Fable 3 wasn’t exactly well received by players and sever critics (us NOT included), and Peter Molyneux, creator of the Fable series, feels the instalment needed more time, and regards it as a personal failure of his.

“I take this as a personal failure,” he told Eurogamer. “And it is a personal failure. Not being persuasive enough that Fable 3 needed more time. That’s purely and utterly my fault. It’s me not being clear enough about it.

“The subject matter of Fable 3 was really good. Becoming a king was a good centre point for a game. It’s a shame we didn’t find more time.”

“As a creative director you always have to be clear about why you need time,” he continued. “Any publisher in my experience over the years, they don’t want to give you more time. Of course they don’t, because it means more money. But they equally don’t want you to make a mistake with the product.

“It’s very difficult for publishers to actually appreciate why more time is needed and what the business case for more time is. That’s the responsibility of the director who’s in charge of that developer. That’s me – to explain that and make that clear.”

He then went on to talk about Fable 2: “I loved the dog in Fable 2. That was a moment where we realised gaming experiences aren’t just about the weapon you’ve got, that you can give something else to players.

It was a great journey to implement that feature. The emotional link people had with their dog – I’ve still got letters from people who said, I love my dog and when it dies these terrible things happen. That’s how you measure success.”

Lionhead Studios have revealed the system requirements for Fable III’s PC version. They are given below.

Minimum requirements:

• Operating System: XP 32 SP3, Vista 32/64 , Win 7 32/64
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 4000+
• Memory: 2GB
• Hard Drive Space: 12 GB of free space
• Graphics Hardware: NVidia 7600GT or ATI HD 2600 Pro
• DirectX: 9.0c onward
• Network: Internet or LAN connection required for multiplayer

Recommended system requirements:

• Operating System: Win 7
• CPU: Intel Pentium 2.9Ghz Core 2 Duo or higher
• Memory: 4GB
• Hard Drive Space: 12 GB of free space
• Graphics Hardware: Nvidia 260GTX 896MB or ATI 5770 1GB or higher
• DirectX: 9.0c onward
• Network: Internet or LAN connection required for multiplayer

The PC version of Fable III will have a brand new control scheme and a first person mode. For the first time in the series’ history, there will also be multiple difficulty settings.

Fable III will be releasing on the PC on May 17th.

[IGN]

The Prison Cell Riot

First off, in order to play the DLC you will have to be playing on a save file on which you have beaten the game as the Traitor’s Keep Events take place only after you have become king (And beaten the game).  Once that is covered you can head to the throne room or simply press start and warp there by pressing ‘Y’ to bring up your quests, then selecting Traitor’s Keep from there.  This will trigger the beginning of the DLC which is what looks to be an assassination attempt  on your life.  However it is not that simple as the attempt on your life being taken might not have been exactly what it seemed to be.  I will try and keep this review spoiler free as the main quests story is what makes the DLC so good.  From that point on you begin an investigation that turns into a journey that you will go on to find out what kind of conspiracy lies behind the original attempt on your life.  There are still morality decisions you will face and even as King you will learn of new things kept secret from you.  During your journey you will come across new enemies and friends.

In addition there are of course side quests, but uncovering this conspiracy is the meat of the DLC as you will find surprises, twists and turns that you will indeed not expect.  These surprises actually took me back and were very clever to add to the content as the main story quest is no more than a couple of hours long while some side quest or Achievements may have you playing Fable 3 for quite some time.  This new content adds new islands and areas for you to explore, with more dig spots and treasure chests to add to the already large world of Fable 3. You will venture into three new areas called Ravenscar Keep, Clockwork Island, and the Godwin Estate during your quests throughout the DLC. Taking part in certain quest as well as venturing out on your own will give you to opportunity to obtain new clothing such as a guard outfit, prostitute outfit, prisoner outfit and the coolest looking one in my opinion, the sand fury outfit. Traitor’s Keep will add 10 for Achievements to the game adding an additional 250 gamerscore and the whole pack will cost you 560 Microsoft Points. A fair price for the content you are getting.

Robo Dog… careful they explode.

