Never played the original is this worth it? Good PC port?

[Hanuman]

Just got a 60% off coupon and I am tempted.

A pet peeve however is I don't like playing windowed games. Will this support 2560x1440 natively?

Also, how does the game hold up after all the years? What games would you compare this to?

Have they fixed all the bugs?

Thanks! The coupon expires in 10 days - so need to make a decision. Leaning towards yes, but the resolution could be a deal killer... Google does not seem to know if it has 1440p on a cursory search.

[Hanuman]

Anyone? This was a XBOX-1 game right?

Do the original storylines and play mechanics hold up?

How good is the port and does it support 2560x1440?

Thank you!!!

[Psychotic Rebel]

xbox 360 game.

[Graesholt]

Personally I think the port is terrible.
The developers put a lot of effort into patching it right after launch (which was a welcome surprise), and as it is now it is playable (after the integration of mouse in menus).
Furthermore, the dev's have said that this is the final version of the game, and that no more patches are in the works.

The game still has a bunch of glaring issues though, most notably for me personally the ridiculous texture pop-in, which is worse than anything we've seen in recent years, and forces you to every time a model loads look at textures which are worse even that the original Fable's.

This remake is a downgrade from the original Fable:TLC, and it would take a massive patch to make me (and more than a few other fans) think otherwise.

That is all I have to say.
My screen resolution is not high enough to answer the other question.
As for what games to compare to, I'd say fable is in a category on its own. I suggest looking at the first few episodes of a Let's Play. You'll get a few early spoilers that way, but that will prevent you from making a purchase that you might later regret.
I highly suggest getting the original Fable: TLC (available on steam for next to nothing), as that one works and is an excellent port. It does have worse graphics than this, but the trade-off is that it actually works and is a joy to play. There is absolutely no conceivable incentive to support this sort of behaviour from developers further.

[necrodarkling]

The menu is horribad hope some one will make a "classic menu mod" other than that its not that bad

[MeganeDamashii]

First of all, it's definitely not worth it without the coupon.

The performance seems to be a bit weird. Some people say it's absolutely terrible, but I was pleasantly surprised that it runs decent (30 fps give or take) on my craptop (i5 @ 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, GT540M).
Can't say anything about 1440p support. Just to clarify, why would the lack of it mean you have to play in windowed mode? Can't you just play at 1080p fullscreen?

Since you haven't played the original, I'd probably recommend TLC over Anniversary. The graphics look dated of course, but it's the better port of the two and it's cheap. This brings up another question though:
What's your preference in terms of controls? Keyboard & mouse or controller? I always found the K/M controls for Fable to be pretty awkward, but if you don't like using a controller, you will probably be annoyed by some of the menus in Anniversary. TLC is better in that regard if I recall correctly (it does not come with native controller support though, so keep that in mind).

I think comparing it to other games would just create expectations that might not be met, ultimately leading to disappointment on your end.
It's an action-RPG / adventure with focus on its good / evil decisions and character customisation. Progress is mainly story driven.
Some of its mechanics and design choices might seem a bit stiff by today's standards (e.g. superficial good / evil decisions, the "open world" is basically just a tube, ...), but in my opinion, it's a must-play if you enjoy the genre.
The character progression feels dynamic since it doesn't have a class system, character levels, or skilltrees. Instead, you gain discipline-specific XP depending on how you fight, allowing you to concentrate on leveling up the skills of your desired playstyle.

Bottom line: Should you give Fable a shot? Definitely. Should you pick TLC or Anniversary? Depends on some of the aspects mentioned in this thread.

[Hanuman]

Thank you everyone for the detailed responses.

As far as upscaling 1080p - I don't like forcing other resolutions into fullscreen 1440p because it looks distorted, fuzzy, and just bad all around.

I used to be a keyboard mouse purist, but at this point am just as comfortable with a gaming pad like the 360 wireless one.

Sometimes I can tolerate dated graphics, other times they drive me crazy. It seems to be rather random. So I prefer to get the best graphics available because it is hard for me to know when bad graphics will bother me and ruin immersion.

LOL - I have made a decision to play Fable - but now I don't know whether to get the HD Anniversary 60% off, or the old Fable TLC.

Does anyone know what resolutions Fable TLC supports? If it is limited to like 640x480 - then I would only consider Anniversary.

This decision should not be so hard but Anniversary seems to be either loved or hated and those games are hard decide on.

[theHappyDance]

TLC supports standard resolutions (i.e. 1080p at least - I don't have higher to check), but has noticably lower quality textures. Anniversary has much smoother graphics. I have not noticed texture popins at all on mine. I think a big part of this is your hardware and software. Hardrive corruption of the game files, dependent files, or system files can cause weird graphics stuff, as can system configuration problems, or defective / weak hardware, etc..

