Was Fable II as good as I remember? - An imperfect clone of its predecessor 

When I was a kid, my Mum used to watch me play Zelda. She took it up and she'd wake me up in the middle of the night on weekends to ask me to help her figure out where to go. After a few years she found out about Fable. She demolished Fable. 😂 All three games, was awesome at them. Made a fortune in each one, got different endings, etc. I'd come home from school and I'd hear the familiar sounds coming from my room, the heater on and I'd have to encourage her to get off so I could play my own games. 😂 I don't like Fable too much, but it gave me a lot of time with my mum just chilling out and playing games. It means a lot to me for that.

My fondest memory of this game was cheesing the renting system by skipping the console's time forward 100 years with maxed out rent, accumulating millions of gold and max negative karma, then going back and making all my properties free before skipping another 100 years and gaining back max positive karma. This game was great.

Hearing Kreia say “you are now famous enough to use the “kiss my ass” expression” was hilarious

As a child, my family was really big into Oblivion on the 360 My mom, while shopping for Christmas present, saw Fable 2, made the fantasy correlation between them, and got it for us A few months later, I got to Bloodstone, and my mom heard a bunch of shouting at the TV for someone to leave me alone She came in and asked who was bothering me And out of the mouth of her, at the time, 8 year old child came the words "Cindy the Whore"

I replayed fable 2 recently and one of the things that struck me the most was how long you we're in the spire. I remembered it as 4 years, when i got back and Theresa said "10 years" my jaw dropped and i was like "thats way too absurd"

Honestly this was my favourite Fable for the reason of the monotonous jobs and buying and renting becoming a corrupt landlord lol. I dunno things were different in 2008 so that was groundbreaking, like a 3rd person sims game.

Stephen Fry as Reaver had me absolutely DYING! "My lover, Penelope, set my house on fire while I was sleeping...with Andrew, as I recall. A delightful young man, Andrew. Though such a heavy sleeper." Reaver was just such an unapologetic douchebag (with a seriously dark backstory) and Fry pulled him off flawlessly.

"This game needs two antagonists that shift from being good or evil" Amazingly he is describing the plot of Fable 3

From what I remember, the exp lost in The Spire comes back when you kill the overseer so it's more a flavor thing.

One thing I remember loving about Fable II was how Old town Bowerstone, and Oakfield, changed depending on your choices. It felt like they tried to follow through on their promises from the first game, of an "evolving world", but it still felt a little flat.

This was the first game I played that made me realise what kind of games I like. I have played both fable 2 and 3 at least 25 times each. I will always love these games. I replayed both of them recently and now that I've been gaming for 10 years I see that they're a bit lacking but I still love them

I like how the old part of Bowerstone can be rich or decrepit depending on your deeds as a child, whether you supported the evil characters or the lawful ones.

I'm thinking that since you're this far and the fact that the series is being rebooted, might as well finish it out. Plus, gives us more content from you, and that's never a bad thing

I love this game. I know it's janky, buggy, and can at times feel like it's insulting your intelligence, but it is just such a comfy experience from start to finish. And sometimes just turning my brain off and laughing at kicking chickens can be just what I need. Next up "Was Fable 3 as bad as I remember?" (yes)

Ya know the one gaming question I've never googled is "are Theresa and Kreia voiced by the same person?" and of course it's a Salt video that answers it.

I liked Fable 2. It was very shallow, but it was carried by it's charm. And the combat was fun and satisfying, in part 3 they took everything that was fun feeling out of the combat. Also really liked part 2's wraiths and remember doing the smithing mini game for hours each new savegame when I first entered Bowerstone market

I remember liking so many details from Fable 2 when it came out- the 1600/1700's aesthetic and guns in a fantasy setting were a unique change from the typical medieval fantasy fare, and seeing how familiar locations in Albion had evolved over time was a treat. But your video just reminded me of how frustratingly short the game was. The "final boss battle" with Lucien was even more disappointing than shown here- if you play a second time and don't immediately shoot Lucien once you regain control to hear his monologue, Reaver just one-shots him instead.

