Fable 2
I’ve played a lot, a lot, a lot of video games in my life. Open-world RPGs have always been my favorite. Fable 2 came out in 2008, and I started playing it shortly after, and it was exactly what I had been looking for in my childhood. The Fable series sought to portray the life of a hero, starting at their traumatic childhood event that sets them on their path, ending when their lifelong quest is finished. Fable 2 did what Fable 1 and Fable 3 failed to do: combine the adventurer’s life with their personal domestic life.Fable 2 is somewhat a generic fantasy adventure game, where the player explores a world and fights enemies to achieve a grand quest. What separates Fable 2 apart from this generic genre is the fact that you can earn money to fund your quest by doing jobs and buying real estate, real mundane stuff. The player is also able to have families: a wife/husband and children—the player can also be a bigamist, being married to multiple spouses simultaneously. I’ve never seen any other open-world RPG do family mechanics so successfully, and I’ve never seen any other game allow bigamy.
Overall, this combination of adventurer and domestic life is just really fun. A player can only mindlessly kill things for so long before they want to do something else, like play the job mini-games or interact with the local characters. Personally, I enjoy being adored by the villagers and being hailed as a hero and celebrity. I feel good when a crowd forms around me to praise me and give me gifts. Some people, however, find it very amusing to play as a psychopath, hated and reviled by the public, whose presence is only abided because no one is strong enough to confront them. This game entertains two very different ideas of fun.
—Gage Wilson, Anime Editor