Before the release of Fable 3, Microsoft allowed gamers to digitize themselves as NPCs that would appear randomly in the game’s towns. I didn’t take part in this promotion, but I ended up discovering myself in different ways through my experience with the game.
The ubiquitous morality system appears across a variety of genres in games like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age. But almost all of these games make the question of morality simple. If you fail to help your teammates in Mass Effect 2, they (or you) die at the end. If you act like a bad guy in Fallout 3 and, say, blow up Megaton, you miss out on a bevy of quests and vital shops. However, Fable 3 was different. For the first time, a video game showed me who I was as a person.
Warning for those who haven’t completed Fable 3: Many spoilers below.
After you succeed in overthrowing the tyrannical King Logan, you learn the reason behind his evil deeds. Evil incarnate plans on taking over Albion and destroying everything in its path. Peter Molyneux and his team set this scene up brilliantly. Since you just faced The Crawler itself and saw what it could do, you understand the very real threat that this monster poses to the people. Now, you must decide to do what’s popular by following through on your promises or to do what’s best for the kingdom — and the two do not intersect. To protect your people, you must fund an army big enough to stop the invasion.
When I first started playing Fable 3, I decided to put myself in the game. I would not do anything that was antithetical to how I act in real life. I tried to project my own morality through my avatar. So when the first decision as king was to take or spare the life of Logan and utilize his troops, the decision seemed clear to me: let him live. He was motivated by good, although he did not act in a righteous manner. As sovereign, I could succeed where he failed. I could rule benevolently and still save my people.
At this first announcement, the people booed. Honestly, I was shocked. I had spent the last 20 hours (countless number of days in Albion-time) befriending these people and earning their trust. How could they not trust my decision making? I had never led them astray thus far.
This might seem silly, but one person, whom I had become quite good friends with during the game (judging by the gift symbol floating above her head), stood in the front row at my initial decision making. Seeing this woman boo — this woman, whom I had fetched a package and given her presents — really struck me. I vowed never to do the unpopular thing again.
After a few more sessions of court, the floor of the treasury fell out. Costly policy after policy drained the coffers, and the annoying new butler chastised me constantly about our lack of funds. I transferred every penny I could to the treasury, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. I began to panic.
When my financial advisor asked me if I should reinstate a child-benefit program, I actually paused to consider it. It would be expensive to implement such a program, but the people would need it. However, what good would welfare programs do to the dead?
I had a moment of weakness where my finger hovered over the X-button, the “evil” option. That would not only get rid of the welfare program, but charge a tax for every birth in Albion. I — we need the money so badly. What were we going to do? What was I going to do?
Then I realized how wrong this was. (And yes, it’s silly to take things so seriously, but remember that I was trying to place myself in my avatar’s shoes.) I decided to compromise with the neutral action, which neither drained nor added money to my reserves. It wasn’t popular, but the people did not hate me.
Fable 3 is by no means a perfect game, but few games have made me reflect so deeply on my own moral compass. Most games make it an easy choice: being evil ultimately hurts your character. But Fable 3 flips that formula and makes it so difficult to be good. The game made me realize how hard it is to be a leader and made me think about the leaders in the real world. In a time of body scanners at airports and compromising to save economies, when does (and this hurts me to write as a bleeding-heart liberal) the happiness of the people have to be set aside for their own good?
After playing Fable 3, I no longer think I could do a better job than the people we elect to office. There’s no such thing as the “good” way to lead. Every leader must do what he or she feels is best, and that’s not always going to be popular. And that might be the last time I put myself so deeply into a video game. It’s so much more lighthearted just to activate the nuke and watch that mushroom cloud bloom.
Besides ruling Albion, Joshua Duke works as a copy writer. He is also editor-in-chief at Morality Points.com and promises (if it pleases his subjects) he will write more regularly on Bitmob.