As Jank as this game is there's just a charm around the entire experience. It's one of my favourite games and after countless replays I still find new things

On Theresa being missed during the abduction, it was actually implied that she either worked with Lucien or at least manipulated him. In one of his diary extracts, a throw away line says he saw a blind hooded figure. When Hammer asks where is Theresa Lucien simply responds: "You're blind friend? I simply listened" Sooo... you're idea actually did happen

I really like this kind of long videos, i havent played a lot of the games you talk, but its still interesting hearing what you think, or how you would make it better. Hoping to see Fable 3

4 minutes in and when you called Theresa "Kreia" I about fell out my chair 🤣🤣🤣

Fable is a strange trilogy of games in the way that they progressively took more and more features out of the game and made the gameplay itself more shallow. Fable 3 is probably definitely the worst. But you should still do it.

I'm grateful you continue to make such in-depth retrospectives on games.

The reason why the dialog is paused. At the beginning, during that final tutorial mission, is because there's a character upstairs in that House. And the dialog doesn't start until the character walks outside on the balcony. Some. Character gets stuck behind the door and the dialog doesn't begin. So you're sitting there waiting for the character to get into the position so it can start its dialog.

"And then I bark at him like a dog for 2 minutes straight" bro im fucking crying I laughed so hard

I was hoping you’d continue the Fable series! As someone who’s never played the games your experiences with the first one was really informative, curious to see how the second compares to it

I honestly loved the job mini games, and the free style swimming 😂 such an amazing game in retrospect and at the time!

The waiting for lines to load is actually the characters walking to where their script says they should be. Sometimes they get stuck on tables and stuff. It's super annoying, but less so when you realize it's supposed to be a touch of reality and not just teleporting characters to the next scripted spot

Something about this game just mesmerized me as a early teen. Classic and nostalgic. I never played the first, started with 2, played 3 then stopped.

Never before has the phrase "Friday's poker night" chilled me to the bone.

The whole effort in the beginning with finding a console, game and functioning controllers hahaha.. I felt that. Kudos to you! I came here from your Skyrim videos, and was super delighted to find Fable videos :D will go through more of your content now, because not only do I love your editing and commentary, but also the usage of music here and there.. and your way of talking just reels me in! Thanks for your hard work

Bro barked at Toby so hard made him leave town 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 48:29

Wish they'd port this to PC it isn't perfect but honestly my favorite of the three. Legit all your gripes 100% correct in my opinion. I really don't understand why I vibe with the game so much.

*Theresa appears* “Kreia here tells us…” I CAN’T

Surprised to see a "walk speed matching" mechanic for scenes where you walk with an NPC so early. Seems even weirder to me now more games don't do this.

Funny enough, Theresa kinda did lead Lucien. She needed him to die to control the Spire for a convoluted plan to protect the world from folks connected to Jack of Blades. Sadly its not at all explained in F2 though

Fable 3 is worth a play. It actually has a different story, its still full of stupid plot holes but its fairly interesting and is worth playing at least once

Definitely do Fable 3. I love hearing your take on games i grew up playing. I find myself nodding along through most of your videos as you say exactly what I thought when I played these games.

I think there are diary entries in the game for Reaver which shed more light on what happened to Oakvale AND himself. A lot of it is just VERY strongly implied, but never stated outright. Spoilers ahead: It's implied that HE summoned the Shadow Court to strike a bargain with them to gain immortality due to his overwhelming fear of death. It's implied that either something went wrong with the ritual or that the amount of sacrifices needed to bring the Shadow Court to Albion was MUCH higher than he'd anticipated. Either way, it brought disaster to Oakvale. He decided that what he'd done to Oakvale was an irredeemably evil act & so he decided to embrace being evil instead of turning back. Eventually, he became the depraved hedonist the fans know him to be in Fable II & III. Some notes also talk about how he still has nightmares from the disaster, but he dismisses them & insists that he's not the same scared man that he used to be. Interestingly (according to various notes in the Cursed Snowglobe version of Oakvale), the town apparently had a few dark secrets of its own before disaster struck as well. It's implied that Chesty was "born" there when some elementary school kids murdered one of their classmates & put her into a (unbeknownst to them) magic treasure chest. The notes in the town & a series of puzzles leading to "Chesty's Tea Party" all allude to this. The implicitly cursed "Knights Aberrant" from the Terry Cotter's Army Demon Door were also housed in Oakvale for a time according to some notes & indicated by similar looking empty suits of armor. It seems that the Shadow Cult had also set up shop either in or near Oakvale before the disaster which might imply that Reaver was one of them!

