Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Interview, Part One
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Atomic: Speaking of narrative, my next question is along the lines of, what's the most important part of narrative for you?
Ken: For me, the most important part is the premise. In other words, I know I'm ready to make a game when I have a premise that makes me do this *starts dancing*. If I say, '˜I have got the best fucking idea in the world.' And, in this particular case, we found a place in the 10,000 years of history that was R.A. Salvatore's background, and I said, '˜Hey, y'know, something unique happens right here. A human being is resurrected for the first time.' And then I said, '˜And you know something, when he's resurrected he doesn't know who he is.' And I said, '˜Wow, what a great premise.' Number one, we know that there are historical/mythic parallels about how important it is to be the only person who's been resurrected, so there's something there. And then at the same time, not knowing if you're a good man or a bad man, that's a good start for an open chance to define your character; and also, you never know if we're going to tell you or not. And, in fact, I'll deny under oath that we'll ever tell you anything. So I get to manipulate the living shit out of the player in that way and, by the way, because I'm a dignified fellow, I don't actually tell you that I'm fucking with you.
Atomic: Like a gentleman.
Ken: Yeah, *laughs*, like a gentleman. In the sense that you start playing and it doesn't, probably for most people, even occur to them that this is an issue: that you don't know who you are. I don't stick it in your face, nobody else in the game says, '˜You don't know who you are.' But if you start to think about it, you may start to wonder, well, am I a good man or a bad man? And then there will be little pieces as you develop in games and, again I'm not gonna tell ya... this is the deliciousness of the plot is that I put things in there that are ambiguous or unclear and you will wonder, '˜Hey, I wonder what that means.' And not everybody will see it but it'll go onto the internet and it'll go into facts and things like that. And then it continues for game after game after game and into the MMO. Yeah, so am I a genius or what? So that's when I do a little Snoopy dance.
