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Video Game: Fable I

Warning: Objects in pool may be less evil than they appear.

"Deep in the forest of Albion lay the small town of Oakvale, unchanged by time and untouched by the sword. Here lived a boy and his family. A boy dreaming of greatness. Of one day being a Hero."'

—Opening narration

The first game in the Fable series, the initial Fable game focuses on the "Hero of Oakvale".

The game starts off peacefully enough, with the main character looking for ways to obtain a gift for his sister's birthday. Unfortunately bandits attack his home village of Oakvale and all things go to hell. The youngster hides from the bandits but his family are not so fortunate. His father is killed, his mother missing and his sister abducted.

A member of the Hero's Guild, Maze, stumbles upon the boy and saves him from certain death. Telling him that there is nothing left for him in Oakvale, Maze takes the young man to the Guild to be raised as a hero.

This game includes examples of:

Badass Back: If you block an enemy's attack from behind, you parry without even turning around.
Badass Bookworm: Briar Rose.
Bald of Evil: Literally. The horns evil-doers sprout cause a receding hairline. Averted in the second game, wherein Ghoulish players will still have a full head of hair when they sprout their horns. Some sort of twisted demonic evolution at work?
Big Bad: Jack of Blades.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lady Grey
Black Swords Are Better: Obsidian weapons are some of the most powerful non-legendaries — only master weapons are more powerful.
Broken Bridge: Demon Doors, kind of.
Broken Pedestal: Maze
Bully Hunter: However it's optional, your character can instead choose to be the bully.
But Thou Must: The Bandit King sends assassins after the Hero whether you kill him or not.
Cutscene Incompetence: Justified, as it is the Satanic Jack of Blades capturing you.
Demoted to Extra: Thunder if you choose to expose Lady Gray.
The Dragon: Maze is The Dragon to Jack of Blades.
Elite Mooks: Minions and Summoners.
Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: The main character is always either referred to as "Hero" or whatever title he currently has.
Everyone is Bi: In the original. Though many folks took a while to admit it.
Eye Scream: The protagonist's sister had her eyes sliced out during the bandit raid in the prologue when she refused to tell them anything about her brother.
Finish Him: Jack of Blades orders you to do this to Whisper. You can refuse, although you forfeit a cash prize. Also, Twinblade and Saker.
Foreshadowing: One of the new quests in TLC involves a group of Minions attempting an unknown ritual. This ends up hinting at Jack's relation with the Summoners.
Game-Breaking Bug: If you jump at the right spot in the Guild Cave at the beginning of the game, you can jump through the wall and get stuck outside of the map. Since this is an important scene and you haven't found any other locations, you can not fast travel out of it. If you save there, you must start the game over. On the bright side, since it's at the start of the game, you don't lose too much.
Heroic Albino: Choosing the good path for your character results in a very white, glowing hero
History Repeats: In a very bad way: Jack of Blades is an immortal entity that attaches itself to a new host each time the old one is destroyed by tricking the owner into wearing its mask. Fortunately, you can end the cycle for good—and in fact Fable II reveals that it's Canon that this happened.
Hoist by His Own Petard: The Guildmaster for a hero who kills him, in an odd way. In his youth, he was one of the heroes who rebelled against the idea that heroes absolutely had to be good, arguing that heroes had to be free to make their own choices. (The ideology of choice is a big thing in Albion.) If your hero becomes an evil monster who turns on his mentor, it produces a certain irony. Combined with Fridge Brilliance, as the Guildmaster goes into a rant about the morality of your characters actions. One wonders if at any point the Guildmaster had a similar speech aimed at himself, being warned that destroying the laws governing a heroes actions would create a force that would destroy him. Ultimately, this immorality in many heroes leads to their destruction on the advent of readily available firearms when people don't need heroes any more and don't put up with their rampages.
100% Heroism Rating: Aversion. No matter how gloriously good your actions in the story have been, if you've still murdered enough people to push your Karma Meter deep into the red the villagers will have no inhibitions about telling you just how they feel about their "hero".
- Fable is an aversion in another way; you can murder a half-dozen people in broad daylight, then buy off your bad karma with a tofu binge, so you can keep using the Physical Shield spell, which makes you utterly unkillable and helps you gain experience at an astonishing rate.
If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten: A demon door that asks you to perform an evil act in front of him.
