Discovering Myself in Fable III

Bitmob has kicked out a spoiler-heavy editorial about how Lionhead’s latest Fable installment caused the author to “reflect on his own moral compass” while making some of the black and white decisions the game throws at you while you’re king.

After a few more sessions of court, the floor of the treasury fell out. Costly policy after policy drained the coffers, and the annoying new butler chastised me constantly about our lack of funds. I transferred every penny I could to the treasury, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. I began to panic.

When my financial advisor asked me if I should reinstate a child-benefit program, I actually paused to consider it. It would be expensive to implement such a program, but the people would need it. However, what good would welfare programs do to the dead?

I had a moment of weakness where my finger hovered over the X-button, the (evil) option. That would not only get rid of the welfare program, but charge a tax for every birth in Albion. I — we need the money so badly. What were we going to do? What was I going to do?

Then I realized how wrong this was. (And yes, it’s silly to take things so seriously, but remember that I was trying to place myself in my avatar’s shoes.) I decided to compromise with the neutral action, which neither drained nor added money to my reserves. It wasn’t popular, but the people did not hate me.

Personally, I thought the decisions in Fable III were ridiculously weak. Every major decision was based solely on your finances (good decisions costed you money, evil decisions lined your pockets), and considering how easy money is to attain in the game, going either route just seemed pointless and inconsequential.