

Besides, that binary morality makes it much easier to play through Fable Anniversary again and have an entirely different experience than it is with a game like The Walking Dead. Its polarity - protect the farm or attack it - might seem farcical, but it's part of that self-referential humour as the Hero grows a halo or horns, and unlocks the ability to do a Disco Dance or a Vulgar Thrust. Many of the side quests are similarly mundane, which is another way games have hardly changed since 2004, but they're most interesting for the part they play in the morality system for which Fable is known. My only real frustration was with the targeting system, though that turned out to be most irritating outside of combat, when I was escorting three merchants through a swamp and had to repeatedly target and command each of them in turn. Boss battles are a typical cycle of avoidance and gradual damage, but games have hardly left that in the past yet either. The combat might feel simple, but the ability to switch between Strength (melee), Skill (ranged), and Will (magic, in a range of unlockable forms) keeps things varied, and a combat multiplier that awards bonus experience and abilities encourages more strategic play. I favoured mouse and keyboard, particularly when using a bow and arrow to pop an enemy's head off, but you can also play with a controller, and this remake even adds a Fable 2/3-inspired control scheme. Aside from a few fiddly menus, however, Fable Anniversary feels natural. enhanced, but it's still incomprehensible to me.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition's UI might be. One advantage of the relative lack of progress in games this past decade is that it didn't take much adaptation to make Fable Anniversary playable in a way that some remakes of classics just aren't. We're still fighting nameless bandits, carrying out fetch quests, and finding treasure hidden in plain sight. I still laughed when I came across my first loot and was told "The people of Albion like nothing more than hiding their treasures inside wooden chests," because games haven't moved on enough in the past decade to make that quip irrelevant. Ten years later, with an HD facelift and the word 'Anniversary' stuck on the end of its name, Fable is still funny.
