One of the most impressive things about Fable 3 isn't the redesigned menu system (it's a room!), the path from revolutionary to royalty (it's like two games in one!), or even the "touch" mechanic (drag a hobo to his death!); instead, it's the release window: this year. For those of you keeping track, that's just two years and five days after the release of Joystiq's 2008 game of the year, which Peter Molyneux told us is a new experience for him.

"A very unique thing about Fable 3," Molyneux said, "is it's been developed in two years. At both Lionhead and Bullfrog, I've never done a game in two years before." And what that means is that Fable 3 looks a lot like Fable 2. But before you run off, screaming something about "sequelitis" and the "creative bankruptcy of the video game industry" we want to be clear: While I, and most of the Joystiq staff, loved Fable 2, we can all agree it would have benefitted from some refinement.