I Must Acquire Fable II
I like to think of myself as fairly grown-up. I can easily turn down the childish pleasures in which many of my contemporaries (or, less grandly, my "age-group") seem to lose themselves so readily.
But there are certain things that I find I must own. I develop what feels like a small void in my chest and abdomen. For want of this thing, I stew, obsess, research and finally capitulate. The process can take weeks, months...even years. Usually, though, it's a matter of days.
Four days ago, I began to see advertisements for a video game called Fable II. It is a role-playing game, sequel to a 2004 release. The main draw of this game series isn't just that you play in a fantastically realized fantasy setting and go on adventures. What makes it interesting to me is that one's character can affect the game world by how one plays. Morality is a factor in this game, as is appearance and communication style. The appearance of a character gradually changes based on combat wounds, eating habits, skill sets and level of good or evil.
In this sequel, not only are public interactions counted towards your overall morality, but what you do in private counts too. For instance, the game strives for realism in a lot of ways. You can get married and have children...and you initiate the action which precipitates children. Now, in Fable I you could have a bunch of mistresses (or boy toys, the game allows homosexuality) as long as they didn't find out about each other. There wasn't much of an effect on your overall status as good or evil. But in this game you are rated on purity and corruption.
One minor annoyance from the reviews: Having unprotected sex is a corrupting influence, wearing a condom is a purity thing. They'll hit you with VD or a kid too. Well, as a Catholic I suppose I can console myself by simply not letting my character fornicate until he gets married. Look at me, I've already decided to buy the game...so much for that "could take weeks to succumb" jive.
What I find so intriguing about this game series is that if I play without a set goal in mind, it can be a tool for introspection. If I play the game as I would live the events in the game, I can see what I suppose the game designer would think of me. It's like one giant Internet quiz. With magic.
Comments
I hadn't realized they still make video games?
But seriously, let me tell you my biggest regret... OK, one of my biggest regrets, and I want to be sure you know that I know that your indulgence isn't in the same league, but when VCRs started to finally come down in price... sometime around the time you were born... I had to have one.
So I paid a thousand bucks for a machine that had a wired remote and all that remote could do was pause it. You still had to get up and do anything else you need the thing to do, even change channels.In addition, the VCR weighed about fifty pounds, so if it broke, it would make a great doorstop.
And mine did. And it cost two hundred bucks to get it fixed.
Of course, features quickly improved but prices didn't moderate nearly as quickly as they do today, so in the next decade or so, I spent about five grand on new VCRs. You know, about ten grand in today's dollars as they like to say. That's money that could have gone into a retirement account and be worth three grand today!?
Anyway, I look back at the things I had to have and I shudder. And the reason is because I wouldn't even buy most of them today at any price. So this is not a judgment on your choices, it's merely to let you know perspectives change over time, and I'd like to help people to avoid the sort of regrets I have.
Yeah, they are actually pretty amazing in terms of graphics. In some games they individually render each leaf on a tree, so you have all these processes going at once. It's pure escapism. As they've gotten more in depth they have become more addictive as well.
Haha, nice one. Believe you me, though, if I were younger I wouldn't have hesitated to go out and pick it up, bills be damned. Now, I hardly ever buy a video game, and only then after reading reviews and getting feedback from actual people about the game's shortcomings.
Ultimately, it's a waste of time and money. It's about like seeing a movie in theaters.
I played the first one, first as a good character then i tried playing it as an evil character, i found out that even in game play for some reason i cant be completely evil. I hope the 2nd one has a female character, that was the only thing that annoyed me about the first one, you had to be a man.... hmff.. chauvinistic game makers.
I lost several days of my life to the first game.