I'm replaying it right now, and honestly... it's better than I remember.

The loss of xp in the prison never mattered when you have, you know, ALL THE MONEY YOU COULD EVER NEED TO JUST BUY POTIONS TO REPLACE THAT XP. That being said, I fucking love this game.

Reaver is actually an awesome character when you read his diary pages. His bargain with the Shadow Court is what led to the eventual (re)destruction of Oakvale. A passage reads: "Then I see him running madly through fields, the realization of just what price he has unwittingly paid hanging like a tragedy mask from his face. He falls to his knees before the town he called home-- now a dark circus of screams. Hers is among them, but he can do nothing to stop it." He was also responsible for killing pirate convoys and sending their heads in a bag to Captain Dread. Although they could have announced this in the story instead of you having to find it through his diary.

I love how your character just Heelys their way through the game.

Salt I just want to say I LOVE your videos, I always look forward to them. Keep at it an finish the series- I am actually replaying fable 3 right now as think that you might have a lot of say about some of the changes to the mechanics for that iteration. I think some of them are actually really interesting to look at as like a moment in games history for better (money room that you can walk around in) or worse (john clease always talking in the pause menu). Anyway, whatever you post next, I’ll be there!! :)

My actual biggest complaint is that you can't savescum choices, which forced them to remove DEATH in case you got trapped in a dungeon with no potions. My other biggest complaint with Fable 2 is that the Cleaver item type became just normal meatcleavers instead of basically one handed mini-buster-swords from 1. The second most annoying part is how your character seemed unable to actually belt their clothes on tight so once you hit a certain tier of muscle you just got FAT.

I definitely enjoyed 2 more than 3. That being said, I wish the franchise had kept going.

This, Fallout 3, and Dead Space hold special places in my heart. These games were the ones I co-op played with my uncle before he died. Use to switch off who was playing every hour. Editing to add that I honestly enjoyed three maybe a little more than one and two. The brother being more of a tragic villain trying to do everything he could to protect his people, and when your character comes in to power, you get pressed to make the same decisions to get your people safe if you can't afford it on your own.

I loved Fable back in a day. Watching this brought up some good memories, but also made me thinking that I wouldn't want to replay them nowdays

I remember being so mad that we couldn't do anything to Reaver, I actually liked Barnum. Plus the fucker will steal your kill if you decide to let Lucian ramble. and that only continued into 3 (with the implication that he killed Garth along the way)- he could have made for a neat bonus boss in 3 if we decided enough is enough.

Pre-Skyrim days, I poured a lot of hours into Fable II. The game wasn’t perfect but it opened my mind to what RPG’s were and could be as someone who primarily played FPS’s. Gonna dive in right now.

The gargoyles were my favorite. Their insults and accent were hilarious. I respect that you didn’t like them but I thought it SO satisfying to finally shoot a gargoyle to smithereens after 10 minutes looking for it, hearing it talk shit the entire time.

My first initial reaction seeing the title was "That game was great! No way could it have been bad. I then watched the video and remembered why I didn't replay it after my first play through like I did with Fable 1. Great vid!

One of the first games I remember playing in which "choice" was a factor, would go on to love the RPG genre. Also, still recall getting freaked out when my character started getting fat and veins, and then horns on an evil run.

Would love to hear you talk about Fable 3. There is a lot of material there for you to talk about! Especially the “King” gameplay! P.S. Zombie Lady Grey is the best Waifu!

Fable 2 is my favorite fable out there I love every about it. Currently working on 1 right now and can see why people are disappointed with 2. But I enjoy it and hope the next fable is amazing

It’s amazing how you can actually see what you’re doing in the first game. In F2 it’s so dark it’s a good thing your enemies have red outlines.

