Wow, i just remembered that I never actually finished Fable 2, I've still got it sitting on my ecsbawks game pile. The last thing i remember is getting bored of the main story and buying all the alcohol i could find and drinking it all at once, while naked, in the middle of Bowerstone to see what people's reactions would be. Unfortunately, all that happened was my character instantly went from being a well toned hulk of a guy to being the worlds fattest man. I stopped playing after that.
Anyway, bad game design? Three words: Mandatory Optional Quests. God DAMN it annoys me when games have this. I understand that optional quests are fine and can add a lot of replay to the game. But damnit if I want to just rush through the storyline, why is it that it gets to a point where my character is incapable of beating the main quest enemies? Doesn't it defy logic that in order to finish the storyline you are REQUIRED to do things that are marked as 'optional'?
In that way I quite like DA:O's storyline. Sure, the pre-patch enemies had their difficulty dialed up to 12 but since the patch I'm quite enjoying being able to go through the world without spending twice as much time grinding my character on menial 'Please, Lord, fetch me 3 bear skins instead of saving the freaking world' quests.