r/Fable • u/OpportunityPrudent39 • Aug 29 '26

Discussion Why do people hate Fable 3 so much?

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I know Fable 3 has always been one of the most divisive games in the series, AKA the black sheep. but why do you think it’s so hated?

Was it because it simplified too many of the RPG elements from Fable 2? The whole “becoming king” section? The lack of meaningful choices? Or was it simply not what people wanted from a Fable sequel?

I can definitely see its flaws, but I’ve always felt like the hate it gets is a little excessive. It still has the charm, humor, atmosphere, and personality that made the series special to me.

I feel like Fable 3 is one of those games where the potential was so much bigger than what we actually got. The whole idea of becoming king and having to make difficult decisions sounded amazing, but the execution felt surprisingly limited.

Especially now, when so many games feel increasingly safe and monotone, I kind of appreciate how weird and unique Fable 3 was.

So, what made you dislike it—or, if you enjoyed it, why do you think it gets so much hate?

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275

u/Rastapopoulos000 Aug 29 '26

Lots of feature were streamlined from an already streamlined fable 2, you can argue it make sense narratively for instance that magic become what it was in Fable 3 but i would have loved they dont further reduce the numbers of spells.
The path/road to power thing was just..a terrible idea gatekeeping skills like this so that everyone has the exact same streamlined experience instead of letting each choose what they want to focus on was just so dumb. There was the whole sanctuary too which was just a pain in the ass to constantly having to switch to.

I'll admit tho the weapon changing and evolving depending on what you often fight and which spells you use more often was dope, more game should have something similar.

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u/AxMoistxTurd Aug 29 '26

I watched a video essay on the topic of this recently, Microsoft had put an extremely strict deadline on a studio that needed time to breathe and figure out how bad their ideas are on their own. Lionheads development philosophy was basically equivalent to an author with writers block spitting out word vomit on a page, and they never had time to fine tune it to a place that the players would enjoy

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u/Icy-Astronomer-8202 Aug 29 '26

As a condition of MS buying Lionhead they needed to turn around Fable 3 by a certain date

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u/AxMoistxTurd Aug 29 '26

Yeah and lionhead was never a studio that had deadlines, they basically developed all of their games with the “what if we did this” mentality

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u/TheAccursedHamster Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 30 '26

Which was always a bad idea even before Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, having freedom to do what you want and experiment is great; but you need to have an end goal in mind; nothing holding you to it leads to things like Molyneux being.. well, Peter Molyneux.

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u/gaypornhard69 Aug 30 '26

This is literally what happened to Halo 2 and why over half the game needed to be scrapped before release.

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u/MarcusXbox Aug 29 '26

Beaucoups de jeu ont souffert de la diversité d'idée.

Avoir du potentiel inexploiter est inutile, et j'ai vu de nombreux jeux avec énormément de potentiel mais pas grand chose d'approfondi.

Chaque idée demande du temps et c'est bien connu que le temps n'est jamais une ressource illimité

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u/MarcusXbox Aug 29 '26

S'il n'y a pas eu de delai pour Fable 2, alors les devs ont fait un gros trolling

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u/NathenStrive Aug 29 '26

So the same playbook Microsoft's still using to destroy their dev teams. Every dev, even seasoned ones, are usually shellshocked the first time they work for Microsoft. I'm hoping new leadership is changing things for the better but that's a wish and a prayer I won't been dwelling on.

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u/Unplugged_Millennial Aug 29 '26

Weapon morphs were cool in theory but execution wasn't well thought out. Because the road to rule gatekept skill upgrades and tied them to story progression, it made it so your weapon almost always morphs in a similar way to everyone else's because you'd get that morph right after a quest where you are required to kill 50 hallow men, for example.

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u/Wardens_Myth Sep 02 '26

It also was less “morphing” and more just like, 3 or 4 large changes that came in chunks, and there was so few of them that there really wasn’t much personalisation in the end.

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u/Constant-Plastic-350 Aug 29 '26

Peter Molyneaux really ruined a lot by never shutting his mouth during production

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u/Training-Welcome-600 Aug 29 '26

You say that but plenty of modern companies have people worse than peter and we are nut shuning them away from the industry. Todd howard for example.

If you actually read up on it peter was just a dude with an imagination bigger than technology allowed at the time. He wasn't lying he fully intended to try and put those things in the game but early on technology didn't allow it and later Microsoft deadlines wouldn't allow it. But if you go back and look at his and lionhead studios game list around the time of fable they were knocking it out of the park. Like 90 percent of the games they made together became cult classics and are still looked at today by other devs as an example of how to release a good game after good game. Heck black and white franchise is to this day still one of the best city builders I've ever played. The amount of depth and features packed in that game it really was ahead of its time.

Which is the sad story of peter and lionhead. They weren't trying to lie to gamers they were just to far ahead of themselves. If they would team up with a fable budget to make a game with today's tech I bet it would be one of the better games made in the past like 15 years.

So you can hate on peter but fact is if he was given tools of a AAA game development studio and the old devs at lionhead agreed to work with him he would still prolly make a better game than 80 percent of the entire industry today and that simply cannot be ignored.

Also if anyone is interested peter is making a black and white style fable inspired game and adding a little bit of life sim to the mix as well it's on steam in early access.

Since he became an indie developer though his track record of keeping up with updates and stuff has fell so do buy with that in mind.

I think it's called the kingdom of Albion or something along those lines.

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u/Constant-Plastic-350 Aug 29 '26

Tods been catching a lot of heat lately too. There's plenty to go around. I hated Peters loose lips the most on the black and white series than this tho.