Unfortunately there are no new weapons with this DLC which was kind of a disappointment to see unless of course you happen to own a Windows 7 Phone and then you will have to purchase the Fable: Coin Golf game for the Windows 7 Phone to unlock 3 new weapons as long as you have your phone linked to your gamertag. A bit unfair if you ask me as I feel they should have made an alternative way to obtain these new weapons for people that don’t own a Windows 7 phone as it currently only has one service provider if I’m not mistaken.  Although the main quest is fairly short it is worth it in the sense of its unique twisting storyline where you find prisoners may be held even though they might be innocent along with the departure from the normal happily ever after ending your used to as the story will no doubt surprise you.  Apart from that there are the side quests which add length and more to the game but you will just find yourself looking for collectibles in the end, which with out a guide can be a pain in the ass.  But overall, Traitor’s Keep is definitely the best DLC I have seen in a Fable game and worth it for the price.  If you a fan of the franchise, than this is a must have for you.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

This is actually the second DLC pack for Fable 3, the first one was just rather short and did not include much content or any Achievements.  Now the ‘Traitor’s Keep’ DLC for Fable 3 just released today and has a bit more content as well as adding 250 Gamerscore to the game. The DLC with feature three new areas to explore called Ravenscar Keep, Clockwork Island, and the Estate with many new quests as well as crossing paths with “a mysterious prisoner” that will be the main part of the DLC Pack. ‘Traitor’s Keep’ begins with an assassination attempt on your life as King and the DLC is all about finding this assassin as well as his reasoning for him trying to kill you. It will run you 560 Microsoft Points. Fable 3 will be coming to the PC as well on March 17th even adding a ‘hard mode’, but the new Achievements for the ‘Traitor’s Keep’ DLC are listed below:

A Slow Day At The Office – 20G
Survive an assassination attempt.

Science And Industry – 20G
Defeat Professor Faraday.

Unnatural Laws – 20G
Defeat Witchcraft Mary.

Who Are You? – 20G
Defeat General Turner.

Keeping It Real – 20G
Decide the future of the Keep.

I, Robot. You, Idiot – 20G
Help Huxley end his Loneliness Mode.

Diary Of A Sad Man – 30G
Find all of Professor Faraday’s diaries.

Lab Notes – 30G
Find all of Witchcraft Mary’s diaries.

A Revolutionary Idea – 30G
Find all of General Turner’s diaries.

Set Them Free! – 40G
Open all Demon Doors.

Microsoft and developers Lionhead Studios have announced that there will be Fable 3 DLC entitled ‘Traitor’s Keep’ that will be available for download on March 1st on the Xbox 360. The DLC with feature three new levels called Ravenscar Keep, Clockwork Island, and the Godwin Estate with many new quests as well as encountering a mysterious prisoner as a main part of the DLC Pack. ‘Traitor’s Keep’ will add more achievements to Fable 3 as well bringing you a total 250 more gamerscore you can get. The PC version of Fable 3 has also been announced to be released on May 17th.

On the Windows Phone 7 phone, there’s a new mini-game coming out called Fable Coin Golf. Playing this game will add gold to your Fable 3 game, very similar to Fable 2 Pub Games for Fable 2 only the game is on a phone and not an arcade title.

Here are the Achievements the ‘Traitor’s Keep’ DLC will add for the Xbox 360:

A Slow Day At The Office – 20G
Survive an assassination attempt.

Science And Industry – 20G
Defeat Professor Faraday.

Unnatural Laws – 20G
Defeat Witchcraft Mary.

Who Are You? – 20G
Defeat General Turner.

Keeping It Real – 20G
Decide the future of the Keep.

I, Robot. You, Idiot – 20G
Help Huxley end his Loneliness Mode.

Diary Of A Sad Man – 30G
Find all of Professor Faraday’s diaries.

Lab Notes – 30G
Find all of Witchcraft Mary’s diaries.

A Revolutionary Idea – 30G
Find all of General Turner’s diaries.

Set Them Free! – 40G
Open all Demon Doors.

I say most rather reservedly. Expansions themselves seem to be getting confused for full games now, with entries like Halo 3: ODST and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood blurring the lines – at least, cost-wise – between full-length game and expansion.

It was largely the advent and popularity of digital distribution services that led to this change. Why spend resources on making a worthwhile expansion when a developer could make an extremely cheap (that is not to say lacking in quality) short tag-on adventure and price it in such a way that they reap more money than a big, unwieldy, time-and-cost consuming expansion? Not even that is something to worry about, since most developers are canny enough to make the expansions worth the four or five dollars they charge for them.

But there are some of them – even released by otherwise quality developers – that are aggravatingly indicative of how stupid developers seem to think gamers are. Most aggravating of all is the release-day DLC.

Take Fable III, a critical and popular success that also happened to be fun as hell. On release day, the game released with a fairly large collection of stuff, but available through the store were a few other bits and bobs. Some content was given away for free, some of it was available only at cost. Like black dye. Nobody has yet been able to convince me that programming black – or pink – dye into a game that is so jam-packed with relatively unnecessary content necessitates charging players for it. They charged us for it entirely because they knew that players would pay for it, even in a state of moral outrage.

Factor in the cost of the black dye, the pink dye, the Industrial Knight outfit, and a few weapons packs it adds up to about 10 dollars or so. So a $60 game, not a collector’s edition or anything like that, ends up costing around $70. Then, when the additional quest content is released, it’s another single payment of $5-10. Which brings the cost up to $80. This is without regard for any meaningful lore-changing or story-affecting content, and without the cost of pre-order. Eighty bucks. For a single game.

