Consolation Prize

Yesterday started out as a good day. I’d finally got my hands on Fable II, and with a little bit of trepidation was anticipating dedicating most of the day to exploring the land of Albion. I was ready to fully engross myself in the rich tapestry this fairytale action RPG purportedly offered, and wondered if Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios could actually deliver all that was promised.

The surround system hummed into action; the disc in the 360 span with a cacophony and the fairytale began with a glorious intro with enchanting music, setting the scene as a young boy takes his first tentative steps towards greatness.

So far so good - the game was delivering. The camera which focuses and zooms in on the action or significant events is a great touch, the “old” London English accents were corny but made me smirk, the townsfolk had character, and Bowerstone, of what little I saw, looked amazing.

Unfortunately it all came to a crashing end (literally) as soon as the tutorial missions were completed after about 30 minutes. In horror I realised what was about to happen as the spinning disc slowly came to a standstill and the game froze solid. I’ve now tried it on a couple more occasions and the freezing occurs more or less around the same spot, just after activating the magical music box. Digging around the Net it appears that I’m not alone and the forums are alive with posts that relate to “freezing”. Even if there isn’t a definitive pattern as to the “why and when” the freezing occurs, it still appears that I’m certainly one of the unlucky ones.

There are a few “so called” fixes I’ve read about. I could try clearing the cache which will remove the game updates and ensure that they’re not re-applied, or I could turn off the multi-player orbs option. However, I’m inclined just to sit it out and wait until any problems have been ironed out and then I’ll know for sure if it’s a software fault, or a problem with the disc. I do know that if I encounter any more problems the experience will have been ruined forever, and Fable II will just sit on the shelf unloved and never played gathering dust.

I certainly appreciate that it’s virtually impossible to deliver software without one or two little bugs creeping in, but there seems to be far more than is normal circulating around Fable II. I just feel sorry for those that have succumbed to the dreaded
Abbot Glitch. For the record the Xbox 360 works fine, the disc isn’t scratched or damaged, and I wasn’t kicking the console while the disc was spinning (although I was tempted by that notion afterwards).

I await the next patch with even more trepidation, but in the meantime Dead Space and Fallout 3 should be more than capable of filling the void.

That really sucks. Hope they get it fixed for you pretty quickly.

Cheers Jigsaw. I’ve decided to send the game back for a refund, just in case it’s a faulty disc. No doubt I’ll play it sometime in the next few weeks (months).. After finishing Fallout, Dead Space, Gears 2 etc..