Chase your chickens with a friend or two.
After Fable: The Journey fumbled into reality, I wasn't sure we would ever see another Fable game from Lionhead Studios. But here we are, one more game and four more heroes. It seems that Lionhead has put the pitfalls of Fable: The journey behind them and managed to refocus its efforts on making an actual RPG fans can enjoy together.
Fable Legends is built around a multiplayer experience, but if you choose to play alone, you can. No matter how you choose to play, you will be traversing Albion with at least three companions and it's your choice to have your friends join you on your quest or play with AI companions. Each individual party member has his or her own set of unique quest lines apart from the main story. Despite this promise of diverse immersion, all that we got a taste of at E3 this year was co-op combat in arena mode.
I played as Rook the archer alongside three other party members—Sterling the Rogue, Inga the Warrior, and Winter the Magician—in an effort to hold back enemy forces. The flow of the combat for the Archer class somehow felt a little like playing Gears of War. I would dodge to get a good angle on my foe and release a barrage of arrows at them in quick succession, which made me think I was shooting an assault rifle. Along with your primary attack you are given a heavy attack and alternate to your primary attack. In my case it was explosive bolts; of course, this is something that could possible change throughout the game depending on what kind of weapons become available.
As in any other Fable game, except for Fable: The Journey, you can choose the good or the evil path. When playing as the villain you'll be able to do more than just be a bad guy. You can put your malice to use in battle against the heroes of Albion using a number of different tactics to control your troops. These tactics will allow you to control the environment, minions, and traps choosing which will work best against certain heroes.
The developers didn't have any of the quests available to play on the floor, but we can only hope that they contain the amount of intrigue most Fable games have been able to deliver in the past. Although I was not able to experience any quests in Fable Legends it's clear that Lionhead is getting back to the roots of what made Fable games great in the past. I have high hopes for Fable Legends but would love to see them demonstrate the story-based aspects of the game at some point before it releases later in 2014 exclusively on the Xbox One.
