1 Jul, 2011
Fans of open-world RPGs, listen up, because Big Huge Games is getting ready to unleash this title on us in 2012. Cleaning up the awards floor of E3 with Best New IP from Game Trailers and Best RPG from Rip Ten, the stage is set for us to be awed by this new game that could give even Skyrim a run for its money.
You saw that right. Whispers have come around that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will be so epic that it could give Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim some serious competition. In an interview with Game Informer, key members of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, the two studios that will be giving us this RPG nugget, sat down to discuss just what makes Reckoning an RPG with a different flavor of awesome.
For one, a lot of key players that brought Reckoning into being have done a lot of work on previous Elder Scrolls titles, including Ken Rolston, the lead designer behind Morrowind and Oblivion. Rolston was actually thinking about putting the keyboard and mouse away forever, and trading an office chair for a pina colada on a hammock in a sunny place. But that didn’t happen after Oblivion‘s release. Big Huge Games came knocking on his door only a mere four months later. Reckoning may very well be Rolston’s final sashe into the world of gaming, and he wants to go out with a bang. “I want something that is worth having,” said Rolston. “I wasn’t going to come back and do another role-playing game unless it was better than anything I had done before. It’s too much trouble, too many years out of my life, too many opportunities to fail to want to do that.”
Rolston, we’re counting on you not to give us the slip, buddy. Given everything that we have out of E3, it’s already looking like one of the best things to start off 2012 with. Considering the lineup for the end of 2011, many of us will be coming off a diet of grand adventures in Constantinople, and harnessing dragons among other things. How do you make a splash when you’re competing against some really big names?
As executive game creator for Reckoning, Rolston had a few words of wisdom about that. “A good game idea starts with a good premise,” he said. “In fact, I had just played Planescape, and that is actually the best starting premise I have ever seen in any game.” In Reckoning, you begin the story as either a male or female protagonist trying to dig your way out of a grave, which is similar to the aforementioned Planescape. For the main quest, your job is to find out what’s your identity, and just why have you been brought back to life. It’s not exactly like [PROTOTYPE], because clearly your character is not angry enough to destroy the world.
It would be a shame if you were really that angry, because the world of Reckoning is very detailed and involving. It’s beautiful. But beauty itself won’t make a game stand out, especially in this day and age when fantasy RPGs are starting to feel like an annual must-have. So what do you do? You walk up to the stereotypes, shake their hands, have a couple drinks, and then walk away. “Players have to feel like they belong here and like this is a world worth defending,” said Mark Nelson, the creative director to Reckoning. “We always know that eventually you’re going to end up saving the world. If you don’t believe in that world, why bother trying to save it?” An excellent question, and exactly why not all of Reckoning will be about the grimness of life and death.
Perhaps one of the downfalls some players may have to gripe about some RPGs are the lackluster nature of dungeons that pepper the world. Why are they there? Are they there just because, or was somebody just spiteful enough to make a random dungeon for no reason? Rest assured that in Reckoning, everything is there for a reason, including the 120 dungeons. “None of them are just an offshoot,” said world artist Jessica Hara. “They’re all more or less fully fleshed out dungeons. There’s something to explore or a quest involved.”
Good news for us, because that means more loot, right? Absolutely. “This is really just a hardcore RPG at heart,” said Nelson. “It’s got all those numbers, it’s got all that backbone – all that crunchy stuff that RPG fans like.”
Don’t let the goofy look of the character and model designs fool you either. While the artistry might be compared to the likes of World of Warcraft, this won’t be playing anything like it. Combat is simple, but complicated at the same time and incredibly hardcore. “All the basic hardcore fighting game lingo applies to our game,” said Joe Quadara, the lead combat designer for Reckoning. “We’ve got frame advantage, different kinds of hit reacts, juggles, and combos. They’re all valid and in there. They don’t necessarily need to be used, but it’s all there.”
As far as we know, all characters can equip up to two weapons at a time. Each weapon is given its button on the controller, and a trigger is assigned to defend with a shield. As you can guess, this leaves little in the way of chaining up for “devastating combos,” so instead Reckoning‘s combat relies heavily on timing and your stance as opposed to remembering if it’s X Y X or X X Y X X. And obviously, you can switch betwen the two weapons seamlessly to create something new. Attacks are also modified by other actions, such as rolling and then attacking, breaking into a run and then attacking, or something else. See what you can do with just three buttons?
While this adventure sounds more and more interesting as the days go by, we can’t let this one go without something to say about the music. Let’s face it, sweeping symphonic soundtracks are making a huge comeback, but sometimes it might get a little much, maybe even boring. “You can take music from any of those games and shove it into another game, and it doesn’t really matter,” said audio engineer Mark Cromer. “Music is more effective when it goes away sometimes.”
One thing that Reckoning will be throwing back to are themes. We bet you can all hum Darth Vader’s theme or Harry Potter’s theme. But where has that gone in gaming? Not since older Japanese RPGs like the venerated Chrono Trigger or early Final Fantasy titles have we heard the “leitmotif,” or theme song. “It’s an opera term that Wagner created,” explained Cromer. “It’s the concept of attaching a melody or theme to a character, like every time you see Darth Vader.”
Are you prepared to mete out punishment yet? Get ready to journey to a land where nothing should be taken at face value. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is ready to take you away early 2012 on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.
For more information on the game, visit the official website.
Source: “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.” Game Informer. Jul. 2011: pp. 58 – 63.
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