What fable did right that Mass Effect did wrong

I just finished Fable 2's standard story and whilst it was a fairly good game it had some big flaws (I may go into this in another post because at least one of them is interesting). Mass Effect 2 was a far better game, was longer and more enjoyable but there was at least one thing that Fable 2 did right that Mass Effect 2 did wrong. That was choices. Or more precisely "moral choices". In Mass Effect 2 lots of actions you do give you either paragon (good) points or renegade (bad) points and a big sign flashed up saying how many points you got for that action. The amount of good points you get effected how well your character could persuade other characters to do things or bad points could be used to intimidate other characters. These points proved essential to doing lots of story missions if you wanted to keep all characters on side. This meant that if you wanted to do the game well you had to just take one side and keep to it. Fable 2 on the other hand barley gives you any notification of good or bad points, its a small number that is actually pretty much invisible on the non-hd TV I play on whilst back in Bristol. The real way you can tell how you've been is how people react to you, friendly if you are good and scared if you are bad. The points don't really give you any huge in game advantage. The only extra ability you get from them is to express your goodness/badness e.g. my character was good enough to earn the laugh expression. This allowed for me to play less worried about keeping my good stats high doing and could let me just do whatever I wanted and what I felt was right. It felt like a much better system that encouraged me to do get involved more in the role, which is the whole point of a role playing game.

This more subtle touch moral system could also be seen in Fable 2's end of game BIG CHOICE, which there wasn't really as much of in Mass Effect 2 but there were some BIG CHOICEs throught out the game. Mass Effect 2 kept it's two path system even in the big choices. Fable's big choice had a third morally ambiguous choice and it made the question much more meaningful and actually worth thinking about rather than just "pick this for good points". I choose the middle choice and I have no idea whether the game viewed it as a good choice or a bad choice it was just the choice that felt right for my character considering what had happened to him. It made a proper ending for a decent game. Mass Effect 2 lacked this impact in any of its choices and weren't as much choices as they were problems to be solved for an optimal solution.