This Lionhead Studios game Fable III is now available to the PC! While it has been on the Xbox 360 for ages, it only was released to PC users in the last couple days.

It’s an excellent RPG, but it didn’t transfer so well to the PC, as it is a Xbox360 port after all.

That doesn’t mean you have to put up with all the problems often littered within ports. We can help you fix these Fable III game problems so that the game runs more natively.

“You cannot join this game because you do not have the same downloadable content as the host”

Unfortunately, to get passed this annoyance you have to ensure that you both truly have the same files — DLC and all. The other person must uninstall the DLC — or you must — in order to play together. HOWEVER, this may cause the saved game data to be unusable…So you may have to start over then. This wasn’t a problem in Fable 2 oddly enough.

Game is Laggy / Low Performance

This is a console port from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions so low performance and lag is a byproduct of bad porting. The low frames per second (FPS) is to be expected in this regard, but that doesn’t mean we cannot help improve or raise the FPS or lower the amount of lagging! The lag or stuttering that occurs is most frequently experienced in towns or areas with many NPCs. Some people suspect there is a memory leak with this game as well, but that is NOT the cause for the lag or poor performance. Some tips to help troubleshoot this problem and increase the FPS:

— Turn OFF VSYNC through the game menu and instead run it / force V-SYNC on through your graphics card (GPU) Control Panel (NVIDIA Control Panel or ATI Catalyst Control Center)! This will help bypass the 30fps cap / limit and get rid of some of the blurring!
— Similar to the above suggestion, try enabling TRIPLE BUFFERING through your video cards control panel after lowering in-game options (like mentioned below). A recommended program for games that use Direct3D that will allow you to enable VSYNC for your monitors refresh rate and Triple Buffering is D3DOverrider (for NVIDIA cards)
— Turn down through the effects slider — blur, antialiasing (AA), bloom shader / shadder effect, Depth of Field (DoF)
— Turn down the tree texture details from high / max to medium
— If you use NVIDIA 3D VISION, then uninstall it! The NVIDIA 3D-Vision driver component is notorious for causing significant drops in performance!
— Turn off shadows. Alternatively, if you wish to keep shadows ON, then you may want to also keep VSYNC enabled as shadows can act up depending on your settings. Experiment and find out what works best for you!

Game is Stuck on Preload / Locked

If your game won’t unlock or is having the error message “This game is currently unavailable. Please try again at another time” then there’s not much that can be done other than contacting Steam Support. If anyone else has a solution for this, let us know! You may end up having to just download the game. This is most common when you get the game outside of your own region, such as if someone gives it to you as a gift. It’ll show Pre-load as an option instead of Play. Note that this is most common during the initial release date and hopefully will decline as time passes.

Steam Stuck Decrypting Game

Annoyingly enough, and as with every game downloaded through Steam, you may be experiencing the typical problem where the Steam decryption process is stuck at a percentage. You can try downloading / redownloading the game to attempt to fix the decrypt problem. You can also try downloading from a different server / area.

Save File Corrupted

For whatever reason, some people are running into problems where their save / saved game data become corrupted and no longer works. I recommend making manual backups of your saved games for the time being until a patch addresses the issue of corruption. Save twice in the save room just in case! And avoid ALT TAB (tabbing out of the game Window). Just a FYI on the location / path of the save files…
C:\\Users\\USERNAME\\Saved Games\\Lionhead Studios\\Fable 3
They’ll be in a folder with random numbers and letters. I recommend making copies of this folder every now and then on the off chance you do get a corruption in your save file.

How to Disable / Remove or Lower the Blur Effect

Perhaps one of the most unwelcomed game effects used often in Fable Three is its over usage of the blur affect. It helps people not notice the frames per second cap.
— Set your effects level to “Reasonable”
— Turn off VSYNC

Mouse Doesn’t Work

If your mouse isn’t working, then it could be from a 3rd party program interfering with it. Xfire is known to cause problems with Fable 3, oddly enough. Close xfire if you have it open and then reopen the game.

“Fable 3 / Fable III Main Executable Has Stopped Working” / Runtime Error / Crashes to Desktop (CTD / C2D) / Fail (Failure) to Launch / Black Screen

When running the EXE, you may encounter this error message randomly in regards to Fable3.exe causing an APPCRASH. It may be related to XLIVE.DLL or your save files being in the wrong location. Of course, it could be related to the Windows Live ID Sign-in or some other problems. This also happens after obtaining the guild seal sometimes or even several other things. Try the following:

— Download and Install Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant 6.5 choosing between the 64bit and 32bit versions depending on your Windows operating system
— Try to register your xlive.dll by going to Start -> Run — cmd — then type in REGSVR32 /u C:\\path\\to\\the\\xlive.dll
— Run the Fable 3 exe in Windows XP compatibility Service Pack 3 (SP3) mode, Launcher, as well as Steam and any other related file
— Close any program that could possibly interfere with the game or its components (i.e. a firewall)
— Go to the Control Panel and choose uninstall/reinstall and choose REPAIR
— Reinstall / Repair Games For Windows Live / GWL
— Reboot your computer
— Reinstall Microsoft Games for Windows and Windows Live Essentials (GFWL / GWL / WLE). You can repair Microsoft Life Essentials via the Control Panel instead, but try reinstalling completely if that does not work.
— Try logging into the Games for Windows Marketplace before launching / opening Fable 3
— After reinstalling GFWL, copy the xlive.dll from C:\\Windows\\System32 and paste it in \\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\fable 3\\ to fix the xlive.dll error. Try registering it if necessary with the CMD from above.

Note: That you should run things in admin / administrative mode! Issues with crashing are sometimes from lack of permissions, which doesn’t occur under administrator mode so try that if you experience a crash.

Cannot Redeem Code / “Can’t retrieve information from LIVE. Please try again later. Status Code: 800700e8”

Try these steps to solve the error:
— Disable your Firewall
— Download Windows Games Marketplace
— Sign in to your account and redeem the code! You can then download the items.

Computer Hardware / System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista or Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 4000+
RAM: 2 GB
HDD: 12 GB free disk space
Graphics: 256 MB Graphics Memory
Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
DirectX: Version 9.0c

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista or Windows 7
CPU: Core to Duo 2.9 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: 12 GB free disk space
Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory
Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
DirectX: Version 9.0c

Supported Graphics Cards:
Minimum – NVidia 7600GT or ATI HD 2600 Pro
Recommended – Nvidia 260GTX 896MB or ATI 5770 1GB or higher
Fable 3 Gameplay HD Video

This game plays fine in a crossfire / xfire and SLI configuration. A hotfix for NVIDIA and ATI cards may be around the corner to help them handle this game with more optimization and ease.