Love in the Time of Fable II
First off, let me say that I love Fable II. I got it for Christmas and have played probably five to six hours over the last two days.
Admittedly, it's not perfect. It sets off my Oblivion triggers like any good RPG does: "well, it's good, but it's no Oblivion... so why don't I turn this off and just play that?" But, of course, it's not supposed to be the same sort of RPG as Oblivion. And for what it is, it's really, really good.
And the "what's good, what's bad" sort of reviews have been done to death, so I'm going to skip those formalities and jump straight into the vast morass of weirdness (and, in all seriousness, I mean that in the nicest way possible) that is the relationship and morality system.
Yes, you too can have one of these
lovely Albion mail-order animatronic
brides for the low, low price of
ALL YOUR DIGNITY.
I ended up getting my character hitched. (And I am going to use the awkward construct "my character" rather than "me" just because this weirds me out.) It was actually pretty brilliant how this happened. You see, there's a quest where the ghost of a jilted lover asks you to woo the woman who ran away from him, and then give her a horrible rejection letter as an act of revenge. (And when I say he's a ghost, I should point out that he killed himself because she left him. Darkest sketch! Darkest sketch!)
Anyway, once you finally make her fall madly in love with you, you get a choice: you can either give her the rejection letter, or you can marry her. This does bother me a bit--seems like there should be a third option where you merely tell her the truth and let her down easy. But otherwise, the moral choice here is brilliant: you either crush the ghost's spirit (tee hee, it's a pun), or you crush the woman's spirit. I'm bitter, and I completely identify with the ghost, but I'm not a complete bastard. So I had my character marry the woman.
Strangely enough, the renown bonus you get from your wedding was just enough to push everyone else over the line, and so my character has about five other people in town in love with him. Seriously, they follow me around. And there's two or three guys who are even hitting on me and it's starting to grate on me in ways I can't even describe. Despite my attempts to be progressive and tolerant, I apparently still have this scary little homophobe running around in the deep recesses of my subconscious. I guess the first step is admitting you have a problem.
So anyway, I'm now paying this woman an allowance of 25 gold a day, and she's sitting around in my character's house in Bowerstone. That's basically it. I can't actually force myself to make my character do the deed, as it were. And while I may be repressed, that's not the "ew, icky human contact!" side of me talking. I mean, if this were real life and I was married... well, let's just say I wouldn't keep the (un)lucky woman waiting the way my game counterpart has.
However, a single virgin otaku playing a video game where he can both get married and have sex just seems creepy as all hell. It's like some sort of hypersexed child-in-a-man's-body version of wish fulfillment--I'm starting to wonder whether Peter Molyneux is really the love child of Stephanie Meyer and Tim LaHaye/Jerry Jenkins*, and ruled as Emperor of All Slashfic before becoming a game designer. (As The Chef likes to say, it's up to him to prove me wrong. And if he has to deny it, it's probably true.)
That, and... well, I hate to sound alarmist here, but remember how Fox News wanted you to believe that Mass Effect was a sex simulator? Fable II is disturbingly close--if not in actuality, then at least in spirit. I can even choose whether my character is protected or unprotected, and I ain't talking about +1 Armor of Deflection here. Granted, it's approaching the subject with a wink and a nudge rather than trying to be titillating.
But anyway, it's not just the wish fulfillment that leaves me a little uncomfortable. It's partly that Fable II's relationship system isn't so much an attempt at character development as it is a mathematical model. (Which is fine--it's not trying to be any more than that, and it lends itself to its own quirky style of gameplay.) You do stupid actions that people like, and they will make equally inane remarks back to you. Points will be added or subtracted from various stats. That's as much continuity between interactions as you get. Really, it's not so much that your character is making love to a video game character as he's making love to animatronic woman.
Yes, animatronics. Remember the singing robots Showbiz Pizza used to have when we were kids? Yeah, I do too, and they scared the everloving shiznite out of me. It would be like doing it with one of those.
Actually, wait a minute. "Animatronic" is a bit harsh. They do seem pretty lifelike and they respond to actions in a semi-intelligent way, even if they don't seem like they are quite highly functioning. So it's actually more like trying to seduce someone who's not mentally competent to make those sort of decisions. Were my character to get busy with one of Albion's citizens, I'm pretty sure Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay would bust down the door of my house and arrest me. Or my character. Whichever. I forget which grammatical construct I'm using at this point.
Anyway, the point is, as cool as it might be to actually meet The Belz, I would rather it not be as he's grilling me in an interrogation room.
* Not the romantic/sexual sort of wish fulfillment, but the "nyah, nyah, we told you were were right, now you're going to burn for not believing us!" sort (see Left Behind Fridays). Also, I'm not sure how a love child could have one mom and two dads, but just go with it here, OK?
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ViNull
Who buries sheepskin condoms?
The Maitre d'
There is so much you must explain.
The Maitre d'
Also...
Your experiences in-game sound a lot like what The Chef claims his wedding was like.
I say "claims" because I was there, but didn't see any live midget sacrifices. But perhaps that's because I was only invited to the sham wedding at the Presbyterian church, not the real wedding at the Temple of Skorm.
The Chef
Skorm? Presbyterian?
The Maitre d'
Oh yeah.
Curse you, High Exchequer. Curse you and your Immortal Robot Reagan.
The Chef
I told you...
I'll schedule you for a new auditing session next week.
reaperman
Your animatronic bride...
The Chef
Well...
The Maitre d'
So I take it...
The Chef
You had him at "nice tits".
reaperman
Icing...
The Maitre d'
Icing...
Of course a lich like you would love it.
The Chef
Icing...
The Chef
And...
The Maitre d'
More profanity?
You do realize that I would never actually say that, right?
The Chef
Yes, more profanity.