Here are my impressions after about 2 hours... I scored the game from a Mom & Pop Store in the Los Angeles area...so if you are near I can tell you were to get it.
Like the original Fable, the game starts you out as a child, but you get to choose if you are a male or female. The whole childhood time is a bit less that it was in Fable 1. In Fable 1, the story seemed a bit stronger and more of pull due to the death of your father and your sister & mother being taken from you. Also in Fable 1, you had some time as a child in the heroes academy, not really sure what it was called. Suffice it to say, that being a child in Fable 2 is pretty quick. I did do everything I could, while the game zooms you into a large looking city, you only have access to a small portion. In this small area, you do have some side quests aside from the main thing you need to do to progress the Story, you easily have about 3-5 choices to make, the good vs. evil kind in this small section.
Aside from the first part which is over kind of quick, there are several in-game options...First and foremost is the bread crumb trail...instead of having an on-screen map, the game will have a golden looking trail leading you to your next objective. While, you can Vere off from this, at one point it comes back to steer you in the correct way. The nice thing about this is that you can adjust it's brightness level from very high (ala a bright glowing trail) to completely off, no trail at all or have it on medium or lightl...so far I have been playing the game with it off, but I have not played that much so I may need to turn it on when I get lost.
I can see using the trail in the open world. Now about the open worlds, the game is not like oblivion, there are still loading zones. In the menu you do have a map that has points of interest on it, strangely you cannot zoom in because some of the icons are a bit small...but the 1st zone I am in is pretty big, I know of other players that have been to even larger zones.
As mentioned above, the starter area is in a giant town, but you only have access to small section. Visually, it was very pretty but I did notice a bit of slowdown/frame rate drop as well as some slight screen tearing. Oddly though, when I grew up and was out "in the wild" the frame rate was very smooth and I could not notice any screen tearing. I am not sure if it was due to the particle effect system they are using for the snow (impressive) or what, but as a first impression and you notice some slight slowdown and screen tearing, I was fearing for the worst once you get into an open enviroment...but luckily... this is not the case and in the open world it ran great.
Hear is something that was never fully disclosed by Peter and the team. We all know about the Orb's of other people on your Friends list that are playing the game. What happens, is if you are playing and you 4 friends playing, they appear as orbs in your world. The orb glows and as it get's closer to you, you see the gamer pic of that person with there name above. As they get closer they have implemented proximity chat. Here is what they never really discussed...Not only can it be your friends, it is EVERYONE that is on Live at that time. Rumors suggest it caps at 60 people, but last night I was running around and I ran into someone (no one on my friends list has the game). So this person comes up to me and he starts asking "can you hear me"?? I said, yes..can you hear me? We both were blown away...about a minute later some other person walks up and he starts chatting...these are people I never met before...
Not only can you chat within proximity, you can select the orb, check the stats, check other stuff and even trade. It is pretty amazing that they did this. They always talked about your friends showing up as orbs, but not the general public nor proximity chat. As you play, it is still your own world because the other player asked if it was night time in my game, but is was sunny, so even though we are in the same path/world, his was independent. What is neat, the 3rd player asked if we found chests...the 1st guy I ran into had played longer and led us both to where there was buried gold..as we approached it our dogs (again independently) ran to a dig spot and we both found 100 gold coins. It was pretty amazing that this could be done.
Speaking of the Dog...WOW! I really thought that it was going to be a gimmick, but the AI they programmed it with is just amazing. I am really blown away by how your dog reacts to you and how he follows you. Once you get "something??" you have the ability to name your dog anything you want. Your dog as you walk around, will bark loudly and run to areas where he sniffs out buried items and treasure chests. Oddly, if you played the first game, there are silver chests in the game. To open these, you need to find silver keys. Each chest has a number on them and you have to have found that many keys to open these silver chest. The dog did bark when he saw a silver key, but the two silver chests I have found he did not...so that seemed a littles odd.
I also noticed that some of the NPC's you can name. I did some posing and flexing and a skank looking female character kind of fell in love with me. I highlighted her and checked her stats and it said that she was a Gypsy and it gave her traits..In short she is a skank/tramp and it gave me the ability to name her, so I called her "Skank the Gypsy". the "the Gypsy" could not be edited, just the first part. This was also pretty neat and unexpected.
I only played for a few hours and what I have played is extremely impressive. Voice acting, sound, music, graphics are amazing. A little disappointing start to the game as the childhood portion is really short, took me about 30-40 min. since I looked everywhere and did the few small other side quests and that there seemed to be a little frame drop and tearing in the opening areas...but once you start adulthood..WOW...I said wow at the beginning, but once you hit the outside world...even more impressive.
I will post more later today once I play some more.