I'm like you as well in that I used to be a kb/m purist and have since moved almost exclusively to controller-supported games. If you prefer playing on controller, Anniversary is much much better. It has native controller support, and the interface is redesigned for it. TLC has no native controller support, and is kb/m oriented, but I too found those controls awkward and hard to get used to - to the point that I never was able to get into TLC.

My guess would be they're dropping the price on this in preparation for Fable Legends upcoming release, which will be a somewhat different style game. It could mean the price will drop more, or it could mean this is the lowest it will be for a while. This game rarely seems to go on sale. I would say visually Fable TLC looks like an XBOX game (1st gen). Fable Anniversary looks more like Fable 2 (XBOX 360), except with cleaner processing.

[MeganeDamashii]

I don't know if what I'm experiencing can even be called texture popins. It's more like the game uses a weird logic to decide which textures should be loaded in their full resolution (i.e. they don't 'pop in', but just stay bad forever depending on the camera position). Ocassionally, my character consists almost of solid colours only, because the game thinks it's not necessary to display better quality textures for whatever reason.
But as has been pointed out, this is likely related to my limited GPU power.

I did encounter bugs in Anniversary that weren't present in the original, but nothing game breaking so far.

I'm strongly leaning towards Anniversary now (preference for modern graphics and you're okay with using a 360 controller). Honestly, don't underestimate the kb/m vs controller aspect. I can understand why someone would drop TLC based on the kb/m controls. Being able to map the number keys to spells / items seems tempting, but fights against large groups of enemies often rely on dodging a lot, which is a lot more natural with a controller (analog stick).

I guess the opinions on Anniversary are so controversial because Fable is a series that a lot of people are passionate about in one way or another, and because there are lots of different backgrounds regarding the series (played all games / only played the 360 games / never played any Fable before Anniversary / etc.).

[theHappyDance]

Try sfc /scannow and chkdsk /v /f. Also, verify game cache via steam, reinstall vc++, directx, gpu drivers etc.. I ran into similar problems to that in a few games and it always turned out to be configuration issues or system / HDD data corruption, rather than the game itself.

You could also try dialing down the settings and seeing if that helps resolve the issue.

[Azrael]

Originally posted by Psychotic Rebel:

xbox 360 game.

The original game and The Lost Chapters version appeared only for the Xbox. On the Xbox 360 you could only play them (badly) emulated using the backwards compatibility.

[Raell]

Originally posted by Graesholt:

Personally I think the port is terrible.
The developers put a lot of effort into patching it right after launch (which was a welcome surprise), and as it is now it is playable (after the integration of mouse in menus).
Furthermore, the dev's have said that this is the final version of the game, and that no more patches are in the works.

The game still has a bunch of glaring issues though, most notably for me personally the ridiculous texture pop-in, which is worse than anything we've seen in recent years, and forces you to every time a model loads look at textures which are worse even that the original Fable's.

This remake is a downgrade from the original Fable:TLC, and it would take a massive patch to make me (and more than a few other fans) think otherwise.

That is all I have to say.
My screen resolution is not high enough to answer the other question.
As for what games to compare to, I'd say fable is in a category on its own. I suggest looking at the first few episodes of a Let's Play. You'll get a few early spoilers that way, but that will prevent you from making a purchase that you might later regret.
I highly suggest getting the original Fable: TLC (available on steam for next to nothing), as that one works and is an excellent port. It does have worse graphics than this, but the trade-off is that it actually works and is a joy to play. There is absolutely no conceivable incentive to support this sort of behaviour from developers further.

That texture pop in has nothing to do with it being a port.. Texture pop in is how squeeze performance out of limited hardware. The game was coded for consoles in mind. So again, the port is fine because it's unchanged overall.

[////]

if you are a fan of steam's big picture and controllers, go for it with 50% (at least) off.

and if you are a die hard pc player, go for fable tlc without a doubt.

[Defiled_Popsicle]

Fable - Lost Chapters is a better version. Aniversary has uprezed textures but its a port of the tablet version. It doesnt run well either. Lost Chapters runs well and the graphics still hold up fairly well without the uprez.

[lopezmikko77]

No.

The camera still makes me dizzy. XBox (OG for Fable 1, 360 for Fable 2) versions didn't make my head spin.

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

i refuded TLC and kept this. so i say this is the far better version. the controls sceme for TLC is horrible, and i have no desire to remap every single key in a game im playing. the controls for aniversary are ♥♥♥♥, but useable.

the menu system in this version is terrible. its the generic 360 menu system. the in game shortcut system is even worse, since you cant move around while using the menu or it will actually move the menu as well. so if a user interface thats actually useable and not complete trash is a HUGE thing for you, dont go with this version.

the graphics in TLC look like late PS1 graphics with a higher view distance. and i dont believe it supports any non 16:9 or 4:3 ratio. this version supports whatever resolution you want. just to test that i set my desktop to a completely arbitrary resolution of 2000x2300, then set the in game resolution to 8000x9200 with DSR enabled through nvidia. ran at like 1 frame per minute, but it worked.