The only major things which were taken out is a fully free roaming environment (a la morrowind) and that every NPC ages. Now, only characters important to you will go through a significant aging process. Also, the promise Fable being different by having no stat pages and that the hero would evolve before our eyes while we didnt even notice it. Last I heard, when you gain experience from picking up orbs (W.T.F.) you are allowed to assign two kinds of experience points. General and Specific. Specific goes to one of the three different categories of Skill, Will, and Strength. General is well, general. I think I read that whenever you go to the guild master to assign this experience to strength, your avatar muscles bulge and become bigger. Not what I had originally expected...
I'm more disappointed at myself than the game though
. I let my own imagination take control of me. I expected impossible results from this game. But, with anything that has dissapointed me something new and better as emerged. I don't think anyone would have thought up the gestures system. BRILLIANT!
Really, the AI of Fable is the most amazing thing about the game, and nobody should go without playing it atleast once.
Oh, and Cany, the reason why Fable doesnt look as great as PE is because it isnt Anti-Aliased and something needed to be sacraficed in order for this game to be kept up at a steady 30 FPS.