Hands on, hopes high: Fable 2
By Frank Caron | Published: July 17, 2008 - 11:06AM CT
Unfortunately for us, Microsoft's show floor offering at the open exhibit hall was a little anemic, but I did manage to sneak in a good half an hour of Fable 2. A Lionhead rep took me through a long combat demo before we finally started off on a little co-op adventure.
Fable 2 builds on the various foci of the first game with its distinct mish-mash of different gameplay engines. There's a simulation side of the game, a social side of the game, a business side of the game, and a combat side of the game. These four systems work in tandem to make Fable 2 a fairly complex game.
In spite of these complexities, though, combat is surprisingly easy to get in to. Every character has three core attacks: sword, gun, and magic. By pressing X, Y, and B for varying durations to unleash these attacks, players can string together combos which will deal with enemies near and far. How you choose to fight in battle—say you favor a particular method of fighting over another—affects how your character develops, and how much XP you receive. You get specific XP for killing enemies with a specific type of attack, and stringing them together into combos rewards bonus experience.
Once I got a handle on the action, the rep popped into the game with me at the touch of a button. He explained that when a friend visits your world, the items and gold they receive will stay with them, but that they're progress in the story was independent from yours: they can't go off and change the way your story progresses. Rather, they just serve as a visitor to your world that can follow you around, help you out, meet your family, and just enjoy your specific version of the world.
We quickly ran through some combat that proved to be exciting: this is the kind of experience that the Xbox 360 has been sorely lacking. Together, we hacked and slashed through foes, he with his great sword and I with my spells. Our characters interacted with each other and there were some pretty cool back-to-back moments when we found ourselves surrounded and had to fight for our lives. It's a relatively simple system, but the potential is there for some great experiences to share with a friend.
Fable 2 is almost here, and by all accounts it looks like it will be a much better game than its predecessor. The one most important question—whether or not the game would wind up being as short and, in a sense, shallow as Fable—couldn't yet be answered, but you can be sure that we'll have that answer for you when the game ships this October, exclusively for the Xbox 360.
And even though it chipped me off at first, the fishing was legendary... Especially those unique catches 
Im another huge fan of the first Fable, cant wait for the 2nd!