Thursday, April 14, 2011

A Better Fable . . .


While it was declared at the outset that Fable 3 would be getting a PC release, PC gamers needed to wait till May for the release; even though the Xbox version was released last October. The developers didn't care to give any specific reason for the delay, except for acknowledging the fact that work on the PC port didn't begin until after the console version was shipped.
Still, it seems the delay will turn out to be better for PC gamers since the developers seem to be intent ironing out most of the glitches and issues with the console version along with making it a PROPER PC port rather than a half-baked product.

Fable 3 lead designer Josh Atkins says that "most developers tend to just rush games out onto the PC; they do the very quickest port they can and they try to do it as a financial model; rather than trying to make something that at least plays like it was designed for the platform, and respects what the platform does.”

So, with Fable 3 will get a smoother PC experience than most console ports like a intuitive control scheme, proper mouse support and, hopefully, better graphics customization options.

Another notable addition is the increasing in difficulty with the new 'Challenging' mode. Atkins says “When the difficulty came up we were talking about what would PC players want. What would be important to them? The additional challenge, or the choice for additional challenge was something that we thought was important".
“Figuring out how to do that in a way that was both efficient and fair was challenging. We didn't just move sliders around: we actually sat down and looked at the creature types and looked at them as individuals. Rather than just say, “This one now does 10 per cent more damage,” we made them a little faster, which gives them the perception of being a little bit smarter.”
So, although the new Challenging mode doesn't hold a candle to, say, the Fallout : New Vegas Hardcore mode as it focuses mainly on more tactical and difficult combat; its definitely an improvement over the console version which Atkins admits was designed to be easy for a console audience.
In addition to this, there are some other changes including more interaction with environment and changing the quest structure to make the experience less grinding.

Although we can't declare how good Fable 3 will be until we can get our hands on it in May, things are certainly looking brighter for the PC port and we can only hope that the final game does justice to our expectations. Still however good it turns out to be, it certainly can't hope to match the behemoth that is called The Witcher 2 : The Assassination of Kings . . .

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