Fable 2 - Teaser @ official site
 

The official Fable 2 site holds a first teaser trailer, available in low & hires, both streaming and downloadable.
More information.

I saw this one through RPGDot about a month or two ago I think. :)

The first Fable was a shallow, boring game that I had to force myself to finish.

Old trailer

I know we have debated this in the past at the dot - and since then I've come to a similar conclusion, but a slightly different take. I think it is very poor as an RPG but fun as an action game. Personally, I think the game would have actually been better off being more linear. Retracing steps, even with the portals, got old fast.

The arena was tons of fun though!

I played TLC, and thought it was decent for what it was - a small linear action-RPG.

Interesting musketeer ..

I grew to love it. Boasting about quests was very unique. 'I can do this quest naked!' I tried it though and failed. Heh.

From my point of view it has more RPG elements than Oblivion, various quest solutions, different ways to play your character, consequenses in the world(either people love you or hate you, actual reactions from people), you can have an effect on the world such as killing people and taking over their shops etc. And yes, I like to poke and prod people into thinking differently, more often than not it ends up with a long discussion, hehe.

With that said, I still don't think it's a great game, but the few hours it lasts are fun enough.

I know I say this about everything, but the action component has no depth at all. Pure melee types get four verbs: attack, power attack, block, and roll. Outside of the battle with Twinblade, you can safely ignore the last two and just keep swinging. Your first spell remains the most useful from beginning to end. I didn't hate Fable, but the RPGish gimmicks and diversions interested me more than the bulk of the game. I want a better action game from Fable 2. Don't stop developing until you have Devil May Cry, Pete.

I found archery more useful in Fable than other games, and also certain spells were fun. I especially like how you can combine melee, range and magic through various spells like multihit, slow time and teleport. Combat wasn't bad really, if you explored the different possibilities, less repetitive than most similar games in my opinion.

If I played Fable again today, I'd force myself to play it as you suggest by crippling my character, so that I'd have to rely on those support skills. Leaving sixty of my skill points unspent did wonders for DMoMnFnM. But my point would remain that the depth of a game depends on the options available to both you and your opponents. If you could defeat any tactic with "pawn rush", chess would be shallow as well.

That's a good point. The thing I like about combat in Fable is that the player at least has options - even though hack'n slash will get you through the game, you have the possibility to do it in other ways as well. In quite a few games nowadays you only have a click-frenzy way of getting through the game. Even combat in NWN2, which is similar to BG2 in certain ways, is hack'n slash more often than not (by all means, the combat there is better than Fable, don't get me wrong, but it's not BG2).

I played Good and Evil before I reviewed it, and never managed to replay after that (despite trying once a few months ago) … and don't have much interest in trying.