[Sir Theobold the Lame]

I just finished Fable on PC (far too short) and was wondering what the esteemed gamers of LO thought about these two titles- what are peoples favourite and why?
Personally i love the humour in Fable, and you also feel more connected with the storyline (IMO) i like the intuitive controls, and the graphics are nice, i like the missions too, varied and interesting and jack of Blades is a good baddie.
I love the epic scale of morrowind, but never really felt connected with the landscape or the story. I thought the landscapes were stunning though, sometimes id just look at the night sky in awe.
I thought Fable was too easy and too short, while morrowind was far too longwinded, also the fact you walked really slowly until your character was a sufficiently high level was annoying. The combat and spell system of Fable was much easier to use.
All in All Fable really struck a chord with me, i think its a great game, albeit about half the size i would have liked and i really hope they make another one.

 

[The_Giant_Mantis]

It's a close one..

I'm going to say fable, because at least it wasn't breakable to the point of madness.. That, and playing a mage type character wasn't mandatory.

As you said, the storyline was also better. They were both slightly shallow in their story and feature implimentation, it's true, but Fable did come out better. I did get immersed in Fable in a way I couldn't with Morrowind. Even the occasional bit of bad voice acting in Fable is obscured by Morrowind's stupid and unimaginative dialogue system. Heck, at least someone bothered to record the voices in Fable..

 

[Kahoolin]

Fable definitley. I have a short attention span with videogames, and Morrowind just didn't hold my attention. It's so open-ended it feels like it doesn't have a point, which made me quickly lose interest. Also I didn't like the look of the various races, they were all a bunch of freaks and I don't think any of them really looked "cool." But that's just me.

The one big gripe I had with Fable is the dark hair/light hair thing corresponding to your alignment. I like full customization with my appearance, and I just wanted a dark haired good character but no! Racists.

Still that's just me. I love creating characters but I start to lose interest once they get too powerful and epic. Same thing happens to me in real life D&D. Never get past level 7.

 

[Agate]

My vote goes morrowind.

Fable was really fun, with a new spin on the whole rpg deal, but that only lasted about twenty minutes, which is how long it took me to ocmplete it. Also The whole advertising scheme was "Fable every choice has a concquence" This was bull, you can kill entire towns and be wnated to the limit, but you walk away and come back later and no one cares. The only choice that really mattered was the last one, and it was stupid.

Morrowind i agree is a little vague in it's gameplay which although annoying slightly allows for huge replay value. I like how everything is big and i can go so many places adn always find something new.

As for the mandatory mage character in morrowind, I don't understand what you mean, Mages IMO were the hardest characters to use because of the mana limit, if you are having difficulties with fighters try making a heavy armor acrobatics spear character, jump on high rocks and stab with spear from out of range, you will win teh game in no time.

Agate

 

[mpdscott]

I really enjoyed playing Fable, even though it is pretty much a linear game, the biggest decision you have to make is whether or not you'll be be good guy or a bad guy, and even then, it doesn't really affect the game much. It was a fairly quick game, but had little in the way of continuability, or replayability.
Morrowind on the other hand was long, way too immense, and slow, but was so non-linear that you could forget what you were supposed to be doing.
Personally I'd love it if Fable 2 (if there's going to be one) would add in a random mission generator, so that after you finish the game (or during if you really want), you can keep playing and achieving. Weird idea I know

 

[pinchy]

While both games are fun, they are definitely flawed.

Fable suffers from being both incredibly short and incredibly easy. It also seemed to be lacking any real depth, things always felt forced to me, there was only one linear place to go. I also didn't think that there were that many equipment options to choose from, nor any upgrades of any real significance on the equipment. I also personally dislike how your appearance affected your alignment, why can't I choose to have a ceretain tattoo or a certain haircut without becoming evil (being scary I can live with). Apart from this the graphics were superb and I was a real fan of allowing people to multi-class without any real penalties from doing so (in fact it was quite beneficial to do so to an extent).

Morrowind is almost the opposite to Fable in terms of things to do, it can be incredibly long, which I really enjoyed, though it is very easy to get lost and confused at times. My main criticism has to be the interface, especially buying and selling at merchants. Why would they make items of high value (over 100,000 gold) when no merchant has more than about 5,000 gold (if they have that), it would also be much easier if you could type in a value instead of buttons that increase or decrease the value by one, this started to drive me nuts very quickly. The character system was also very easy to either exploit or to mess up, meaning you could very easily gimp yourself or make yourself so powerful that the game lost its challenge. I also must say that I found the main campaign very hard to get into, it was the usual cliched nobody who really is someone powerful but didn't know it plot that seems to be the safety net for any second rate fantasy story. I agree wholeheartedly with the earlier comment about movement being incredibly slow until you get some constant effect restore fatigue gear later in the game) This is not to say I didn't enjoy the game, I really did, but it could have been so much better (hopefully thay will fix some of these complaints when they release Oblivion). The only other thing is that I used to have mysterious crashes with Morrowind from time to time, though this was on a different computer to the one I played Fable on so take this with a grain of salt.

Overall I'd probably go with Fable, though both games were good, they didn't quite make it to being a great game.

