Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Previews, Interview, and Scaling Explained

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on October 3rd, 2011

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One of the first things that struck me about Reckoning was just how much there is in this game. I don't mean this in the sense that you're getting book-sized journals thrown at you every few minutes, but just considering the overall scope of Reckoning can be dizzying. After being brought back from the dead to escape the tutorial dungeon, the game's "guiding tracks" quickly fade away, allowing for some endless exploration sessions that have you running from monsters you really shouldn't be tangling with. As the only person in Amalur able to change destiny itself, it was obvious that there were more than a few individuals interested in guiding me to some goal or another. Unfortunately, since I have the attention span of a kitten, I quickly found myself ignoring the main storyline quests, choosing instead to fight Kobolds in a nearby mine for some shiny loot.

Speaking of loot, Reckoning's equipment system is the deepest I've ever seen in any action RPG to date. One of the biggest turnoffs I run into with these kinds of games is that weapon and armor models rarely get the attention they deserve (sometimes they don't get any attention at all!). Usually, development teams like to animate only a handful of models, recoloring them as the player finds 'stronger' versions, but every few hours in Reckoning found me looking, and feeling, like a unique character. Reckoning employs that same addictive randomized loot progression system that made Diablo II so popular, but this is the first time I've seen it really work in the action RPG genre. Nothing was more satisfying than finding a pair of epic daggers for my Finesse / Sorcery character.

Jumping back into my adventures, after upgrading my gear and buying a nice chakram, I was ready to head back out into the world looking like a redheaded Xena the Warrior Princess (or more precisely Xena the Rogue Mage). I opted not to go back to Ettinmere, but instead explored the world.

I passed through the forested areas of Dalentarth into the vast Plains of Erathell. I found the desert plains filled with bands of raiders and abandoned caravans, a huge island city with lots of merchants and quests, and beautiful areas with waterfalls that were just enjoyable to view. I was avoiding combat as often as possible, though in one of my encounters I did happen upon a piece of an armor set. It was a helmet that boosted my elemental abilities and finding the rest of the set would have added even more. A carrot that kept me looking for more pieces to complete the set.

My exploration came to an end in the Southeast corner of the map in an area called Detrye. It is a dusty, rocky region where I encountered many more beasts that I had not seen before. Without going into too much detail, it seems as if this area is meant for much later in the game than where I was in the story. During a talk with Ian Frazier, he stated that the game's main story will have players zigzagging across the map, though touching every area for at least a brief stop. Despite trying to see as much as I could, it turns out that I'd only seen less than a quarter of the world, and only small portions of those areas. There was even a whole other continent to the east that I'd not found access to yet. For anyone that likes exploring, this game will keep you busy for a long time.

In terms of gameplay immersion, one immediately apparent throwback to Elder Scrolls was Reckoning's crime and punishment system. The infamous red hand will appear over chests and doors that you have no business opening, and being observed while helping yourself could result in pursuit by guards and subsequent jail time and loss of items, or if you manage to fight your way out, being marked kill-on-sight in that particular area for a time (which could naturally make it hard to complete quests). Attacking townspeople, even if provoked, could have the same consequences, so you'll have to choose your fights carefully while in civilization.

If in jail, you can sneak out with the painfully concealed lockpick (stealing back your items from the chest and taking no reputation damage in the process), do your time and lose some coin, or fight your way out with fisticuffs and be branded public enemy number one in that village for a time. In short, it's the crime and punishment system of the Elder Scrolls serieswithout the skads of red-hand items lying everywhere.

"The world is divided into regions, not necessarily delineated by the game's geography, but regions that make sense in terms of the pace of the game," explained Reckoning's systems designer.

"Each one of those regions has a level range, so 10-15, 15-20 etc and when you enter a new region for the first time it locks everything to your level within the range of that region. If you try to go all the way across the map, you'll hit a [difficulty] barrier where you don't meet the minimum requirement for that region, so it locks to a much higher level than you are and you'll start getting killed a lot!"

"We looked at a lot of RPGS and we saw how their levelling systems work and we've come up with a pretty good system which allows players to explore a lot but also guide them with difficulty."

You are also currently working at 38 Studios as a creative director. Tell us a bit about the projects you are working on, particularly Kingdoms of Amalur?
I don't actually work there; I'm a consultant. At this point, I don't even go there all that much. I go in now and then. I just try to stay out of the way because what happened was at the very beginning, I got this phone call from Curt Schilling. I'm a Red Sox fan, and I get this phone call from the guy with the bloody sock; that was very strange a cold call, I didn't know him. He told me I was his favorite writer, and would I create a world for his video game company that he was starting? And so I was basically with him when he started the company. I helped him pick the location, and what I did is I put.my gaming group together and I used them as researchers and I built this world for him this world of Amalur. It was for an MMO 38 Studios was designed to build an MMO. That's what we were going to do; we were going to build one game, an MMO. Well it got bigger than that.

I created 10,000 years of history. I, along with my group, created a skeleton for 10,000 years of history, and the narrative team at 38, which includes a couple of members of my group, have been fleshing out that skeleton for five years now. This massive world full of history, and the reason we did that, the reason we went so far back in time even though the players don't have to look at it, don't have to care, although we hope they will because it will enrich their experience, is that my theory was having these deep threads of history, this 10,000 year history would put everybody that was working on the game the artists, the designers, the mechanics, the systems designers would put them all on the same canvas when they were painting. And so the world would make sense, it would have the kind of consistency and logic that a world has to have if you're trying to immerse someone in it.

I remember the first year, I would go in every week I was in 3, 4 days a week, but I would go in once a week and we would have a content meeting, and once a week we would have an art meeting, where all of the content designers, and in the other one all of the artists, would sit around this big table in the war room and pitch me what they were working on and where they were going. And for the first few months, in the beginning, I would keep taking out this green binder we had, our bible if you will, and slam it down on the table and say (How does that fit?) So the most common word out of my mouth was no. But something happened, it was a gradual change but I remember one day going in there with the content team and seven of them at the time (I think there were seven) told me what they were working on and I didn't say no once. Instead of that, I said, (That is really cool.) They had bought in to the IP, into the flavor of the world. Every IP has its own flavor, and it's important that everybody working in it understands what it's supposed to smell like, and feel like, and look like, and taste like, and we had gotten to that point. And I remember leaving that meeting and I walked into Curt's office and I said, (My job's done.)

And that was a couple of years into the project, and I still have things to do. I go out and I promote for them, and I go in and I.like when we bought BHG Big Huge Games down in Baltimore, we bought that studio to do single player RPGs, for the 360, the Playstation, and PC. They looked at our history and they.came up with a story line based on a specific piece in our timeline, one that seemed to fit. And then of course, I had to go right back to work again and help make sure that was consistent. And I sat down with all of their narrative team who were working on all the side quests, and they had to tell me because it's an open world RPG and they had to tell me all the side quests they were working on, and I had to approve those as well. The first product I can't wait it comes out in February, and it's called Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. That's the single player RPG, and I can't wait, because I haven't been able to talk about this world for five years. It's killing me. I can't wait for people to see it.

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