I’ve recently been replaying Fable: The Lost Chapters on PC (released in 2005), and in the midst of struggling through certain frustrating sections, a thought occurred to me – have these sections always frustrated me, because of terrible game design? Or am I frustrated because the game is outdated?

The answer, for me, was the former. Fable: The Lost Chapters has frustrated me since I first played it in 2005. The game is outdated in some areas, sure (almost 20 years later), particularly in terms of how it controls and looks, but those don’t really hurt it much at all. In fact, they add to the game’s charm. No, what hurts the game today was following the design trends of the time – specifically the trends of the late 90s and early-to-mid 00s.

Those design choices were frustrating back then, and they are even more frustrating today, in the year of Our Lord, 2025. What’s more, only certain games relied on those trendy design choices. Others stayed as far away from them as possible – to their benefit.

So, let’s examine each of them, shall we?

Inconsistent and/or punishing checkpoint systems

This one comes up often when people talk about outdated game design. The thing is though, adequate checkpoints and/or the ability to save anywhere have been around on the PC since the 90s. Many games on the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox also had adequate save systems.

For example, Halo: Combat Evolved, a game released on the Xbox in 2001, had checkpoints roughly after every combat encounter; sometimes multiple checkpoints within a single long encounter. As a result, dying didn’t feel like a huge slap on the face. The much-maligned Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness let you save anywhere you wanted (on all systems, not just the PC), and it wasn’t the only game to let you do that – on consoles or PC.

Halo: Combat Evolved had a pretty good checkpoint system.

At the same time, many games in the 00s – on those same consoles – also had very poor and/or punishing save systems. Those save systems were, for whatever reason, ported onto PCs (in some cases), which is what we got with Fable: The Last Chapters – originally released on the Xbox in 2004, as Fable.

So, what is a punishing save system? It’s a save system that doesn’t save your progress for long chunks of time, forcing you to repeat lengthy segments of the game every time you die – whether it’s an entire level, mission, quest or just a long section of an area. Best modern examples of this are Elden Ring, Lies of P and other deliberately difficult and punishing games. This type of save system isn’t bad, as it both creates tension and forces you to be more deliberate with your actions – when implemented correctly.

A poor checkpoint system is an inconsistent one. Sometimes the game would be very generous with its checkpoints, granting them every few minutes, and other times it would be very stingy, without any rhyme or reason. The game that makes me think of this the most is Mafia 2, which would sometimes save your progress after every minor action, while at other times, it would make you repeat extensive yet uneventful sections. We’re talking 10-to-20-minute sections. The game isn’t difficult per se, but dying in it feels like a chore all the same – especially in segments where most of what you have to do is drive from point A to B, which could occasionally result in you accidentally bumping into a police car and getting shot by cops.

Fable: The Lost Chapters is no different. Sometimes you’re forced to go through multiple areas before a checkpoint would kick in. In one particularly egregious example, you have to get through a series of unskippable cutscenes/dialogue inside a prison cell, do a race and then sneak past a guard to steal a key. Fail the race or the stealth section, and you’re back in the cell, listening to the same unskippable dialogue scene, before being forced to do the same race and then go through the same exact stealth section. It doesn’t help that the stealth section has a trial-and-error component to it – if you steal the wrong key, you get detected and have to repeat all of the above-mentioned chores again.

This isn’t hard or anything, but it is needlessly punishing, as if the game deliberately wants to waste your time. Not cool.

Modern games have largely done away with such punishing checkpoint systems, even tough games like Elden Ring, which provides a checkpoint near every boss battle (unlike its predecessors, Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne). Even when checkpoints are sparse in certain parts of Elden Ring, you’re never subjected to minutes of unskippable dialogue or cutscenes upon death. You’re thrown back into the action, so you can try again almost immediately.

Fable can sometimes feel like Elden Ring (in a bad way).

Some old games had this notion that if a section is “easy,” it doesn’t need to be broken up by checkpoints. I disagree, because small mistakes can lead you to repeating a whole bunch of stuff. Driving for 10 minutes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas isn’t hard, but bumping into a police car and having your mission ruined by a car chase means that you’ll have to spend another 10 minutes on that same tedious driving segment. Again, not cool.

Many games of the era didn’t have this issue, while others reused these tired tropes again and again. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is still a masterpiece in my eyes, but man, some of those missions were a real pain in the butt.

