In-game, the lack of menus works particularly well during battle. There's an excellent riddle on the back of the chest, but you can work that one out for yourself. From here, there are four rooms to explore: the Armoury, where you can switch in and out of different weapons the Dressing Room, which provides a much needed improvement to the clothing organisation system from Fable 2 the Live Room, for all the co-op gaming which hadn't gone live at the time of writing, and the Trophy Room which features a couple of very large pinboards displaying your achievements as well as your bank account which is an area you get to fill with a mountain of gold as you amass your fortune. It's also an excellent way of keeping tabs on what you've still got to achieve in each part of the world. The central feature of the Sanctuary is the map of Albion right in the middle, which you can zoom in and out of, and acts as a method of fast travel as well. It's well worth the trade off, but one can't help wondering if it's just for the benefit of the non-RPG hardcore so they're not put off by Strength stats and potions and the like. All the same though, that's all the Sanctuary really is - a 3D set of menus - and while it looks great and is very easy to use, it does involve around 5 per cent more running around and loading than the other method. You don't need to muck around highlighting different options and shoulder buttoning your way through pages, and you don't need to spend two-thirds of your high-end graphic adventure in 2D enterprises. The idea of the Sanctuary is to remove all need for on-screen menus and, for better or for worse, it works. That said, Fable 3 still contains all four of the above, but somehow it doesn’t quite feel like that's the main event. But the bottom line is that it works and it's a nice change from the classic taverns and fireplaces of your average goblins and battle axes fantasy RPG.
To put it slightly unkindly, and don't let this put you off, the closest thing to it is probably the mechanisation meets frontier-land fantasy of the movie the Wild West. All the citizens are looking much more 18th century, only with an added twist anachronistically, from Earth's history. The difference is that industrialisation has hit Albion and everything's all gone a little bit brown where it was generally green before. As it happens, the more adventuring you do, the more you realise you do recognise many of the same paths and city plans. Not only has the action moved on 50 years from when the last hero - you - trod the plains, but it all seems to be presented at slightly different angles. The game is set in the very same land of Albion that the other games are although you won't necessarily recognise it to begin with.