[Hilo Oficial] Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

ruben_psp escribió:tener tiene muy buena pinta, pero últimamente casi todos tienen buenísima pinta y se queda en el pedazo de juego de gothic.
Espero poder ver un nuevo oblivion o por lo menos que este a la altura de este.
se sabe fecha? 2011 o 2012?

ruben_psp escribió:tener tiene muy buena pinta, pero últimamente casi todos tienen buenísima pinta y se queda en el pedazo de juego de gothic.
Espero poder ver un nuevo oblivion o por lo menos que este a la altura de este.
se sabe fecha? 2011 o 2012?

So a former baseball star, world-renowned fantasy author, iconic comic artist, and gaming industry demigod walk into a bar and… We forgot how the rest of that nugget of comedy gold goes, but we imagine it’d sound a lot like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The brainchild of a hugely diverse brain clan that includes Curt Schilling, writer R.A. Salvatore, artist Todd McFarlane, and Morrowind and Oblivion lead Ken Rolston, Reckoning is poised to dodge cries of “just another fantasy RPG” – a magic missile-shaped target that seems to appear on the back of just about every aspiring swords ‘n’ sorcery behemoth these days. In response to such cynicism, however, general manager Sean Dunn presents a very simple philosophy: if it’s good, it’ll find an audience.

“You can look at all the current big names in the RPG space, and everyone started as an unknown IP,” he told VG247 during EA’s GDC showcase event. “And really, the core essence of their success has been building an awesome RPG. Whether it’s an open world RPG or a story driven RPG, it’s been that execution – that commitment to a quality product. And that’s what we’re all about. The IP is a world for us to play in.”

“And really, the visionaries that we have working on the project – R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and Ken Rolston – it’s a place where they’ve been able to craft this world and give us all of this backstory, history, and future to pull from to build the essence of the world. It really allows us to ground the player within a space. So there’s the ten thousand years of history that R.A. Salvatore built with the team, and we take place in just one portion of that history.”

The moment of reckoning

Big plans, big talk, big names. All great, sure, but what about the game itself? We were treated to an eyes-on (whatever that actually means – it sounds painful) demo of Reckoning, and we came away fairly impressed, if not a wee bit skeptical.

The game opens with your character awakening from a very specific sort of sleep. You know, the dead kind. You’ve been given a second lease on life by an old scientist who’s been experimenting with something called the Well of Souls for years, and – wouldn’t you know it – you’re his first success story. And the others? Well, they became hideous, deranged cave monsters, which translates roughly to “combat tutorial” in badass fantasy hero-ese.

As soon as the main character started hacking and slashing, however, Reckoning stopped looking like a chip off The Elder Scrolls’ block and transformed into the LARP-obsessed bastard child of God of War. Everything – from sword swings to massive, rock-shattering spells – looked equal parts big and stylish when viewed from the game’s dynamic third-person perspective. In other words, as un-RPG-like as possible. Combat, however, was mapped to a single face button, with timing – and not the finger equivalent of Twister – deciding what sort of beatdown foes received. In spite of that dedication to crowd-pleasing choreography, though, Dunn assured us that Reckoning’s still very deeply entrenched in its RPG roots.

“It’s been that execution – that commitment to a quality product. And that’s what we’re all about.”

“When you look at the combat, it’s a very robust, almost fighting game-like system. There are parries, dodges, [and things of the like]. But at the core is RPG combat. So the stats of your character, the weapon that you have equipped, the armor, the bonuses apply, skills and traits that you’ve applied to your character through leveling up – that’s a huge portion of your combat. That’s going to dictate whether you win or lose more than your skill. You can’t skill your way through the game without progressing through talents and progressing through loot,” he explained.

Character building, similarly, takes the Ye Olde Booke of Fantasy RPG Cliches and chucks it out Ye Olde Window, instead allowing you to invest in whatever skills you want. In other words, the game has no pre-defined classes. Want to pluck a skill from the big, burly “might” talent tree? Go ahead. Want to sweeten the pot with a little magic? Be our guest. It’s all up to you, and the Reckoning team’s aiming to create a system in which variety rules the day – not boring dedication to a single talent tree.