It’s subtle nickel-and-dime stuff that I find questionable. It’s not the quality of the content that bothers me, it’s how piecemeal it comes in release. Was forcing players to pay for the dye pack, of all things, necessary? It can’t cost any more to produce, and the instant download meant that the entire thing was already coded into the game, and buying the dye just unlocked it within the game. The same was unfortunately true of the first expansion DLC release: the quest under Bowerstone. It, too, was an instant download, which again meant that it was already included in the game, so the content didn’t need an extra two weeks of tweaking or coding to get it released, it was just waiting for gamers to play the game long enough to forget that they had paid $60, and were willing to shell out another few bucks.

When Dragon Age: Origins released, if you paid an extra $15, you could purchase the Collector’s Edition, which on top of having a few physical treats (a very pretty map of Ferelden as one of them), or the Digital Deluxe Edition, which didn’t come with the map but came, instead, a short quest, called “Warden’s Keep.”  The quest was something totally superfluous but (I’m told), fun. Fine, I don’t mind missing out on a two or three hour quest in a game that generally clocks in at around 40 or so hours to begin with. But the biggest annoyance was that the quest is constantly shoved in your face. A waving merchant stalked you in your camp every night, and I imagine the warden, as well as the rest of the party, was kept up at night by the guy’s gigantic glowing exclamation point that never went away. MISSING CONTENT HERE. BUY IT FOR FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

It begs the question as to what we are entitled to when we spend $60 dollars. Are games to be strictly delineated by genre? Will a first-person shooter longer than 9 hours list those hours as additional content? Should games release single-player and multi-player portions separately? How about an RPG just gives the player a basic set of armor and weapons and forces them to pay a dollar here, a dollar there, to unlock even the option of using the rest?

That is not to say that any of the above games are bad (quite the contrary), and it might all sound ridiculous or look like absurdist bitching, but these are legitimate concerns. The more comfortable gamers get at buying things that by all rights should be covered with the original purchase cost, the more developers are going to exploit it. The more shit is going to be held back from us with our games, the more we’ll have to pay for separately, as we inch toward games that only release half their content at a time.

I don’t want to wait five years and find out we’ve all been sucker punched.

Still waiting for the PC version of Fable III to release? This might “hopefully” cheer you up.

Lionhead has assured fans that the PC version of the game is still in development and news regarding the title will “hopefully” be on the way “soon”.

“It’s painful to admit we can’t yet answer any questions on the PC version of Fable III,” the British developer tweeted today.

“Hopefully soon we can spill the beans!”

Lionhead dropped plans of releasing the version along with its 360 counterpart last year but confirmed that the game was still in development.

However, it’s been quiet a while since we got to hear anything about it and this might atleast ignite some “hope” in people’s hearts.

Fable III released in October, 2010 for Xbox 360 and has sold north of 2 million copies already. We liked it pretty much, and gave it two reviews, praising it in both of them.

Understone

Whether you have beaten the game or not you can do the quest ‘The Wheel of Misfortune’ becomes available and is the same as the arena based mission you do in Reaver’s Mansion in Millfields, during the main story of the game. Now you can play it over again while given the opportunity to obtain the Dirty Harriet revolver and Dead Ned’s Revolver. Speaking of weapons right as you download, actual unlock would be a better word after purchasing this quest pack, you are gifted the ‘Marksman 500’ rifle and ‘The Full Monty’ pistol which are nothing too special.

Shooting Range

The last quest that you unlock is the Shooting Range quest in the Mercenary Camp. This quest allows you to compete in a shooting range challenge with headshots netting you more points and chicken shots getting you the most. You will be shooting cardboard cutouts out Logan, while scoring enough points can net you ‘Money Shot’ rifle and ‘Black Dragon’ pistol. The rifle is most efficient for acquiring money once upgraded and the pistol is extremely powerful once fully upgraded making them a couple of the best weapons in the game.

Industrial Armor (Extra 160 MSP)

This ‘Understone Quest Pack’ should have been unlockable from the start being that it was on the disc but it does prolong the game and is worth getting if you need more from Fable 3. You might say you are getting ripped off, but it might not be such a bad thing with it being the only way to unlock the content which is 400 Microsoft Points ($5). If anything I would say the DLC is worth it just for the weapons alone but the quests to add more to the game.  Overall it is not a bad deal but as far as content goes it is not a lot.  Your choice.. cheap but not much too it.  There is also added small DLC packs such as ‘Industrial Armor’, Dye Pack, Hair Pack among others and the armor is pretty damn cool looking for 160 MSP.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

We have the first screenshots from the recently announced Fable III DLC pack, Understone Quest Pack.