 

[LordXander]

Shouldn't you be comparing with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion instead?
Anyway Morrowind wins hands down, why? one word "Mods"

 

[Dranthar]

To be honest, I've never actually played Fable but from what I've heard, it sounds far too short and simple for my liking.

Morrowind is definitely one of my favorite RPGs (right with Baldurs Gate 2). The game is massive, with hundreds of quests and a huge map to explore. The slow walking speed can get infuriating, until you figure out how to get the boots of blinding speed (not hard)and a way to negate the 100% blind (ie. get some half-decent magic resistance). The various boats, teleporters and silt striders also help quite alot when you get the hang of where they are and go.
Selling items is also a pain, but that's what mods are for - a single merchant with a stupid amount of regenerating gold (ie. 1,000,000+) can really speed things up, especially if you don't want to use the creeper trick.

The game can be broken (like training with stupid amounts of money, and the uber-ness of the thief skills combined with the amulet of shadows), but I don't mind. Levelling up quickly through training enhances the game for me (cuts down the grinding time considerably), and if I want a challenge, I could always just leave those thief skills alone.

 

[The_Giant_Mantis]

As for the mandatory mage character in morrowind, I don't understand what you mean, Mages IMO were the hardest characters to use because of the mana limit, if you are having difficulties with fighters try making a heavy armor acrobatics spear character, jump on high rocks and stab with spear from out of range, you will win teh game in no time.

1. Did you try walking everywhere without magic?

Boy you must have had a lot of time on your hands..

2. Did you observe the goodness of magic items? They were so broken you didn't need to cast spells any more.

Right.. now, let's just say I went and killed a golden saint (it was pretty easy once you knew how) made a hundred intelligence potions using my alchemy skill, drunk them all to get a ridiculous intelligence score, then just bound the fattest damage dealing enchantment possible onto a good item..

You know what happens to that stabbing fighter now.. He's a smoking pair of boots!

3. The infinate money combo depended on mysticism.

4. Mages could do anything.. I'm serious, anything. You want to stab things? Make an enchantment or potion to raise your combat stats.. you want to sneak and rogue it up, you can with alteration and illusion.

Frankly, mages were silly.. Breton mages were the worst, but I played high elves because it was fun being taller than anyone else. You know what else sucked though.. As a high elf, you get to have uber disease resistance! Yaaay! Until you realise that everyone gets 100% disease resistance as part of the damn plotline. Boo! What's special about those Altmer now, except the stupidly high mana and the tendancy to die whenever a magic spark hit them in the face.

The mana limit could be overcome with a correct combination of racial and star sign traits.. besides, by the end game, mages would barely use their mana, it was mostly magic items.

 

[pinchy]

Shouldn't you be comparing with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion instead?

Much as I'm looking forward to Oblivion, it's almost impossible to judge a game when it has yet to be released, you need to spend quite some time playing a game before you really know whether it is a great game or not. You can get a general idea of whether a game is good or not in less than an hour, but replayability and long-term enjoyment take time to determine (something that many reviewers seem to forget about).

Also, as to the argument over which class is the best I have to say that it does not matter, you could easily specialise in all three through training. Sure a mage can be a good fighter or thief by using magic, but using that magic on a character who already is an incredibly good fighter is even better. I used to play as a Breton when I made my second character, 100 skill in Long Blade, Light Armour (used glass armour) and most of the magic skills was very easy to come by through training, you just need some gold (*cough* stealing the key to the Redoran treasury as a level one character, not that you will be able to carry half of the loot *cough*). Decent equipment is also quite easy to find without fighting if you know where to look, the magic resistance armour in Tel Fyr, Sword of White Woe in Balmora, the aforementioned treasury in Vivec (speaking of which Vivec himself becomes a joke to kill if you want to skip half the main quest and just take the Wraithguard off his corpse).

 

[Sir Theobold the Lame]

Shouldn't you be comparing with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion instead?
Anyway Morrowind wins hands down, why? one word "Mods"

im sure Oblivion is going to be great, but as it isnt out i cant really comment- i will probably check it out when it is released...

and you can keep your mods, i have two words for you: Darkwood Bordello ha ha

 

[Evan8433]

My vote is for morrowind for sole reason of open endedness. That's what keeps me comin back to morrowind, everytime i beat it I can pretty much do it my way. You can even skip most of the main quest by bustin open vivec himself.
However for the fighting system fable beats morrowind, come to think of it it beats morrowind in more or less everything except size. Everytime i play fable my character is unstopable in no time, EVERY boss is a joke, complete joke, next time i play fable i'm gunna try and beat it without leveling, then when i get sick of dieing put stuff up a little bit. Anyway if the fable battleing engine and graphics were used in morrowind it probably would have been my favorite game ever hands down(doesn't matter which system for vlass/leveling i love them both).

About a mage being necessary in morrowind this is not true at all, sure life's easier as a mage(mark/recall) but almost all my characters in morrowind have mystism for just this use. In fable I find the archer is best, i can make it trhough almost the entire game remembering every time i got hit(shoot/roll while charging next shot/repeat) makes the game horribly easy, jack of blades is an even bigger joke as an archer(skorm bow multi shot any1? takes like 4 bursts to kill him when he's flying)

 

[Tyrael-RM]

heh you guys see the specs recommended for oblvion?

3 ghz
1 gb ram
Geforce 6800 and up