A whole new world

Reckoning’s foundations are undeniably solid, but let’s face it: most people don’t play RPGs for the combat or the number-crunching. Those things – no matter how promising – are just gravy. The world and the story, meanwhile, are the creamy mashed potatoes in this mouth-watering analogy, and in that area, Reckoning raised more questions than it answered. On the upside, what we saw looked quite gorgeous, though nothing really popped out and took us by surprise. During the demo, we were shown a colossal, high-ceiling-ed cave, a forest that may well have contained every shade of green known to man – as well as a few new ones – a tiny rural village, and some crumbling stone ruins. The game’s art style reminded us very much of a higher-fidelity, more detailed World of Warcraft. It still retained that cartoony slant, but we could definitely tell its console’s innards weren’t asleep on the job.

For all its size and majesty, however, Reckoning’s world struck us as oddly empty and – at this point, anyway – somewhat lifeless as a result. It also didn’t help that 38 Studios and Big Huge Games weren’t talking story or character interaction just yet, though Dunn did note that it’ll be “what you expect” from a game in this space. He was also a great deal more forthcoming with details about what was going on underneath the hood of the game’s sleek, shiny exterior. For instance, “big” and “open” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but what’s Reckoning’s take?

“It’s really big,” said Dunn. “It’s really hard to put a square footage or anything like that on the world. It is an open world kind of in the frame of, like, an Oblivion. You can go just about anywhere. Also, there’s the power of the player [to consider]. We don’t auto-level the power of the world depending on the level of the player. You can get yourself into trouble by roaming into an area or a dungeon where stuff is just too powerful for you.”

“And the beauty of that is that you may get your ass kicked in a place, but you get to go build up your character and then return to exact retribution on the stuff that caused you problems. To feel powerful in a world, you have to also feel in danger, you know? So it’s really important that we don’t want to pigeonhole the player into playing this area and then this area and then this area. It is an open world, but there are places where the player can get themselves into trouble.”

“We don’t just have guys sitting there waiting for 300 days for Joe Blow to come by and save his chickens.”

Meanwhile, Dunn also attempted to allay our fears about Reckoning’s apparently blank planet, saying that “NPCs definitely aren’t static. You saw in the demo when we moved through a day-night cycle, characters have different ways that they move between towns. We also want to make sure, though, that quest-givers are always there. We’re not talking a whole lot about that right now, but you can kind of see that – in the world – we don’t just have guys sitting there waiting for 300 days for Joe Blow to come by and save his chickens. We try to make the whole place feel alive. It is open world, you know.”

On top of that, not all of the game’s story is coming from desperately needy quest-givers. When you’ve got R.A. Salvatore spilling an entire universe from his brain onto a page, it’s generally a good idea to stuff bits and pieces of story wherever they’ll fit.

“When you come upon, say, some ruins in the world, they’re not just there to look pretty. There’s actual backstory on what those ruins were – the language they used, the markings they used, you know. There may be books in a nearby town that may be able to tell you about the history. There may be myths about that civilization that built those. So it’s really important that it be grounded,” Dunn explained.

“That’s really the purpose of building the IP. It’s not just building an IP so we can sell stuff for it. It’s like, you need to have a world that your RPG can live inside of. Just like the Elder Scrolls series, or Dragon Age, or Mass Effect, they all started as original IPs and came to fruition because of really high quality execution.”

Fantasy fatigue

Granted, even the most detailed, imaginative world ever conceived won’t do you a lick of good if everyone just judges your book by its cover and uses its pages to line their cat’s litter box. Dunn, however, doesn’t think the situation for fantasy – which has lost its place as the sexy, young arm candy to pop culture’s evergreen movie star – is as dire as many people are making it out to be.

“I think those can be trends,” he told us. “You know, the industry can support those trends and still support that core idea. Lord of the Rings wasn’t something new when the movies came out. When you execute on the core fantasy of a world well, I think it’s compelling no matter what – whether it’s fantasy or sci-fi or modern day. It’s about that core execution, and it brings palatable story and palatable content. Really, you’re here to save the world. It’s about building a world that’s worth saving – whether that’s in the future or in the past or in some fantasy world.”

