Fable 2 Non-Gamer Review

Fable 2 Non-Gamer Review

By Faith Martin

OK, so here's what’s going on. I find myself taking a short break in Reading during my half term to stay with my brother Joe - and before I know it, he has me doing work experience and I’m sat by in the bit-tech offices writing a review for Fable 2. So here I go.

The game starts with you taking the role of a young girl or boy called Sparrow. At the beginning you find yourself living on the streets of Albion with your sister Rose, where you're struggling to survive. The game gets you to follow Rose and by doing this you start off finding small quests to do, earning the money that you need to advance further in the game.

As a person who doesn't play a lot of games, I often find it hard to master the simplest controls and consequently end up with a bad case of motion sickness. Fable 2 wasn't like this though, as the game didn't launch me straight into action like some other games I have played. Instead, the game spent the first fifteen minutes slowly teaching me about the controls and helping me gain confidence in what I was doing. I was also being introduced to the story and characters at the same time.


During this introduction to the game I started to be able to make my own small decisions about my character in quests. For example, do I help out a criminal for a gold piece, or do I help out the police for a gold piece? It didn't make any difference at that time which one I chose, because either way I got a gold piece but this was just the start of the decisions I had to make.

As the game progressed it allowed the decisions I made to determine everything about Sparrow; if I chose decisions that were morally good, it would lead me closer to becoming a hero of Albion, and also make me more attractive to fellow villagers. Be wary of this though, after a while I noticed that my female version of Sparrow was becoming increasingly popular with female villagers!

I found the versatility of the game, and how I was able to control all aspects of Sparrow’s life, really cool. It meant I could mess around and turn everybody against her, and make her do funny stuff like kick chickens. Yes! That’s right you can kick chickens in this game, and also pigeons, but they’re harder to catch. Or you could play really seriously and complete quests, striving to become a hero.

Eventually I completed all of these, what I like to call 'warm-up quests', as a young Sparrow. Sparrow and Rose could now buy a magical music box with all the money they had earned. With the magical music box we would wish to live in a castle just like Lucien, the local Lord.


Well, what do you know, king Lucien's guards tuned up that night, and brought Sparrow and Rose to the castle. But tragically King Lucien had brought Sparrow and Rose to the castle for another reason – to try and kill us! Shock horror!

Luckily, Sparrow escapes and when she wakes up she is at a campsite and is much more grown up and ready to face the world. She doesn’t have to do it alone though as she has two trustworthy friends to help her. The first friend is a woman called Theresa, who Sparrow met when she was a child and who guided her and Rose towards buying the magical music box. Theresa acts as a guide on Sparrow’s quests and contacts her through a magical item. I found her really helpful whilst I was playing, because occasionally when I would get distracted from what I was supposed to do in a quest, she would pipe up and help me out.

The other trustworthy friend that Sparrow has is her dog. It follows you around everywhere, finding treasure and other goodies on your travels. Earlier, when I was describing all the funky decisions you get to make in the game. I didn't mention that they also change your dog. If you make bad choices, your dog will turn into some ugly mutt, that barks at babies. Or, by making good decisions, it will change into a pretty pup that everybody loves. I thought that dog was good in the game. It helped you find things upon your travels that you missed, or wouldn't have noticed. Sometimes though during a fight it got in the way a bit, and put me off.