Tell Me a Fable

The fourth bandit's arrow pierced through my Fire Monkey inked back, ripping through muscle, scraping bone, and knocked me off kilter just enough for his fiendish cohort to run me through with his blade. As the world began to darken, I grasped for some food, a health potion, anything to stave off the death that was looking me in the eye. WHAM! One last blow to my neck and I fell, lifeless, to the cold dirt path that would be my grave.

SON OF A....

Okay, so obviously none of that really happened -- 'cos, wow, that would've sucked for me, right? Though, ask Erik, I was more than unhappy with that outcome in a recent quest through the land of Albion. Yes, faithful reader, I have (after a long and healthy absence) returned to the thrill of the XBOX and found a new procrastination.

Fable: The Lost Chapters.

I know, I have way too much to do (namely finishing several plays) to invest my time and energy into another video game. But there's something oddly satisfying about completing quests, saving damsels, finding treasure, and harnessing lighting and fire to obliterate your enemies --- even if it is only virtual.

But what I truly love about this game is that it's not so cut and dry. You're not automatically the hero, the white knight, brandishing some legendary sword against some vangaurd of evil.

No, see, you can be the vanguard of evil. And suddenly this game, for me, went from just a virtual quest to some virtual test of morals and ethics. Just go with me on this. In the game, every decision you make determines the man you become, determines how you're perceived, and ultimately, your destiny within the game. Like everyday society, you're reminded that evil is evil and encouraged to do the right thing, but at the same time, the game gives you the tools you need to break the law and turn to the dark side (if that's what you're going for).

Ultimately, this fascinates me. As you progress through this game, answering the call to arms to slay Hobbes and Bandits and other things that happen to be reigning terror on Albion, you're often presented with choices that send you down a path or light or dark. Sometimes it's some reward or power that will be granted if you do something quite evil (like slay the innocent you're escorting to safety). And they're blatant about it too. So if you're partial to playing the villian, you can.

Funny thing -- even though I've always joked that in theatre, I play the villian, in Albion I'm leaning towards hero. I find that even in the virtual world, I don't like the idea of doing very bad things. So -- yeah, comforting on that front. It seems, much like life, I get the whole consequences arguement. But, conversely, (I guess like in life) it's not always that easy. Often in the game, you're presented with small moments of potential "bad deeds" -- a health potion sits on a shelf in a house: do you take it? In battle it may just save your life. But it's still stealing. In other questing games, I always found it funny that you could just take anything you needed to help the quest, as if the little people in the games didn't mind being robbed as long as it was going towards saving the world. In Fable, stealing is stealing. Doesn't mean you can't take that health potion, but if you're caught you get fined and even if you're not caught, your alignment on the scale of good and evil shifts a skosh to the evil side.

It's addicting. I won't go into the boring details about how cool the rest of the game is, nor the commentary about how it preaches materialistic practices in that while, yes, you can flirt in this game, once you have and the wooing is over, no one will talk to you further until you put a ring on their finger -- and I say "their" because you can marry often as polygamy doesn't seem to be a "bad deed" in Albion (though, honestly, my character -- Rotham -- isn't married yet so I may not know what I'm talking about).

At this point I'm assuming most of you are getting that glazed-over look that my girlfriend gets when I talk about video games. And since I started this post last week and life has moved on somewhat, I think we should switch gears.

So, as I'm oft to do with her, I'll turn the topic to something much more interesting, something we can actually have a dialogue about instead of me spouting on and on and...oh, sorry, we were going to dialogue or something weren't we? Okay, so here's our topic du jour: Saint Jude and Saint Anthony of Padua and how cool they are. No, that's not the usual conversation we jump to, just the one to which I'm jumping now. It's a story ripe with drama, intrigue, and the possibility of a grown man crying -- so you know it'll be good.

This weekend, the one revolving around Memorial Day, with the theatre, the food, the friends, the relaxing...yeah, it was fun. And then sometimes -- it wasn't.

Let's just start with this: you know my flash drive? MY flash drive? The one Mary bought for me for my birthday? With the "Serenity" keychain dangling from it? The one that has ALL of my writing on it AND the most recent draft of my play for the Playwright Festival (the one I FORGOT TO BACK UP!)?

Yes. THAT flashdrive.

I lost it.

Commence panic attack.....