Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

in response. There were many images of the
adventurer standing in vast wheat fields; or
beneath the shadows of a dead tree, the set-
ting sun serving as a backdrop; or of a lonely
mountain road, the ruins of a long-forgotten age
in the foreground.
And lo, just as the public began to take a
strong interest in this Project Ego, Microsoft the
Mighty accosted Peter the Boasting, wielding the
Purse of Many Dollars, and insisted that the RPG
come to the Green and Black Box that they had
created for the purpose of hosting such adven-
tures.
Peter the Boasting was thusly joined in
union with the Mighty Microsoft. Once destined
for a great multiplicity of PC’s, The Greatest
RPG of All Time now was destined for the Green
and Black Box. With the move to the Mighty Mi-
crosoft, Project Ego was dubbed a more simple
and fitting title: Fable. Even more etchings and
engravings began to pour through the heavenly
gates of The Inter Net, and many of its denizens
commenced the composition of various pam-
phlets and epistles, comparing it to other highly
anticipated adventures soon to come forth.
Yet, as time passed, the public grew anx-
ious, frustrated, even worried about the RPG,
as its release was not yet known, and the public
was informed that the game was going through
delays. Was there something wrong with the
Greatest RPG of All Time known as Fable? Two
years of setting suns and rising moons had
passed after Peter had taken the Boasting plat-
form, when one day an proclamation was made
at the Festival of Three E’s: the adventure was
to ship in four months time! There was much
rejoicing. An even great number of excited mis-
sives were written and exchanged in the course
leading up to the day of launch. The moment
was arriving, and the public’s anticipation was
palpably ripe.
Part 3: The Great Launch
The four moon cycles had gone by and the
RPG was released onto the public, swollen with
anticipation as they were. As they first partook
of the adventure, they all had a laugh with the
innocent inhabitants of the towns and the inter-
actions they made possible. Yet, this joy was to
be short-lived - for the quests they undertook
were more important than fooling around with
the innocents of the towns. People began tak-
ing the quests that the guild had provided for
the adventurer, and it became apparent to the
public that the quests were a bit one-sided: it
was easy to see that many of them were set
up for the adventurer to lean towards a pure,
moral alignment. The adventurer had no real
choice when it came to his questing. There were
but few quests that afforded the adventurer
this choice of sides. This promised dimension
of choice and consequence seemed to be falling
short of its potential. To become wholly good,
all an adventurer had to do was kill bandits and
other villainous creatures of the land. However,
to become wholly evil, the character simply had
to begin killing the traveling merchants and the
innocents found in the towns. In becoming evil,
the so-called “bad elements” in the game, ban-
dits and the like, would continue to attack the
adventurer instead of siding with him. It all felt
shallow and hollow.
Yet were there still the wide-open areas
to be explored in the game? Not so! It became
quite apparent that the wide-open areas had
been replaced with simple, inflexible paths. The
RPG’s motto was: “Every choice has a conse-
quence.” This too proved to be an optimistic
estimation of the game, at best; generally the
case was that if an adventurer failed in an un-
dertaking, he hadn’t really failed at all; as if by
magic, the events that passed seemed to erase
A Story of Fable 47