Araan rides again.
What could make me revisit an established score? How about a show stopping bug and a horrible gay stereotype? Oh yes.
One of the good things about Fable II is the sheer amount of variety and content. If I had waited to review the game until I had met every single person and played through every single scenario, you’d be looking at Fable III before getting my score. In the last few days I’ve explored the more “adult” side of the game, and I’ve found two serious issues.
First, I’ve discovered that if you save & quit in the presence of your adoring wife, once you log back in she will immediately divorce you. That’s happened to me twice. Not acceptable, since saving and quitting from your safe home is a logical and common occurrence.
Second, the game features a horrible gay stereotype. All of the male prostitutes are overweight, bearded, and wear leather harnesses and chaps. I wouldn’t complain if there were more than one variety, but with the single model it’s just a great big ugly S&M show. What happened to the other models that were in the concept art shown at the Game Developer’s Conference? The fact that art like that at the right existed tells me that Lionhead made a conscious choice to belittle and mock gays.
These two things are indicative of serious issues in the deep game, and both of them disgust me in different ways. As such, I am revising my score to give Fable II Three Weiners out of Five.
Playing With My Weiner 