“It’s about building a world that’s worth saving – whether that’s in the future or in the past or in some fantasy world.”

“I think Dungeons and Dragons is a great example. It’s something that’s been around for who knows how many years, but it’s still [around] and has its moments of popularity. When you have moments of great execution of story in fantasy worlds – whether it’s George R. R. Martin or whether it’s R.A. Salvatore – they’re multiple time best-sellers in fantasy novels, and their numbers aren’t dropping. They’re still very relevant. And using Salvatore to craft this world, we’re still pretty sure that the relevance of the world is still there. It’s not just generic fantasy. It’s not just orcs and elves. It’s the R.A. Salvatore take on that world.”

Sky’s the limit

No matter how far Reckoning strays from generic fantasy conventions, however, comparisons between it and Bethesda’s upcoming 800 lb three-eyed gorilla monster The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are inevitable. And with Skyrim launching at the tail end of 2011 and Reckoning reckoning it’ll hit shelves sometime in 2012, the two might be battling for more than just bragging rights. Dunn’s response? “Bring it on.”

“I think our attitude is more of a ‘bring it on’ type of thing. I mean, we love it when there are successful RPGs. The more great RPGs there are, the bigger the genre grows, and the more people there are that play these games. They approach the game the way that they want to and they’ve been doing open world games for a long time. We have a lot of people from their previous teams, but we’re also doing our own take on open world RPGs,” he said.

“You know, combat’s a thing that’s really important to hit in that real-time way that we have. The look and feel of the world is totally different than Skyrim’s. The way that we approach characters and story and things like that [is also very different]. So we think there’s space for everybody to play in. If you make an awesome, high-quality, open world RPG, we think people will buy it.”

Well then, Sean, you follow through on that first part, and we’ll take care of the rest.

“Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, is a fabulously, immersive vast narrative rpg, with kick ass combat and master crafted by visionaries. Which I think is the selling point; kick ass combat visionaries.”

KOAR do have some talented people behind the game such as; Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, RA.Salvatore, NY times best-selling author coming from the dungeons & dragon world building period.

Ken Rolston goes on to add “The most important thing is the kind of game need to be made, as in the action part of the combat, enabling opportunity exploration in the game more fun to get better animations and a better theatre of combat.”

He then continues saying RPG’s maybe carry a burden of their conventional game four bearer’s, and all been to comfortable in the animation of combat.

“It’s great to be able to pick up the controller and feel immersive in the characters actions and to move smoothly through the world. Also clapping and saying, oh my god that is so cool, and that’s not happening in RPG’s just jabbering in pleasure. If you watch people testing our game and watch the videos of what’s happening in our game, people will get excited, and that’s what I want a excited 9 year old reaction.”

Rolston did say that the Elder Scrolls: Morrowind fans will like this game, because its immersive, huge and colourful.

La compañía estadounidense Big Huge Games es bien conocida por videojuegos de estrategia en tiempo real como Rise of Nations, pero ahora quiere dar el salto gracias a un RPG fantástico, profundo e incluso con toques "hack 'n slash". ¿Una combinación imposible? Para nada, y mucho menos después de haberlo visto hace unas semanas. Los reinos de Amalur no podrían mostrar mejores virtudes para convertirse en uno de los RPG del próximo 2012.


A cada mes que pasa, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning va ganándose cada vez con más merecimiento nuestra atención. Su propuesta RPG, a medio camino entre la profundidad de Oblivion y la acción de God of War, se va labrando un camino propio muy esperanzador gracias al talento de figuras como Ken Rolston (detrás de los últimos Elder Scrolls), R. A. Salvatore (novelista especializado en fantasía medieval) o Grant Kirkhope (director de audio procedente de la era mítica de RARE).

Todos juntos conforman Big Huge Games, una compañía estadounidense que nació con la vocación de crear juegos complejos como el presente, tanto que incluso pretendía que Reckoning fuera un MMORPG. No obstante, tendrán que esperar, al menos hasta que salga en el mercado un producto al que, eso sí, se le nota su espíritu masivo original, con un mundo que recuerda mucho al del intocable World of Warcraft, con un trasfondo de 10.000 años de antigüedad y una duración que podría ir desde las respetables 20 hasta las increíbles 1000 horas de juego.

