Fable II . . .Why God, Why?!

At first I didn’t think I’d like Fable II. Fantasy Role Playing is just something I was never able to really get into, (despite my fascination with D&D). Sci-Fi has always been were it’s at for the geek in me.  And so, I was totally unprepared to be sucked into the sprawling “Choose Your Own Adventure” world of Fable.

Basically, you can choose to be an upstanding hero, or a total git. But its far more complicated than that. Everything you do, even down to what you eat (more on that later), determines what sort of adventurer you will develop into. The choices you make even effect the world in which you play. For example, help the town guard as a child and when the game leaps forward into your young adulthood your old neighborhood will be posh and colorful, full of high rent flats and fancy businesses. Double cross the guard and sell his missing warrants to the street thug and ten years later your old home will be a lawless slum. Depending on which path you try to walk both outcomes can be a benefit. It’s easy to be a total bastard in a crap town with very little law. Kill whomever you like -no one will miss the scum populating it’s streets. This little vignette illustrates how it works very well.

All in all the scope of the world, the visuals, and the morphability of your character is amazing. But it was the pies that pushed me down the slippery slope of obsessive gaming. I was getting my ass kicked by a gang of highwaymen and I was going to die . . .again. There were no more healing potions left, but there was a pile of food I’d found recently -and food has healing properties. what I did not yet understand was that what you consumed has as much an impact on you as anything else did. So I scarfed a couple of pies, some rancid beef jerky, two bottles of skunked beer, and a three day old fish. I survived the battle but was horribly disfigured! I had gained about 80lbs, grown a second chin, and was sporting a gut to do any armchair quarterback proud. I was the frumpiest squire in all the land!

The parallels to my real life were not lost on me, and I was left in a state of mild depression for most of the weekend.

And so I spend all of yesterday sitting on the couch, eating nothing but celery and silken tofu, and jogging everywhere I had to go -not that running helps you lose weight, but it made me feel better. My only motivation for questing and killing was to earn more gold so I could visit every produce stand in the kingdom, buy up there supply of celery, and then jog off to the next village to do it all over again. It was annoying when bandits and hobgoblins got in my way! No time to rescue slaves or raid the Shadow Temple -I’ve got fresh veg to eat and Ye Olde Pilatis class at 11:30!!!

I am happy to report that today, Sir Balfazar Chicken Fucker is a lean, mean, (vegetarian), killing machine.

Fable II is really a kick-ass game, and its a wonderful break from the glut of first person shooters that dominate the 3rd generation gaming platforms. . .unless you play Wii, in which case all the games lack the ability to hold my interest for longer than five minutes. Yes, even Mario Cart, (which the widget is loving). Dorinda is home sick today, and is curled up on the couch, eating virtual celery and hunting highwaymen. Fable II is definitely a really solid, cross-gender game.

The Boston Comic Con was, in a word, fan-fucking-tabulous. We debued the new Atomic Robo t-shirt and sales were brisk. I slapped a severe discount on my Punisher pages and sold a lot of them -thank god too, because the bathtub is getting quite full of old art-board. I sold a pile of Robo TPBs and was very thrilled to give one to Peter Laird & Co. The new Robo sketchbooks did pretty well, and I only did two sketches -which is nice since I hate inking sketches at conventions and no one ever seems to want a nice pencil sketch (which I love doing at conventions). Both commissions were a lot of fun though. the first was Robo and Punisher and the second was Robo and Supergirl.

As usual, the best part of the con was after the con. I went to the very yummy Japanese/Korean joint called Samurai with a small group of my Boston friends who I never get to see. Also as usual, I was in a coma after the con, but I think I still made decent company.

Now in two weeks we’ve got another show coming up, the Portsmouth Comic Show! Ralph DiBernardo is the man behind this show and he is a HUGE supporter of small press comics. He did an exclusive alternate cover for the Red5 FCBD comic earlier this year and is great at spreading the Robo love.

Won’t you come support Ralph?