Infinity+1 Sword: The Sword of Aeons, in the regular version of the game is the strongest weapon in the game. In the Updated Rerelease, it's only the strongest one handed sword, as its attack power is halved. Avo's Tear is equal to the Sword of Aeons, and almost identical in appearance, but it's gotten in a much nicer way.
Karma Houdini: The Knothole Glade Chief's eldest son in the good ending of the Ransom quest. Even if you expose his plot to have his younger brother murdered, nothing seems to happen to him.
Lost Forever: If you turn in Lady Grey rather than marry her, you can never get through the Demon Door near her home.
- Also, if you give all your Silver Keys to the demon door in the Necropolis before you've collected all of them and opened all the treasure chests, you will never be able to open the chests afterwards as there won't be enough silver keys left in the world for you to collect.
Loud of War: The Hero is tortured by listening to the warden read homegrown poetry, which all the other characters treat as worse than the standard whips and chains in the torture chamber.
Machiavelli Was Wrong: This was the reason Maze didn't kill the Hero.
Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Jack of Blades does this in the end of the expansion pack to the game.
Multiple Endings: Two, though the Updated Rerelease continues the story past that, and makes which you chose less important by weakening the Sword of Aeons if you choose to get it, and giving you the identical Avo's Tear if you choose not to.
Night of the Living Mooks: These are slow enemies that hit hard and like to come in numbers.
Outlaw Town: Twinblade's Camp
Phosphor-Essence: Very good/pure characters develop a faint aura.
Point of No Return: Once you choose to remove the barrier in Hook Coast, you're locked into the endgame and can't do any sidequests until the Playable Epilogue.
Rapid Aging: Your character gets a little older every time you level up. This isn't to scale with anyone else, which lead to somewhat disconcerting scenes where you finally meet your long-lost sister who appears to be a young woman while you're a geezer.
- Hell, if you rank yourself enough, you'll look older than your mother when you finally see her!
Scary Black Man: Thunder. He's the biggest, burliest bastard in the whole of Albion, and he hates your guts no matter what you do, even if you take mercy on his sister in the arena.
Self-Imposed Challenge: The game allows the player to make boasts before quests, where the player gambles money on being able to complete it nude, unarmed, or with some other added challenge.
Shout Out: The Kryndon tattoo.
The Kryndons are an old order of assassins who live normal lives by day.
- One of the weapons looks exactly like the Scythe from the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- When you attack the guards they ocassionally say "It's just a flesh wound".
Stop Helping Me!: The Guild Master. "Try to get your combat multiplier even higher!" "Your health is low. Do you have any potions? Or food?" "Check the guild for more quests."
- Parodied in one scene in The Lost Chapters where Jack of Blades starts mocking these things. "Hero, there is an important quest card waiting for you at the bottom of a slime pit!"
- Your Combat multiplier is atrocious!
- Apparently not just limited to players. In Fable II, some of the loading screens mention a rumor that the Guild Master was eventually found dead with the words "Your health is low" carved into his forehead.
Technicolor Blade
Ungrateful Bastard: Even if you spare him, Twinblade will still try to have you assassinated. Multiple times.
- Even if you spare his sister, Thunder will still treat you like garbage.
- The Archaeologist is a prick to you even after you save him.
Unwinnable by Design: The stat level ups you need to unlock the Harbinger are at a fixed number, but the stats don't count until you first try to get the sword. So if any of your strength levels is at a point where it can't be leveled up anymore, tough cookies.
- Actually averted. If you first try to get the sword with very high stats, you can still unlock it by maxing all the relevant stats (even if the increase does not meet the normal requirements). Or, if you have all stats maxed the first time you try the sword, you will get special dialogue about your awesomeness, because The Dev Team Thinks of Everything.
Updated Rerelease: The Lost Chapters, which adds many more side quests, new areas, another fight with Jack of Blades and several new weapons.
Urban Legend of Zelda: The game is rife with these, with the most famous being the sandgoose and the Singing Sword, as well as the Dragon Cliff, the music box, and a host of other things.
Useless Useful Stealth: Required to get past one section, pretty useless everywhere else.
Walking the Earth: If you spare Whisper, she ends up leaving the Guild to do this. According to the Oracle in The Lost Chapters, she eventually settles down and becomes a famous guardian of an unknown land in the west.
You Can't Thwart Stage One: Even though you have a virtual army of guildmates (including Thunder, depending on your previous choices), you're always just a few seconds too late to stop Jack from activating the Focus Sites.