Y todo bajo un simple designio: aceptar la aventura de conducir a un personaje -rescatado de la mismísima muerte- hacia una aventura por conocer quién le mató y por qué. Alguien que ha revivido desde el "pozo de los espíritus" y en cuyo lugar nos pondremos para labrarnos un destino propio (o varios) a lo largo de Amalur, una fantástica tierra dividida en cinco regiones basadas en la antigua edad Arcana, repleta de magia y extraordinarias criaturas.


Un fantástico y multiplataforma reino RPG
En pocas palabras, una épica de fantasía medieval donde, una vez creemos a nuestro personaje (se pueden modificar sexo, cara, tipo de pelo, tatuajes, accesorios...), nos pondremos en marcha a lo largo de un RPG enorme que no parte del mismo concepto de clases que otros exponentes de su género. Y es que una de las grandes virtudes de Reckoning es que podremos cambiar de rol con gran facilidad. Aunque estemos en el medievo, los estados estamentales no serán para nosotros, con lo que se podrá alternar entre guerrero, mago y pícaro, incluso creando híbridos.

Pero eso no es todo. Aquí las clases no son en realidad tales. Más bien, se conocen como destinos, y en total hay más de cuarenta, las cuales nos aportan una inmensa variedad jugable. Guardianes, paladines, hechiceros, caballeros, maestros, acólitos, sabios... cada clase (o destino) dispone de sus propias particularidades, de manera que un mago podrá teletransportarse de un lado a otro para esquivar ataques y un asesino nos mostrará sus dotes para usar el sigilo en las zonas más comprometidas del escenario.

Hasta podremos ser un ladrón despiadado que sea capaz de robar dinero sin ser detectado. Aunque muchas veces esto también dependerá de la experiencia y habilidad conseguidas, de forma que podríamos ser incluso sorprendidos y obligados a pagar por nuestras fechorías, yendo a la cárcel si es necesario. Afortunadamente, para los usuarios más usurpadores no habrá gran escarmiento (la obra no dispone de sistema moral), aunque sí que padeceremos las consecuencias en forma de rechazo por parte de la población.


Así pues, estamos ante un universo persistente y reactivo a nuestras acciones que se ve complementado por un sistema de "quests" -a priori- bastante complejo. La razón está en que no sólo tenemos la opción de escuchar -en este caso leer- la historia particular detrás de la persona que nos propone cada tarea, sino que también cabe la oportunidad de presionar a nuestro interlocutor para que nos dé (si es tacaño) algo de dinero como recompensa.

Un detalle que no pudimos apreciar en nuestras anteriores impresiones, y que ahora se nos presenta, además, acompañado de la posibilidad de encontrar una alta variedad de tiendas y, sobre todo, herrerías que nos faculten para mejorar nuestro armamento. Porque otro de los grandes bastiones de Reckoning era, y sigue siendo, su espectacular sistema de combate. Una fluida y, por otra parte, poco habitual propuesta "hack 'n slash" que da mucho dinamismo a este enorme juego de rol. Y es una gran noticia, sobre todo considerando que God of War fue una fundamental fuente de inspiración.

Sólo hace falta ver alguna de sus batallas para comprobarlo. Una sorprendente respuesta en los controles, combos muy rápidos y ataques realmente espectaculares se juntan para dar un resultado satisfactorio, el cual queda magnificado por el detalle de que se puede seguir atacando a los rivales aunque estén en el aire, algo casi nunca vista en un RPG y muchas veces ausente en los más respetables "hack 'n slash".


Puede que algunos lleguen a sorprenderse igualmente por la presencia de eventos "quick time", los cuales sirven fundamentalmente para rematar a jefes finales (algunos de descomunales proporciones). Pero no nos importa en absoluto, si con ello no se disminuye la profundidad, como parece que ocurrirá. Así, los desarrolladores prometen que la estrategia, a pesar de la rapidez de las refriegas, será parte importante en el desarrollo del juego, de forma que para acabar con determinados enemigos antes deberemos estudiar algunas de sus pautas de combate.

