Book Review: The Art of Fable Legends

Highlight for this book for me are the character and creature designs. All the characters look and feel so different from one another. There's so much personality that comes from the way they dress and also the way they stand. All of them look terrific and solid, like they have weight.

Each main character, or each Hero, has a few pages of art that consists of three full page artwork of a game screenshot, a full coloured illustration and a 3D render in grayscale. Usually, I don't like game screenshots but in this case, there's actually some sort of painterly effect on the character screenshot and it actually looks quite good. The art direction and treatment is nice and often gives the characters a caricature and stylised feel. Even the 3D grayscale renders look like they were painted. In addition to the full page artworks, the other pages are filled with smaller sketches, and coloured concepts and costume variations.

Creature designs are also beautiful. I prefer the raw texture of the pencil sketches to the digitally coloured concept drawings. Character and human designs talk up 135 out of this 192-page hardcover artbook.

The environment art look great too. I love the houses and the quirky way they look with the slight slant applied. The mood and atmosphere are terrific, especially the evening or night scenes with glowing elements with diffused lighting. There aren't a lot of prop designs, but mostly the trees, stone relics, Demon Doors, brickwork of the houses.

Last few pages are the Hero cards and ability icons as they appear in game.

There's a good amount of text too, not too lengthy, that talks about the designs for all the artworks.

Overall, it's a wonderful companion to the game. Get it for the character designs.

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