Many moons ago I got a free copy of one of the Fable games for my Xbox 360. My memory is hazy, but I'm thinking it was F3. I tried playing it but found myself feeling it a bit... Dry. I think your comment sums it up perfectly. The world was beautiful, but also very static. The story was okay but very shallow. The characters were very one dimensional. It felt polished, but lacking in character.

I found myself mindlessly wandering through meaningless side quests with little to no interest in getting lost in the lore. Maybe this is my fault for jumping into the the middle of some plot by only playing F3, and maybe I lost out on some major development by never finishing the game, but I just felt like it was okay at best.