Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning

The next big RPG after Skryim will be Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning. It is an open world third person rpg that is being developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. It will be available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. It will come out on February 2012 and it has a wide array of rpg features that should please many. It is a game that has full character customization, eight classes, loot, factions, different races, crafting, different cultures and a huge world. You may have seen this game before, especially since it is published by EA and written by R.A. Salvatore. You also may have seen this game back when we were doing E3 2011 coverage. One of the most interesting features that we noticed was how combat works, it isn't typical to an rpg. They took the rpg elements and mixed them with an action game, some kind of hybrid between a games like God of War and Fable. The world was also pretty interesting looking, seemingly one of the first RPG's in a long time to truly present a huge vibrant world, hopefully one without massive flaws like Two Worlds or Gothic. The map is pretty massive and detailed, which you can check out here (it's interactive). Sure, Skryim comes out in three days, but if you are looking for a different kind of rpg then keep your eyes out for this one.

There isn't a plethora of information available about gameplay, mostly lore, but we do have the classes and factions. They give you the choice of three basic classes, but each class can be mixed. For instance, you can be a fighter-mage, mage-rogue, fighter-rogue or jack of all trades, on top of the three pure classes. I'm not certain if your class is set in stone, or if it is all changeable, but they call each class a destiny so it seems like it will directed in some way. You start the game as fateless, in the Well of Souls, a machine that the gnomes made to resurrect people, and you are unleashed upon a broken, bloody and chaotic world. There are five factions that you get to deal with throughout the world, all of which have their own goals and bias's. Check them with this video guide to the factions of Amalur.


Last we saw they were trying to do a strong dialogue system, much like Dragon Age of Mass Effect, but there has been little new to see with that other than the short look at it from the E3 gameplay demo. Combat uses a timing system that requires you to do more than do slam down a button and it also has quicktime events, similar to what you would see in God of War. When you kill enemies you get fate energy which builds up like a limit break. Once you get enough fate energy you can do a fate shift that gives you a massive amount of power temporarily, which is shown at the end of the video below. All the monsters are fairly typical of what you would think of for a fantasy rpg, koblods, skeletons and all that, but you can check out the incomplete list at the Reckoning wiki. Check otu the E3 video for a good, but old, look at some gameplay.

E3/Brigands' Hall Cavern Demo 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning looks to be the kind of open world rpg that I've been waiting for ever since I saw how Fable promised so much, yet didn't deliver, and Two Worlds grasped at greatness. It could end up being horribly flawed like those series, or the Gothic series, but I anxiously await the day there is a open world rpg like those games that turns out to be all around great. Don't get my wrong, I'm not putting down the Elder Scrolls series or Fallout series, but they are entirely different types of rpgs. Thanks for reading and for more information check out the wiki or main website. 
Main Website: http://reckoning.amalur.com/
Amalur Wiki

-Written by Sean Cargle
Posted by Lokai at 1:36 PM
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4 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure there are more than 8 classes...

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  2. From everything I've read there aren't technically classes, just destiny trees. One tree for might, one for magic and one for sorcery. All of which can be inter-weaved to make up the destiny cards that are on the main website. If you information stating otherwise I would love to read it so I can revise the article.

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  3. There are 3 skill branches so there would be 3 pure classes. Then you could do combinations of two different trees, or a jack of all trades with all three. Technically I think that works out to about 7 "classes" but there is a ton of customization and chances are that everyone's character will be different. Personally I am loving a finesse build with chakrams and faeblades.

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    Replies

    1. Do they successfully interweave the classes? Or is it still mostly class archetypes that you are generally stuck playing?

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