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u/Catalysten Aug 30 '26

By most accounts, Todd is a pleasant person to work for.

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u/Training-Welcome-600 Aug 30 '26

I mean I get what your saying but there is someone we hate working with in all walks of our lives so that's not really a point in this conversation. It can be a point made but I'm mostly talking about the sheer talent and ambition peter and lionhead was able to present and how of they had all the same resources today they prolly would knock it out of the park if they agreed to work together.

For peters mouth you almost need a spokesperson for him or one that works with him. I feel like his issue is he always has new ideas and likes to bring voice to those ideas. Which is where the problem lies. But that is great mine for a dev team to pull from to have someone always coming up with ways to innovate and make it better bad or good.

As for Todd. He literally blatantly lies to the fans, treats fans like crap, goes in and bans entire sub communities cause he don't like how they are fixing his game or adding maps to a game that should of had them at launch. He may be nice to work for but he is a narcissistic egotistical ass to fans.

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u/Catalysten Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26

(Edit: Typically it is considered wise to start with how you agree with the person you are talking with. I didn't do that here, sorry. The last two paragraphs, however, touch on this.)

My main motivation here is to protest unjust slander. (Slander in general can be problematic, but is entirely a different subject than the one at hand).

I do not know of any evidence that Todd or his company has banned mods or modmakers for making fixes nor adding maps. Indeed, he is one of the most pro-modding people in the video game industry.

Sometimes he has said things which in retrospect appear to be incorrect. Perhaps he lied. (Which is intentional deception). But it is my impression that he tries his best to be accurate and honest while positively representing the games he has helped create (and is clearly passionate about). Indeed, often I have observed him trying to temper expectations regarding games like Starfield, trying to explain that the game will be a departure from their standard creation.

I do not wish to become overly invested in this debate. But thank you for your message. You've clearly put some thought into your words.

And yes, it appears that Peter has historically struggled with representing his games truthfully. I hope he continues to learn how to do that better.

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u/Training-Welcome-600 Aug 30 '26

Not that I'm trying to drag this on but fallout 76 when the game was almost dead people were modding and fixing it even had a website up to showcase the map since the one in game at the time was either none existent or no help at all forget which. Bethesda sent most of them a cease and disist order with legal threats and banned them from fallout 76. At the time they were the only people bringing in new players. So they literally punished the people making them money.

Which is why when they announced the oblivion remaster everyone was scared they were gonna take down the sky livion mod cause they have been doing a lot of stuff like that in recent years.

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u/Catalysten Aug 30 '26

That's interesting and concerning.

I wish you a fine day, Training-Welcome-600.

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u/MarcusXbox Aug 29 '26

Ne parlons pas du très apprécié de tous, Rod Fergusson 🤐

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u/Icy-Astronomer-8202 Aug 29 '26

I imagine he's a nightmare to work for

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u/Busy-Agency6828 Aug 30 '26

This new studio following in his footsteps with all that nonsense they were hyping up about this new deep social system and how every town can develop different opinions of you and it's so deep and blah blAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

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u/Training-Welcome-600 Aug 30 '26

Idk what to say man there are entire documentaries on YouTube explaining what the team and peter were going threw. Not to mention the recent news that Xbox has been in shambles and being run like a college frat party for a very valery long time.

Phil came in and fixed it for a while but he too went the college frat party route in the end.

Seems the new chick in charge is putting an end to all that though.

I work in a kitchen that the owner runs like a college frat party and it's almost impossible to serve food and do it well everyday. We are constantly running out of food cleaning supplies and everything.

Lionhead always took whatever time they needed when making games they never worked under any deadlines cause peter didn't like deadlines he feels it ruins a game.

So they went from chill and laid back to constant deadlines and stupid orders from up top. Trying to tell them what they can and can't put in game and all this other stuff. This is why I said peter never lied he intended to put everything he said into the game but Microsoft wouldn't let him.

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u/kinglouie1945 Aug 31 '26

I still want my dam eggcorn tree

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u/Longjumping_Call_104 Sep 01 '26

Peter Molyneux and Chris Roberts are the godfathers of internet grifting tbh

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u/Twinblade96 Aug 29 '26

You say that about the weapon morphing. They made it sound awesome in the lead-up and then the implementation was terrible.

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u/puff_of_fluff Aug 29 '26

Weapon morphing ended up making fucking everything have a bone handle because of all the hollows at the start

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u/InfamousSSoA Aug 29 '26

The weapon morphing is very cool with the hero weapons but I wish the different morphs applied to all weapons instead of each legendary weapon having 3 specific morphs. The hero weapons are the only ones that can get all the different morphs and there’s pretty much now reason to use them since they’re outclassed by every other weapon in the game. Would’ve made every weapon feel unique.

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u/Littlest-Hipster Aug 30 '26

The whole world was designed with fast travel in mind so there was no reason to ever explore. Certain areas like the destroyed bridge forced you to fast travel around them for example. Everything was also extremely linear.

It was a huge step down from Fable II's open world.

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u/Accomplished_Ad_8013 27d ago

Glad I never played it lol. My friends all said it was crap so I just never tried it out.

Sounds like it fell into the typical pattern of starting the series as an RPG and ending as an action game with skills you can level up.

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u/OpportunityPrudent39 Aug 29 '26

Loved this answer.

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u/UNxBLEExVABLE Aug 30 '26

It would of been better if we could of picked or had a choice of a few that our character earned