Fable 4 Officially Announced: 10 Things To Return The Series To Greatness

Fun fact: In Fable 2 and 3, you can open up a menu that shows you your relationship with any ambient NPC in the game and change their name. Literally call them whatever you want. That’s how little NPCs matter in these games.

While you can romance and marry any of these stock NPCs, there’s little-to-no engagement with them whatsoever. Only Fable 3 gives you a romance you actually care about in your childhood sweetheart that you can choose to marry later in the game, but after their key side quest even they become an empty shell of a character that you could randomly choose to shoot in the head if you wanted to.

Even NPCs involved in the main questline are reduced to: your dog, your tutorial character that speaks to you in annoying voiceover, a villain, and pretty basic "companions". No side quest NPCs are important or memorable, and your main questline companions get very little development or time dedicated to them.

The NPCs that give you quests are all essentially stock characters. There’s no emotional investment in any of them as people. Even the more interesting characters, like Maze or Walter, appear intermittently and with short, scripted interactions only. Changes to the choice system could easily make them more engaging.