleashed 2, a game so rushed and shoddy that it got Force Unleashed 3 cancelled and ended up hurting the original Force Unleashed in the long run.

Just like I love not fixing what isn't broken, you should also not try to shoehorn a sequel into something that had a great and logical ending.

There should be a witty snarky final remark here that I always make to rile up the commenter's, but I don't have one...so instead I'll just post this.

---

Working Question

To keep with the current times, do you think Kinect and/or Move will be a factor this time next year?

If so, who do you think will be more successful?

If not, why do you think they will fail?



Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I'm not even going to lie. If I had a larger living room I'd totally be playing a Kinect game right now.

In the nude.

Sweet dreams.