Inclusive se afirma que la IA no será para nada deficiente. Enemigos irán a auxiliar a otros a fin de acabar con nuestra vida, aspecto que nos llamó la atención, aunque no tanto como el motor gráfico que muestra Reckoning actualmente. Fluido y sin ralentizaciones, virtudes que destacan aún más si consideramos la solidez de modelados y animaciones que presentan sus caricaturizados personajes y hermosos escenarios.

En esencia, todo parece rezumar el espíritu de World of Warcraft, con un diseño artístico muy llamativo, pero también con una gran distancia de dibujado, un instanciamiento moderado (sólo se carga cuando entramos en mazmorras) y un sistema de iluminación que lo distingue de cualquier exponente del género. Los amaneceres y atardeceres con rayos de sol proyectándose entre ramas de árboles ofrecen una estampa poca veces contemplada en un videojuego, suponiendo otra más de las múltiples razones por las que deberíamos esperar a un Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning que, sin generar mucho ruido, podría convertirse en una de las sorpresas roleras multiplataforma (360, PS3 y PC) más agradables del próximo 2012.

Yakerton escribió:cuando sale?

“We have five distinct geographic regions, 120+ dungeons, four big cities, dozens of towns and quest hubs… it’s a big world you’re going to be going through and a lot of time-consuming content.”

360 Magazine was given a demonstration of Big Huge Games’ upcoming Open-World ARPG Kingdoms Of Amalur: Kingdoms Of Amalur: The New God Of WarReckoning recently, a game inspired by at least four different major action and RPG titles of the last 20 years and penned by bestselling author R. A. Salvatore. It’s a canny blend of old-school RPGing and contemporary fantasy swordplay with enormous boss-monsters (like our friend Balor in the pic on the right), very much in the vein of the God Of War series. Producer Ben Smith was kind enough to fill in the details:

On the main character:

“At the beginning of the game the main character wakes up on a pile of corpses. He doesn’t know how he died, who killed him or anything like that, but he very quickly comes to learn that he was brought back to life by this machine, which is called the well of souls. One of the consequences of coming back to life – and you are the first person to come back to life in this world – is that you have no fate.”

On the size of the game:

Players care more about how you create the character more than who that character is. We have four races, two human, two elves, both genders and huge customization options. We want people to create a character they’re going to fall in love with because they’re going to follow this character for 30 hours+. It’s a big open-world, we have five distinct geographic regions, 120+ dungeons, four big cities, dozens of towns and quest hubs… it’s a big world you’re going to be going through and a lot of time-consuming content.

On the important of choice:Kingdoms Of Amalur: The New God Of War

Of course choice is a big part of it. For us there’s the macro-choice of consuming the main quest and doing the side quests and faction quests. If you try to rob a guard and fail you have the choice of paying the fine, going to jail or resisting arrest, in which case you’re going to have to five 12 angry guardsmen or so, depending on where you are. Of course, fighting is really key for us, it’s what we feel makes Kingdoms really special and we take our inspiration not really from other RPGs in the genre but from what action games are doing.

On the loot system and crafting:

Loot’s huge for us and RPG gamers, so we have thousands of unique pieces of art for weapons and armour which we then combine with a fixed system, so it generates buffs and debuffs – there are hundreds of thousands of combinations. When you’re not fighting you might be doing crafting with alchemy, putting together reagents with alchemy, experimenting with those reagents to create recipes. You might be doing blacksmithing if you’ve got armour or weapons you want to sell, you can break them down into pieces and put those back together into the weapons you want. Then you have sagecraft where you have these shard you find in the world, put them together as gems and then you can slot them into armour or weapons to add environmental effects.

On secrets and the unseen:

Other non-combat skills change how you interact with the world. Detect hidden you might find ways through a dungeon because other players don’t have enough skill, you might find treasure chests that other people wouldn’t find because they didn’t invest [in detect hidden skill]. Those treasure chests can be magically locked, so dispel skill will unlock it.

Other non-combat skills:Kingdoms Of Amalur: The New God Of War

Persuasion gives you a chance to give you different rewards for a quest but also different threads in a quest. And of course stealth isn’t just for sneaking around, it’s for sneaking around and stabbing big, dumb, red creatures that don’t see you in the back. Probably the most important thing for most RPG gamers is how you develop your character, so we have three ability trees: sorcery, might and finesse. You can invest your points in a number of different abilities and weapons to unlock special attacks. You might spread [your points] across those trees or plunder the depths of the sorcery tree to get an uber-spell like meteor.

