Fable

Been playing Fable: The Lost chapters for the PC. Great game, superb even. Haven't had this much fun since KOTOR 2. Fable has a very intricate morality system. If you walk into a town, go into someone's house and search their bookshelves for items and remove them, you will be punished if someone sees you do it. The owner of the house will run off and find a guard, who will come and offer to take the fine for stealing or breaking and entering or lockpicking or whatever it is the villager reported, and if you decline to pay they will attack you. Different crimes have different penalties, for instance if you kill a guard its a $2000 fine, if you are trespassing in someone's house it is only $150. The key is not to get caught if you are going to break the law. When you build up your stealth skill high enough you can lockpick and steal items from shop owners. At night, when everyone is sleeping and the guards are patroling, you can break into a shop and steal things. Whenever you do something wrong like this you get evil points; when you do good things like kill a bandit or give money to someone who needs it you get good points.

I'm playing through the first time evil cause its easier to do. Even breaking barrels in town for items like healing potions or food is vandalism and stealing, and you get fined for it. Also, sometimes in the heat of combat you could accidentally target a friendly and take them down, evil points galore. Kinda different from most RPGs, where you can walk into everyone's house, break their pots or boxes or open their treasure chests for money or food or items and no one cares. I'm focusing on strength and speed and melee attacks, next time through I'll play the Gandalf/Elminster/Merlin character and be an uber good magic user.

The world is alive, more so than any game I have played. In the wild between cities you will run into traders and people traveling to go to other towns, there is a day and night system so if you arrive at town in the middle of night and need to buy something shops will be closed. You can talk to everyone, maybe not have in depth conversations but there are different actions and expressions you learn along the way. Such as flirting, flexing your muscles, standing in a heroic pose, belching, pretending to be a chicken, and so on. You can have women (or men) fall in love with and marry you. You can buy real estate, fix it up, live in it or rent it out. You can make money by buying goods in one town and selling them for more money in another town. And there isn't an unlimited supply of goods, items will actually sell out until they get another shipment in. You can punt chickens for points (or just for fun), compete in an archery range for prizes, escort traders to towns and have them follow or wait in places while you clear out the bandits or monsters ahead.

I haven't even gone into the elaborate skills and leveling system. Its very easy to make whatever kind of character you want. Offensive magic user, beserker melee barbarian, stealthy rogue sniper. Storyline is decent, kinda cliche/predictable, but maybe there's a plot twist coming I haven't seen yet.