Did you treat your kid well in Fable II? Did you take care of them? Feed them? Clothe them? Give their mother plenty of money for when you're off hunting gargoyles, digging treasure or satisfying the whims of those annoying demon doors? Or did you father multiple sprogs with multiple wenches, kill your demanding other half rather than pay her any maintenance money, then fart in your child's face, laughing heartily as social services took the traumatised toddler off your hands? Er, us neither.
Whatever you did - whatever kind of saintly or devilish hero you were - we hope you're content with your behaviour, because soon Fable III will ask you to live with those consequences.
As the child of the previous game's hero, you've either spent your childhood loved and mollycoddled - if you played Fable II as a goody-two-shoes - or abandoned, malnourished, horned and bullied for your veiny blue skin. The decisions you made, and the person you became, will be passed onto your offspring, who can then choose whether to live up to your terrible/heroic legacy, or whether to head in completely the opposite direction.
With your burden (or gift) dictating their initial appearance, and thus the reaction they'll elicit from the kingdom's inhabitants, Fable III's new hero has to explore Albion once again - but this time, as a revolutionary. Fable III is split into two halves. The first sees you growing up as an idealist unhappy with the current ruler of Albion, and determined to oust the monarch from the throne. But armies need people, and people need to be convinced if they're going to fight for your cause. And in order to convince them, promises need to be made...
Overthrowing a king is a lot like a general election. People make pledges they aren't going to keep - even if they intended to keep them at the time - as they tour the country, shaking the Great Unwashed by their smelly proletarian hands. The first half of the game has you doing exactly that: going up to Albion's general public and promising to make their lives better when you become king or queen - in return for them lending a hand in the fight to attain it. You'll be able to shake their hands, too, thanks to the game's new touchy feely expression system. But we'll get round to that in just a moment...
In the fifty years since the events of Fable II, Albion has headed further down the path of industrialisation, and the result is a land with a greater rich-poor divide than ever before. The paupers of Bowerstone are forced into ghettos, as the elite settle snugly into their vast mansion homes. Put simply, there is injustice everywhere you cast an eye. In such a politically charged climate, it probably won't be too difficult to find support and gather an army capable of seizing the crown - the hard part comes when you finally have it.
Fable III's second half charts your reign as king or queen of Albion. Rather than the mock monarch you could be in the second game - if you bought every piece of land in the kingdom, you were rewarded with a crown, robes and a fancy title - Fable III lets you indulge in every kingly/queenly act you can think of, from sending your subjects to prison for no good reason to distributing the crown's wealth as you see fit. You'll still be able to wander round the kingdom, smacking bandits and looking for silver keys, but it's now backed up by a more evolved version of Fable II's sim elements - rather than simply buying everything in sight, you're able to shape the very nature of Albion.
Say your castle is looking a bit grim. You could spend your kingdom's limited resources on sprucing it up, but then you'd have no money left to attend to all the other items left on your royal to-do list - like going to war with other nations, or keeping all those promises you made.
Ah yes, the promises. For some bizarre reason, The People want you to uphold your pledges, rather than sticking your fingers in your ears and chopping off their whining heads instead. It's up to you whether you honour or ignore these promises, but you'll soon learn that life as a monarch isn't as straightforward as you imagined it to be - in order to ensure the smooth running of the kingdom, compromises have to be made. It's Fable's customary morality system taken to another level: rather than being good or bad simply for the hell of it, you'll be forced into making the kind of tough moral choices that real leaders have to make all the time.
When you need to take a break, why not pass judgement on your subjects? According to Peter Molyneux, you'll be able to go up to any Albion inhabitant involved in a crime and 'pass judgement' on their life, initiating a side quest where their friends, family and co-workers present evidence about their misdeeds. You can either judge the perp on the spot, letting them off or throwing them in jail, or you can investigate their life in more detail, in order to make a more informed decision (and presumably get more cash or XP as a result).
The expression system has been removed, replaced with something called 'Touch'. Rather than farting, Cossack dancing or clucking like a chicken (which would seem a bit odd as the ruler of Albion) you'll now hug, snog or shake people by the hand.
Apparently, this is because Lionhead "didn't feel like there was a connection in Fable II. The characters felt separate from the world." So you'll now be able to hold anyone's hand, for instance, taking a loved one to a cliffside to watch the beautiful sunset, or dragging a cute child from a burning house - reassuring the brat afterwards with a soppy hug. Lionhead are calling this 'Dynamic Touch'. "Imagine being able to embrace your own child," Peter said, explaining the concept. Well... we'd rather not embrace anyone else's.
It's another ambitious evolution of the Fable experience, then. But with every title Lionhead edge closer to their original goal with the series once known as Project Ego. The second game let you have another life - bearing children, getting a job or playing the property game - but Fable III just might let you live it, thanks to the new touch gestures and the chance to actually change the world in a meaningful way. Lionhead put it another way: when developing Fable II they were "still learning the art - but this time we're taking it seriously".
