Molyneux, one of the most imaginative and ambitious game designers of our time, has consistently seen his works fall short of their potential. No question, he sets the bar high: Molyneux is fascinated with the roles of good and evil and how they can shape virtual worlds. That's a good topic, especially with more games allowing players the freedom to be less than heroic and still succeed.

And Molyneux's ideas are fascinating. Black & White was to have been a huge leap forward in artificial intelligence, with the player's actions directly influencing an AI avatar which would in turn live in the world around it. And now Fable was to have been a dynamic wide-open fantasy world where the player's actions whether good or evil directly affected the character's look as well as the reactions of non-player characters. Even better, rival NPC heroes would compete for quests and the adoration (or fear) of the world at large.

Unfortunately, limitations like time and AI advances and the all-important dollar have forced Molyneux's final products to fall somewhat short of his ideas. Black & White was hindered by a steep learning curve (for both player and AI) that often required too much patience from gamers looking for instant gratification. Plus, the spell system, which required elaborate mouse gestures sometimes beyond what mouse drivers could interpret, was needlessly complex. And now with Fable, similar problems have reduced an awesome idea to a fun but not at all revolutionary RPG.

Players expected something on the scope of Morrowind, a hardcore RPG with a vast world and the freedom to do as the player wished. Fable is, instead, an RPG-lite more like Knights of the Old Republic, with small zones housing generic NPCs and an extremely linear storyline.

The story begins with our hero as a child; he's forgotten his sister's birthday and so must do good deeds around the village to make some gold and buy a present. It's a nice introduction to the ways of Fable's world, and despite the emphasis on good deeds allows for some evil action. Soon, bandits raid the village looking for our hero (who is hidden behind a slat fence; they don't look too hard). They kill his father, steal away his mother and sister and leave him to be found later by a mysterious man named Maze. Maze escorts the boy to the Guild of Heroes for training to fulfill some as-yet enigmatic destiny.

From the outset, Fable is less customizable than the aforementioned KOTOR. There is no way to play anything other than a white male, though his look later evolves depending on the player's actions. The training sequences, though, are good, and introduce a fairly easy control scheme. I wish there had been more emphasis on easily controlling the character's many expressions; they directly affect NPC reactions later in the game, but for some reason the player is left to figure them out.

After training, our hero is released into the world with a couple of quests generated at the Guild of Heroes. I have to admit, I was expecting to go back often to pick up randomly generated quests. Instead, the Guild hands out mostly story-related quests, with only a few secondary quests available every so often. There are some random quests available out in the world, but most often players will run across NPC traders fighting off bandits. You can help them or slaughter them for experience and such, but I was expecting lots more structured but generic quests (escort missions, search and destroy, etc.).

One more reason Molyneux must be frustrated: His games often mar their high concept with needlessly complex features. In Black & White, as I mentioned, spellcasting was the primary gameplay function that suffered from this. In Fable, there are two. First is experience. You get experience from defeating enemies, sort of. Rather than auto-allocating, dead enemies drop glowing orbs that eventually disappear. Using the right trigger pulls nearby orbs to you, but in large, pitched battles you'll still lose a good amount. There is no good reason for this.

The second needless complex feature directly hurts owners of first-generation Xboxes such as myself. During actual quests, the player cannot save the game. Instead, you can save your hero's inventory, skills, etc. That means you may have to replay a quest, but you'll be doing so with the items and experience and money and so on gained during the first run-through.

For whatever reason, the Fable disc is extremely prone to being read as a dirty or damaged disc by first-generation Xbox drives. That means lots and lots of opening the tray and reloading the disc. That also means lots of quests that have to be replayed, because they're generally long and can't be saved halfway through. Again, no good reason, though I suspect the devs thought it might ratchet up the challenge level.

It sounds as if I hated Fable. I didn't at all. It's a good game in the RPG-lite sense, and features some very cool moments. I very much liked the subtle choices that could be made; for example, walking away from a defeated boss (who begs to be killed) rather than killing him leads to a large amount of positive alignment points.

I loved the level-up system. You get four types of experience: generic, strength, skill and will. What you get depends on which skills you use most often. Points from the three specific areas can only be used to level up in those areas, with generic available for anything. Rather than forcing the player to choose between the usual RPG character classes, Fable lets you put points into whatever you want. My first character, for example, was heavy on physical skills (melee power, health and natural armor) while dabbling in some skill areas (specifically, speed and guile) and totally ignoring the spellcasting abilities in the will section.

The graphics are good, especially the environments at different times of day. NPCs are not as good graphically, with similar models used very often. At one point, you meet a childhood friend who then walks away. Because she's the same female model as a number of other women in the area, I found it impossible to locate her again. I also found it odd in a game that allows for varying body types for the main character that all of the NPCs were either your usual top-heavy fantasy women or surprisingly buff peasant men. Minor quibbles that don't really affect gameplay.

Sound is very good, with Danny Elfman contributing to the music (quite obviously in some points).

Fable is at its core an engaging game but easy to put down. You won't spend months wandering wherever you want in the gameworld, but probably will finish the main plot with a week of regular play (or less). Don't go into Fable expecting nearly as deep an experience as was originally planned. That's got fans just as frustrated as Peter Molyneux.