It’s a little jarring to leave your baby, then return a day later to find a 4-year-old who desperately wants a present. Once you get into the (entirely optional) business of getting married, having sex and raising a family in “Fable III,” it’s clear Lionhead has changed up the experience from “Fable II.” Whereas in “Fable II,” children were born babies and stayed that way until a key moment in the game, “Fable III’s” kids grow up fast, as in the time it takes you to leave town, complete a quest or two and come back.
(Before any moral panic starts over “Fable III’s” sex scene, hanky panky in the M-rated game consists of a black screen and some comically suggestive noises coupled with tame dirty talk.) As a married guy myself, the prospect of getting “married” in a video game to another real person seemed a bit odd to me, so I confined my relationship-related experimenting to the random villagers I seduced and courted.
“Fable III,” which I reviewed yesterday on the blog and in Friday’s Press Democrat, is rare among video games in that it allows players to marry and have children, even over Xbox Live with other players.
