Review by: Tom Chick

Open-world games are mostly immutable. It’s hard enough to build an open world, much less let it get changed or broken. Some games have tried. The day/night zombie cycle in Crackdown 2 or the breakable landmarks in Red Faction: Guerrilla, for instance. The fake-out that opens Guild Wars is a good example. Games like Dragon Age or Fallout 3 have you changing the world, but then the game ends, so you have to take the developer’s word for it that something dramatic happened.

Fable III does its level best to buck this trend. The first third is a conventional game of Fable, in which you run around doing typical Fable things: simple combat, silly clothes, farting, molesting chickens, goofy quests, and so forth. Then the second third of the game happens and you make decisions that affect the shape of the world. Once all that resolves and the storyline has sputtered out -- it’s the typical disappointing game ending, even though it’s not technically the ending -- you’re left to your own devices for the third act.

This is where Fable III really comes into its own. You’re super powerful, but the difficulty, such as it is, has scaled accordingly. There are still plenty of quests to do and assuming you’re a completionist -- you are, after all, playing an RPG with Xbox Live achievements, so that's a safe assumption -- there’s plenty left to unlock and level up and explore. You’re touring the game world you’ve decreed. If the shops are all closed and nobles are hard to find, it's the effect of your economic policy. If the scenery changed, you did it. If children everywhere hate you, you have only yourself to blame. This is your world. Welcome to it.

In terms of how the story resolves, the choice and consequences system is awfully fuzzy, which will frustrate anyone hoping for a clear-cut win or lose situation. Although Fable III starts off with the usual obvious choices of whether to kick the puppy or pet the puppy, it gets admirably complicated later on. I have no idea whether I made the right choices, and I respect that Fable III doesn't present them as right or wrong. They're simply difficult. For all its faults as an overly simplified game, Fable III deserves credit for presenting tough choices.