Can’t wait for 3, should be a very ranty video

Fable 2 will easily stay as one of my favourite games of all times, my nostalgia probably blinds me but i replayed all the fables recently and fable 2 was by far my favourite, could replay it so many times again like I did when i was 9 when it first came out.

really enjoying all of your content and your thoughtful commentaries. One thing you might not be considering regarding the game's progression are casual players who won't be spending hours grinding the various tasks or buying up all the properties for rent etc. Seeems to me like the progression is designed to let you finish the content without much of a problem without needing to invest heavily into the side activities.

bro, you're hilarious. Love your videos

Never really thought about how similar the plot is to the first game before this. I haven’t played the game in many years but I remember being quite captivated by the game. I was especially fond of the atmosphere in many of the areas in the game and I’ll never forget the Winter Lodge.

Fable 2 may be a flawed game, but it means so much to me. It was a game I played numerous times growing up and I get so emotional whenever I hear Danny Elfman and Russell Shaw' OST just because it takes me back to the my younger days.

i really enjoy watching these videos its resparked my burning passion for most of these games you've reviewed also you got some real good insight on and ideas that could improve upon these... have you ever thought to write for or develop a game?

your descriptions of this game's events are funnier than most youtube meme compilations

Just got home from a horrible day at work and this is just perfect right now, thank you! ❤

2 was easily my favorite still to this day. The freedom and goofiness kinda goes well together…kinda like how the 2nd Kingdom hearts felt. It felt like a perfect blend to me. I wish other games or rpgs can rip off certain aspects of Fable and Fable2. Other than infamous 2, I had never really played a game I enjoyed being evil in AND it shows.

I'm for a Fable 3 review. It's interesting seeing how each entry holds up compared to each other.

I'd like to note my siblings and I have given a stupid amount of childhood playing this game and not once had the AI pathing issues you seem to have all the time xD I have extremely fond memories of Fable 2 and thinks it's the best one out of the 3 games by a long way. More weapon choices, combat is more fluid, magic while more simple just feels better, skill system is more in depth, I love everything about the game except movement can feel a little bit like trying to steer a wet bar of soap haha, when you played this from release you didn't really know any better so got used to it quick like. Fable 2 was ahead of it's time I think.

I haven't clicked something this fast since I turned of my mother in law's life support

"Using the last dextrous style of sub-targeting is almost never as good as spam shooting your gun" I couldn't disagree more.

Back when I was in high school my older brother would just play Fable 2 days on end, even after finishing the main story he'll just grind Renown of all the npc's in the game. Partly because our family didn't have much disposable income, so we only bought games that had long replay value.

Just cause nobody else said it: you could have given that Hollowman at at 53:34 the stone back. The problem is you shot him instead of walking up to him.

So, important note on the DLC. Back in the day, they had "DLC demos" available in the store, but if you used them, you would probably brick your save. The demos were massive. The descriptions were vague, so you were led to believe there was a significant amount of content in these demos. There wasn't. They added a couple NPCs and items. Everything else was locked out, apparently the idea was that the demos were the full DLCs, just locked out until you purchased them. However, if you're not an idiot, as soon as you realized these demos were just bloat, you would uninstall them. Except, once you did, you could no longer load any save you had played since installing them. The game had no way to handle the fact that content was now missing. Problem was, the two demos together added up to like 800 MB, which wasn't a problem on newer models, but the old models only came with 20 GB HDDs (and effectively, more like 17 GB). So the demos, in effect, only really existed to hold your save hostage. Teenage me was absolutely malding when I found that out.

I need to do some decluttering and you are coming in clutch my good sir! thanks for more fantastic content!

Would love to see Fable 3 eventually. Love your content :)

I love watching these videos at the gym while cycling and playing on gamepass might watch two in a row if i got the energy or am not embarrassed by the pool of sweat under the cycle.

