Fable III

The player controls the Royal Hero on their adventure to usurp the current monarch and to then manage the kingdom. While progressing along the main story, the player will have to make impactful decisions that will reflect their standing among their subjects, and which will also have consequences in the future that the player must address. A morality system divides most actions as either "good" or "evil", with good-aligned actions generally expressing generosity, kindness, and forgiveness, whereas evil-aligned actions represent selfishness, greed, and cruelty. Most moral decisions are prompted by dialogue branches, but the player's standing will also be influenced by side quests and how frequently they commit crimes, such as robbery or murder. Rewards, in the form of guild seals and gifts, can be earned through how they are viewed by the populace.

Combat encounters are frequent. The Royal Hero has three main methods of attack: a melee attack, a ranged attack, and magic. The player can customize each of these attacks with different weapons, such as choosing between a sword or hammer as a melee weapon, or the capability of combining two types of spells. Attacks can be held and charged in order to unleash powerful flourishes, at the cost of making the player stationary.

Fable III takes place on the fictional continent of Albion, 50 years after the events of Fable II. The player character of the previous game, the "Hero of Bowerstone", became ruler of Albion and forged a new kingdom with Bowerstone as its capital. As a result, the kingdom has begun entering an industrial age, where large-scale resource gathering and factories have become commonplace. Alongside Albion, the game also includes the foreign land of Aurora, a desert region that is struggling to rebuild after a devastating event.

Following the death of their parent, the youngest child of the Hero of Bowerstone (the Royal Hero) lives within the capital's palace alongside their older brother Logan, the new king of Albion. While attending to chores, the young sibling overhears rumours that Logan has changed over the last four years of his rule, becoming excessively tyrannical, to the point that they recently executed a citizen of Albion for a minor crime. Upon seeing their love interest trying to prevent Logan killing a group of citizens that had come to protest his rule, the Royal Hero is left with the choice of sacrificing either the group or their love interest against their will. That night, after their decision, the Royal Hero is advised by their mentor, Sir Walter Beck, to escape with him and plot the downfall of Logan due to his actions. Joined by their butler Jasper, the Royal Hero flees from the castle.

At the beginning of the Gamescon announcement of Fable III, Molyneux stated that the game was taking a different theme compared to the others as he believes the third game in a series to be hard to do correctly: "If all the rules have been established and all you offer is a new story and a handful of locations, people will start to lose interest".

In an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, Molyneux spoke about how Fable was at risk of becoming a generic game where the player started off underpowered and weak but slowly got more powerful after they met the bad guy. After the player killed the bad guy, the credits would roll. Believing that is the formula that applies to many games, he asked why games "end at potentially the most exciting bit?" It was this that formed the basis of Fable III, where the player can overthrow the tyrant before becoming ruler themselves. He stated that it was when the player was ruler that the consequences of "who you are going to be, are you going to be good or evil, cruel or kind" stopped applying only to the player, but affected the entire country.

Fable III received a generally positive critical reception. 5/10, praising the final segment of the game involving the player's role as a monarch, the combat system, and the world-building, but criticising its slow beginning and some technical bugs. 5/10, saying: "This gorgeous world is brimming with humor and personality" but felt "a bevy of technical problems and oversimplified gameplay distract from the fun". Official Xbox Magazine said: "Fable III is most memorable not because it makes you laugh, but because it also makes you care.

If a spouse gets carved up in your absence, you'll feel pangs of guilt. When your dog saves your bacon during a fight, you'll feel pride".