Kingdoms of Amalur: Recknoning might be flying under the radar for most people, but those in the know have kept a keen eye on its development.
With a fantasy world developed by 22-time New York Times best selling author R.A. Salvatore, a game world brought to life by Spawn and Spider-Man artist Todd McFarlane, and gameplay put together by the lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion, Reckoning is on track to take the RPG world by storm.
We caught up with lead designer Ian Frazier and had a chat about what Reckoning has to offer role-playing fanatics...
Can you say a little about 38 Studios - am I right in thinking the founder is Curt Schilling, the old Red Sox pitcher?
It's kind of funny. I lived in Boston before I lived in Baltimore, and I'd occasionally go see Curt play. I worked for a studio up there that did Titan Quest. We worked in the same building as Curt when he started his game studio. It was called Green Monster Games at the time, but now it's 38 Studios. We were all wondering, why is this baseball player making a videogame? He was a big MMO player, and they were working on an MMO.
The studio I was in went under, I moved down to Baltimore to work at Big Huge Games, who were owned by THQ at the time. They were doing an action RPG called Crucible: open world, action RPG, that's the guts of what became Reckoning. THQ got into trouble, and then along comes Curt.
He was interested in what we were doing, loved the art style, and wondered if we could turn it into a singleplayer game in the same universe as his MMO. We were like, okay, we'd like to continue having jobs, that sounds like a really good plan. He bought Big Huge Games, and Curt actually shows up once a month or so. He's at the Providence office all the time, but he comes by our Baltimore office all the time.
Can you explain the relationship of the games?
It is a little bit complicated. 38 Studios is the overall company. There's also the Providence office, which is exclusively working on the MMO. They've been working on the MMO for a number of years, it's still in production. I can't give you a release date, but it is just happening.
What I can tell you is that it is an MMO, and it's in the world of Amalur, and it's set 2000 years after Reckoning. You'll be able to go to a lot of the same places and see what's happened to them over time, but it will be very different, because it's much later.
New IP is so risky, especially with fantasy dominated by Oblivion and Diablo. How do you give new IP the edge?
Sometimes he'll describe something and it will be like, 'that doesn't make sense in a videogame at all'. But sometimes it will be a really fresh idea because he's coming from a completely different place than the rest of us.
Can you give us some examples of that kind of thing? We once spoke to Jim Lee about DC Universe Online, and the thing he was most worked up about was that he couldn't control the frame in a videogame - he wanted big dramatic capes, and he just couldn't have them.
It's funny, a big thing for Todd was capes. He wanted big, huge, long-flowing capes. We had to say, 'we don't have cloth physics. It's a videogame, they're not powered by magic'.
He said, 'I don't care, I just want capes'. He was like, 'just animate it'. We said, 'but we've got tens of thousands of animations, we can't just hand key capes onto every one'. But now we've actually got capes - we found a way to do it, not as well as we'd like, but they're there. He wanted something, we all agreed it was cool, so we put it in.
Comments
23 comments so far...
sonic_uk on 27 Jan '12 said:
I'd never even heard of Kingdoms of Amalur until last night when I played the demo and was completely taken by surprise by just how good this unknown-to-me-at-the-time game was. I now intend to preorder a copy. Brilliant rpg game.
TheLastDodo on 27 Jan '12 said:
I'm far from the biggest Skyrim fan and I think Amalur absolutely destroys Skyrim as far as combat is concerned...........
HOWEVER
@Ian Frazier, if you're reading this (which you'd better not be), fix your own game before pointing out the massive flaws of others, the demo, once you go to talk to Hughes or whatever he's called, has a bug that automatically skips through an entire conversation.
Fix that then you can talk all the poop that you want about Skyrim.
Dewin on 27 Jan '12 said:
I played the demo. Looked to me like WoW meets Fable. The direction wasn't that "new" to be honest.
EddieNES on 27 Jan '12 said:
Well, since we are all playing Elder Scrolls 5, I guess most people enjoy that kind of game. Let me know when Kingdoms of Amalur 5 comes out. Id be shocked to see 3.
radiocat on 27 Jan '12 said:
"We want to take RPGs in a new direction?"
So here's another open-world Orcs and Elves RPG just like all the others. Hmmm?