Escort quests/missions

Fable: The Lost Chapters is also guilty of having escort missions. Combined with its poor checkpoint system, things can get pretty annoying, as you can imagine. Luckily, there aren’t too many such missions, and again, they are relatively easy – especially when compared to its contemporaries, like the Grand Theft Auto games.

There’s not much to add to this other than escort missions where you have a defenseless and braindead companion with a health bar that cannot be replenished are not only frustrating but actively anti-fun. Nobody likes baby-sitting – especially for free.

The AI in a lot of these games would often also irritate, as is the case with Fable: The Lost Chapters,  where you have characters either refusing to follow you or rushing straight into danger and getting themselves killed.

Most modern(ish) games either don’t have supporting characters with their own health bars – as is the case with The Last of Us and God of War (2018) – or the developers ensure that their AI is good enough not screw you over when you least expect it – as is the case with Tango Gameworks’ The Evil Within games.

Escort missions were not in every action game, at the time mind you. Half-Life 2, for instance (released in 2004 – the same year as the Xbox version of Fable), featured a prominent companion in Alyx Vance, who couldn’t be killed. She followed you without getting stuck in the environment, and she actually helped you out (Fable companions, on the flipside, were only good for dying). Halo: Combat Evolved also didn’t feature any companions whose death would lead to instant failure, and that game came out in 2001. It did feature squad mates, but their deaths never affected the status of your mission.

Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 (Episode 1, to be specific).

Escort missions were a strange trend of the 90s and 00s that some games embraced, while others didn’t. I’m glad plenty of games avoided them, but those that didn’t always annoyed me.

Timed quests/missions

Time limits stress the living crap out of me. Tight time limits downright piss me off. In some of the older games, such as the PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto games, time limits were incredibly unforgiving, requiring you to either do the whole run perfectly or restart. Jak 2 probably had some of the tightest, most brutal time limits I’ve ever seen in a game.

And again, Fable: The Lost Chapters is guilty of having time limits too. Thankfully, they are pretty forgiving, compared to many of its contemporaries (like Jak 2). Still, it doesn’t make them any less annoying.

Time limits still exist in games, but these days, they are either very generous or confined to games that rely on time limits as part of their core gameplay loop (meaning they are rarely thrown into RPGs and other non-time-sensitive games, such as Grand Theft Auto 5, for instance).

As is the case with escort missions, not every game at the time had unforgiving time limits, or any time limits for that matter, but those that did always annoyed me.

Poorly implemented stealth sections

Stealth in modern games is so, so much better than it used to be. Despite being action games, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Fable: The Lost Chapters both feature stealth sections where getting spotted means instant failure. The problem is that stealth in those games is too basic to be enjoyable. Usually, you press or hold the “sneak” button to crouch-walk, then proceed to hide behind a tree, wall or some other object to wait out the enemy as they pass by before moving forward. Stealth kills were also possible in many non-stealth-focused games at the time, such as Fable, but they weren’t enough to make up for other shortcomings.

Stealth in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

You couldn’t hide in tall grass like you could in a dedicated stealth game, such as Metal Gear Solid 3, nor were there any indicators above enemies’ heads to let you know how close you were to being detected. Instead, the AI would detect you as soon as you were spotted. Games didn’t have advanced alarm systems either. You couldn’t move or hide bodies. You couldn’t hide in lockers, haystacks or similar hiding spots. You couldn’t climb much either. All you could do was crouch-walk around enemies and occasionally take them out. That’s it.

Stealth in Metal Gear Solid 3.

When these stealth sections in games like Fable were made mandatory, they often felt like punishment. Dedicated stealth games like Thief, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell were far more engaging, which made games with half-assed stealth, like Fable and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, all the more frustrating – even back then.

While stealth is more prevalent than ever in modern games, it’s rarely mandatory (except in the early build of Star Wars: Outlaws, for some reason, which tried to buck this trend). Furthermore, stealth in most modern games is far more fun, with plenty of options. Say what you will about Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, but at least you can hide in tall grass, while each enemy has a detection meter above their head (or in the area of their general… body). That’s got to count for something.

Okay, so old games are painful to play… what else is new?

No. Old games are fun! But yes, some old games are frustrating, and they always have been. That’s my point. If you’re looking to replay old games, know that no all of them were this frustrating. Many of them were quite fun. Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid games, for instance, still hold up remarkably well. So do plenty of RPGs from that era, like Baldur’s Gate 2 and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Give them a try, why don’t you. You’ll see.