14 DAY TRIAL // Fable II gets a relaunch on the Xbox live in the form of episodic content. “Fable II: Game Episodes” had its first episode come out today and will be available for free. The episodic release will feature the full game's Achievements system and will be fully compatible with the “Knothole Island” and “See the Future” game addons. The full story of the game will be released along with a total of five episodes, with the remaining four that haven't been launched yet awaiting to be priced.
This first and last free episode of the game will introduce players to the world of Albion and will depict the life of our hero from childhood up to the trials of young adulthood. The episode will take up 2GB of hard disk space but won't interfere with the recently revised XBLA limited size cap, as the game will be available in the "Games on Demand" section.
A game released in episodic content has been seen before, as the Half Life 2 Episodes have already seen a second installment and are awaiting their third. But Microsoft got the whole thing backwards, or worse, they know exactly what they're doing. If Half Life 2 Episode I and Half Life 2 Episode II offered a brand-new story and followed up from where the original HL2 left off, Fable 2: Game Episodes just offers the original game, but in bits and pieces. The Half Life Episode series was even regarded as a whole new Half Life by the fans, for the simply vast amount of improvements and additions it brought from the standalone HL2.
The idea of episodic content was originally created to speed up the release process of a game and reduce the time it takes for it to reach the fans. Once the game engine and all technical foundations of the game were laid out, the story would slowly be laid on top of it as it was written. With the technical details out of the way the creative process would take over and receive everyone's full attention. From episode to episode, developers could also make use of the recent improvements made in the engineering department of graphics evolutions and tweak the new episodes of the game. In short, it meant that games would be shorter but made faster and would improve from installment to installment. But Fable II: Game Episodes offers nothing new, and with the disc game currently priced at $30, the episodes would probably end up costing more.