View them in our gallery.

The Understone Quest pack will be releasing on Nov 23 and will cost you 400 MSP.

Fable III released exclusively for Xbox 360 last month and have done moderate business so far.

View all the screens below-

Click to ZOOM IN

These are all extremely valid points. Chances are, taking an average gamer’s last ten game purchases, at least nine if not all ten of them have been, in some way, related to a franchise. And if not, chances are the game purchased will be part of a franchise. Anything that rises even tremulously above mediocrity is likely to get a franchise treatment in some respect.

The legacy, impact, and overall importance of franchises thus far is unimpeachable. They have ensured the steady growth of the industry, simultaneously attracting new generations of gamers while keeping those of us who grew up alongside it happy.

But there’s rot at the heart of the empire. The problem is stagnation, and stagnation comes from a variety of different places.

For one thing, popularity is not a gauge for quality. Popularity does lead to income. Income leads to the ability to make better games in the future. For a franchise to remain popular, it has to strike a balance between its nebulously defined “core elements” and the demand for something newer, shinier and more exciting. Mess up one game, and it could kill the franchise.

It’s a tricky catch 22, that the power gained by a franchise is illusory because the franchise has its hands tied down by its own popularity. The longer a franchise maintains itself on its original ideas, the harder it will be to change them. It’s a system that allows perpetually repetitive franchises to flourish, while simultaneously allowing any newer, less polished games that have no franchise association to wither on the vine, despite (or because of) the new ideas it brings to the fold.

As good as some indy games are, they can’t compete with any of the big hitters. Despite having some of the most insanely fun and addictive elements, they are seldom recognized as anything other than games to occupy our time with while we wait for the next Mass Effect to come out. Because of their limited appeal (and even more limited budget), it falls on the shoulders of competitive franchises to attempt to do new things. For example, it takes a game with the pedigree of the Battlefield franchise at its back to challenge Call of Duty on the modern warfare FPS front, something that an indy developer wouldn’t have a hope of attempting.

It is unfortunate, because of some of the most fun and interesting games are ones that remain under the radar to the average gamer. Mount and Blade took an old and familiar formula – fantasy role-playing – and used a unique and clever combat system to make it rise above its competitors. One of the main reasons few gamers are familiar with it is simply because the game looks hokey. Characters are blocky and the graphics look like they were straight out of the turn of the century. The stand-alone expansion, Mount and Blade: Warband added new factions, new weapons, and new multi-player modes and while it’s not perfect, the game is, for my money, more fun and replayable than either Dragon Age or Fable. It’s ambitious, clever, and fun… but it’s not a recognized franchise, and so nobody plays it.

That is perhaps the worst part of the franchise-dominated industry. While it’s not protocol for a publisher who owns a particular franchise to discourage indy games, the effect is the same as if they did. The fact that only franchises have the marketing power to put their name out there practically ensures that all but a few annoyed gamers will tend to stick with what we know, and what we see. Indy developers can’t compete, because we as gamers laud so highly the well-known names and faces of franchises, we tend to prioritize our purchases accordingly. Why spend twenty dollars on an indy game that might be crappy when we could save it to buy Black Ops?

It all adds up. The marketing power, the popularity, the investment of the time and money it takes to make a quality game all rest with the franchises. They dominate the industry so thoroughly that we, the gamers, are more than willing to spend $60 a pop for a game that carries the title of a franchise we enjoy. But imagine what the price for Fable III would be if they didn’t pay for a commercial to air every thirty seconds. How much money did Activision pay Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel to appear in their latest (admittedly very cool) commercial for Black Ops? Maybe the price of those games might drop five or ten dollars.

What needs to happen – and this is something that we, as the perpetuators of the industry, have the power to change – is the dethroning of the franchise state of mind. We need to make it clear to distributors that, while we’re willing and able to pay inflated prices for games that, let’s face it, we’ve already played, we’re much more interested in what games could be, instead of what they are. Let’s try to get distributors to throw a little extra money at side projects in between their big releases. Instead of getting a new Call of Duty every year, let’s wait two years, with a short, inexpensive experimental shooter in between. Activision can certainly afford it. How awesome would it be for the script quality of any Bioware epic to be put behind a game based on the clever mechanics of something like Mount and Blade?

Short, experimental games made by companies that have the power to distribute could find a willing market for them. They could even be included, through Xbox Live marketplace downloads or some other such distribution vehicle, in that publisher’s next big game; first-edition games could come with a download code for a one to three hour investigation into the potential fun of a shooter set in World War I. If it proves popular, a full game might be made, and a new franchise born. If it doesn’t, then that company has saved themselves the time and money of attempting a full-length game that might prove to be a doomed concept.

With the power and the influence that franchise publishers have, there’s really no excuse for this not to be happening already.

Let’s make it happen.