I'd love to see RPGs being taken in a new direction... no orcs, no elves, no dragons. How about someone tries using a bit of imagination for once? How about an RPG set in ancient Greece, or 16th century China?
delmariachi on 27 Jan '12 said:
Downed the demo and in general i wasn't that overawed by it. I know its not the 'be all and end all' til the full code is released but I found myself reminded of Fable and one or two older (albeit 2-d) Megadrive adventure games, so the something new and different is all well and good but its not quite the epoch making peice they are talking up so far (again going by the demo).
I have never been massively into adventure games, just a few here and there, The JRPG's and even Oblivion bored me, but Skyrim does something right. I couldn't tell you what it is, but i'm up to level 13-14 and can't get off it... And thats good enough for me
If i can play Amalur's finished code at a mates or something and its better than the demo, i may well seek a longer look but Skyrim's enough for me at the moment and for quite a few months to come.. That in turn could be Amalurs problem, especially with well timed "specials" on Skyrim of late and no need for codes if bought second hand.
I hope it does well, as new franchises are always welcome, but it's got some stiff competition.
stealth on 27 Jan '12 said:
all western rpgs are generic. I played the demo of this and it was so bad
but he is right, elder scrolls are all the same lord of the rings rip off games
budge on 27 Jan '12 said:
That's exactly what it reminded me of but it had a certain charm to it, the music was good and the voice acting was distinctively British. I'll be getting this game as soon as i'm done with FFXIII-2.
TheCleip on 27 Jan '12 said:
Agreeeeeeeeed
HarryJack on 27 Jan '12 said:
I hate cocky developers they really p**s me off, thinking that they are the best at making games when in actual fact they have made a game that is a huge clone of Fable!! The signs are everywhere, the whirlpool's in the river to show that there was treasure, combat had Strength, Skill and Will and that everybody was British!! This is a totally unoriginal game! But I'm still getting it day of release!
solamon77 on 27 Jan '12 said:
This interview makes it seem like there was a lot of conflicting forces working on KoA: Reckoning. I hope the game doesn't suffer because of this. Guess I'll get to find out in a couple weeks since I have already preordered the game.
Sammy_bham on 27 Jan '12 said:
Demo was terrible.
"shrugs"
got mass effect 3 armour, thats all i care about.
Channel4 on 27 Jan '12 said:
PC demo was completely unplayable for me. It let me play but the screen was black and when i paused it the pause screen just stayed up even when i unpaused it. I could only see what i was doing by looking at the map lol
MeanwhileGuy on 27 Jan '12 said:
I'm all for more original RPGs, but going after Bethesda's audience i just going to fail. I didn't mind the demo, but it just felt so generic. That tends to happen when your game that supposedly takes the RPG "in a new direction" plays like Fable and looks like Dragon Age with more colours.
Good luck lads, you're going to need it.
vitorfernandes83 on 27 Jan '12 said:
You want to play a good RPG for a change? Try Xenoblade on the Wii, I'm hooked, skyrim and a few other games are gathering dust for now, hope I find time to play them maybe in the summer.
MattyR95 on 27 Jan '12 said:
Pretty brave for an average/kinda boring game (plot wise) with alright combat (Judging by the demo). Definitely not original. It's in the category of get it when it's cheap, but will have probably forgotten about it when that happens. I think it's what a dragon age: origins & Dragon age 2 combination would be like, except dragon age has a better plot.
nb_nmare2 on 27 Jan '12 said:
There have been several RPGs set in ancient Greece released in the past few years: Numen, Rise of the Argonauts, and Titan Quest (the latter of which is mentioned in this very article). AFAIK none of them sold very well.
The LotR influences in Oblivion and Skyrim are undeniable, but I'm sensing you haven't played Morrowind. It's nothing like LotR whatsoever.
Phaedros on 28 Jan '12 said:
What like Dynasty Warriors or something? Hmm, RPGs generally focus on medieval fantasy type settings. There have been plenty of science fiction RPGs as well.
Old Skool Gamer on 28 Jan '12 said:
Maybe a dark horse, let's see.
voad on 28 Jan '12 said:
Or how about a modern day spy/espionage RPG.... like Alpha Protocol. That sold so well, right?
PevMaster on 28 Jan '12 said:
You're an asshole. How are Western RPGs generic? Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect--the list goes on. None of them are generic, and Skyrim is an excellent work of art. Eastern JRPGs are terrible, all of them are weird, clunky and ugly. F*ck you.
Channel4 on 28 Jan '12 said:
That it the most hilarious overreaction I've ever read.
ptechg on 31 Jan '12 said:
I'm still playing my way through Dark Souls but I just downloaded the demo for Amalur. I will give it a go certainly.