Yeah, you should definitely play three. Being king and picking what happens to certain places and people is an interesting aspect that I bet many are curious to know your opinion on. :)

I remember being evil and having lady grey fall in love with me and as soon as the quest finishes she would just bug out and instantly scream and run away from me on account of my being horrifying evil. She wouldn’t even talk to me haha 😂 Not quite the romance I was hoping for!!

Man I've been watching your videos for a long while, you always have extremely interesting takes on alternative ideas on how parts of the game should of been on how dlcs should of been. For example, the alternative puzzle take for knothole island or just other story components. You should consider becoming a writer for video game companies somehow. Like I said you just always have cool ideas on some of these things. Idk just a idea, keep making content, love your videos man!

This is one I'm doing for the channel cause there's something exciting about Fable 2. You're correct about 2008 being a big year for games too, it was a special time.

This video really makes the case for bringing 2 & 3 to Steam. The first game and the Anniversary edition of 1 is so it’s weird the sequels aren’t. Also I’d like to point out that with the Commandant you get back all EXP you lost doing good after you kill him in the escape sequence.

Fable 3's reputation primarily comes from how it helped start the trend of intentionally holding back content to sell as DLC later

I know it’s been months since you made this video, but I’m gonna toss my hat in the ring for doing a video on Fable 3. In terms of mechanics it is pared down compared to the other two games, but it’s gameplay is still fun and it does have a couple new features that the other two games lacked. The story is also original and much different from the other two games, and I think it’s the best story in the trilogy. To be fair Fable 3 was also my first Fable game, so I’m probably biased, but I’ve also replayed it much more than the other two and it continues to entertain me to this day. I recommend playing it. I think if nothing else you’ll enjoy it’s story

The answer is yes. I haven’t watched the video yet but I always go back to play it from time to time. It’s is fun every time.

Been waiting for this video for so long, the fable anniversary is proably my favorite video of yours

I love these videos. You break things down so well, with brilliant comedic timing and phrasing. Thank you for the effort to do these, it's deffinetly a quality over quantity and this is very high quality.

Definitely do Fable 3. I only played it once and all I really remember is that it was really short. I could use a refresher and your perspective is always interesting.

I don’t know how this video is 3 months old and this is the first time I’ve seen it. I love Salt Factory and thought I’ve seen most of if not all his videos.

I swear your videos in terms of depth about the games you cover rival TheActMan in quality. Always happy to see a new one in my feed!

This is really freaky, just finished replaying Fable 2 this week AND I literally rewatched your Fable 1 video yesterday, in other words I couldn't have asked for a better video today :)

Would love to see your take on Fable 3. I also remember it being a little disappointing, BUT there are some good gem moments, and I do think they tried to do something very different w/ the franchise? 🤔 Thanks for your hardwork, these vids are always so nostalgic, but they also highlight some missteps the games took that we may have forgotten. 🤭👍

initially playing fable 2 for the first time i enjoyed it. but i was very young. looking at it now with a more different and matured mindset. holy hell you hit the nail. and might as well complete fable 3 lol. id love to see you rip that to shreds with the unique weapons and such.

Yes I’ve been waiting for another Fable! Edit: please don’t skip F3. That game had a lot of misses, but a lot of charm as well. It’s not my “favorite” but I’ve definitely seen way more incompetent games that missed the mark, or games that had potential and squandered it. F3 sits oddly in the middle

Honestly I've been waiting for this one after recently getting into Fable again. Can't wait for your Fable 3 review.

I love how I’ve never thought about the age of the dog after playing through this game multiple times over the last decade.

What the what?! I literally don't remember the dlc. Not to mention i played this game a lot back in the day! Great video!

I remember being so excited when this game came out, the original Fable was one of my favourites. Sadly I encountered a bug which didn't let me finish a quest, and I couldn't continue without starting a new game. I never played again.

I remember playing this in the army around christmas 2008 and really enjoying it. Got hammered eating Papa Johns and probably sinking 16 hours into it in a weekend.

Speaking of fable, I would love to see you do Fable 3. More of a progression from this episode. Keep up the awesome content, but don't feel rushed

I haven't laughed so much "for a while" at the accurate destruction. I might appoint you world leader one day.