9. Fable III
Peter Molyneux really did go down after the first Fable game. The customization and variety which was present in the original Fable was slightly downgraded in Fable II but still present. Then Fable III just said "Away with customization" and now you're limited to the bare basics. OK so what did we get? Well for all the big name voice actors, Zoe Wanamaker, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg etc., we got pretty much nothing. A few quirky one liners didn't help to save the ship from sinking under the weight of the most linear Fable game in the series, a plot which you just prayed would be over in the next town, a main character who sounded like he took acting classes from the school of generic voices and just the game itself. Hyped up as the biggest and best installment of the Fable series it just felt so uninteresting. It felt like going to a shopping centre and all the nice bits that you remember seeing on your last visit were closed and you're now left with maybe one pretty shop and the rest is just the ones you never liked, like the Brussel Sprout store or the shoe lace dispensary. I suppose what really stuck out though was the evolving weapons. When they announced that the weapons would evolve based on how you played I though "great, this is gonna be epic. My sword will have the regal nature of a natural leader and will glisten with the light of a thousand...why did it turn green?" Yeah the evolution wasn't as stunning as I thought. Apparently, too, the protagonist had a growing fear of weapons which hadn't been in the hands of either a serial killer or Jesus himself as you can only use your fathers 'Hero' weapons or weapons which have unique properties about them. For what it was hyped up to be, Fable III certainly failed at being the diamond in the crown it promised to be. More like a thorny crown which bores you with generic dialogue but maybe makes you chuckle as Stephen Fry acts camp through Reaver.