Half Gamer Half Crab

I've been interested in Fable for a long time. I don't mean since the previews of Fable II started or anything. I mean since the game was a fuzzy pre-alpha screenshot and 40 words of text talking about a Project Ego.

So you can imagine that I was into the hype surrounding Fable. The talk of freedom and morality and so forth. And you can imagine that I was disappointed by the final game. Now don't get me wrong, because it was actually a very solid, enjoyable game. It's well made, fun, fast-paced, and all that jazz. I've got few complaints about Fable as a game, just disappointment that it was Fable and not, well, Project Ego.

Fable 2 looks like a different story. We Brits have to wait a couple more days sadly, but what I am hearing so far sounds good. Great, even. Specifically what sounds great is that you can purchase every single property in the entire game world, and then rent them out or whatever, gaining income for doing so. This, in itself, is wonderful. And I just can't help but think about the possibilities of, for instance, purchasing the business and home of someone who was unkind to me as a child, decades later, and turn him out onto the streets. I want to make him a PAUPER.

Or I want to buy an entire town and run it like the archetypical cruel Victorian industrialist. I want to grind them under my heels as I grow fat and gout-ridden on their toil. I want to inspire the writing of Das Kapital. Or to simply buy the entire world and ban everyone from every property, turning the nation into one of bums. (Will they commit crimes out of desperation?)

I don't expect that it will be quite that detailed and freeform. But it'd be quite lovely to get even a few of these things to some degree. And it does sound like Fable 2 comes closer than most to this sort of freedom!