The class system – or lack of it:

For us the most important thing is that we don’t force the player to make a choice about class up-front. We don’t really have a class system, what we do have is as you invest points in those ability trees, depending on where you invest those points we unlock these narrative wrappers upon which you’re already creating… for example if you’re a mage-melee guy you might unlock Shadowcaster. It provides a name for what you’ve been doing already and provides bonus back into the abilities you’ve already been investing in. So for example for the Shadowcaster, if you’ve been investing in longsword and spells, you can potentially get a buff to your mana.

Todd McFarlane has told folks attending Comic-Con that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is scheduled for a February release, “unless [EA] tells us otherwise.”

EA has responded, stating the game is slated for an early 2012 release, and it has nothing further to add.

To McFarlane’s credit, and anyone else familiar with a calendar, February takes place in the early part of the year, so it is technically “early 2012″. Therefore, February’s a possibility. Then again, March is early in the year as well, and so is January 31, which is the placeholder date GameStop has put on the title.

At any rate, it will be out next year on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Selphie_Epojé escribió:Este juego le va a dar 100 vueltas a los Fable como juegos de rol, y eso que a priori comparten bastante estética...

More often than not when interviewing games designers we find that the answers they provide us are as short and as succinct as possible – after all they have usually had to answer the same old questions over and over again. However when speaking to Ken Rolston, a man whose tongue is seemingly perpetually planted firmly in his cheek, it is very clear that Ken loves to talk about games. Ken spoke in so much depth that we actually found it hard to actually ask him any questions. Rather than being a traditional interview we present a transcription of our recent chat with Ken Rolston about RPGs, his work on The Elder Scrolls series, what he thinks of the competition, and what we can expect from his new game Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning.

Ken, for those that don’t already know who you are, can you introduce yourself and tell us what you’re working on

I am Ken Rolston, internationally celebrated games designer, and your humble servant – as I said yesterday – and I’m the lead designer on such classics as Morrowind and Oblivion, which you had better have heard of, and now the visionary – notice the visionary as opposed to the guy who does honest work – yes the visionary for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is a fantastic new role playing game that has way too much fun with the combat and yet all the other things that you wanted which was narrative, exploration, combat and advancement.

So expand a little bit on the combat, what differentiates the combat of Reckoning from some other action RPGs?

Now the thing that I wanted it to do was not suck! Now that’s overstating a case, it’s not like I haven’t had fun in all the role playing games I’ve played and design, but they all come out of a tradition of tabs top games where your expectations are modest to say the least, for how slow they go and how complicated they are. So you go from (RPGs like) that to great games like Baldur’s Gate, which is still turn based, and as long as you’re very patient and you don’t expect things to happen straight away, its wonderful. It’s like small group combat, World War 2 combat but with magic and stuff.

And then you go to games like Oblivion, modern games in which you have that first person or third person view as you’re exploring the world, but then your still saying “wow is that the best animation I’ve seen in the industry” and say to yourself “maybe not so much”. Then “is that the most fun combat?”… no. Because we’re prisoners of our genre we don’t know to ask for more.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has a refreshingly fluid take on combat

So I said, “wow I bet we could go play an action game and see how much the fun the game would be”, but I hate action games, always did! It’s not because it’s fun for a limited time, when you’re doing stuff and getting excited, but because they’re on a rail. And very often you’re in a level where often you’ll be trying to figure out “What is the designer expecting me to do here? Do I have to hit him with a hat rack or an oil base paint can?” your just trying to figure out what the designers doing.

So I had this – what I thought to be – brilliant idea; it turns out there are four pillars of role playing games: Bioware seems to have accidentally done a great job with narrative, so can’t go in there, and then there’s Bethesda, and because I’ve been responsible for some of their role playing games, they don’t suck, and then there’s Blizzard who do not a particularly bad job of advancement and the loot and compulsive stuff, and so I say “OK we can do it, we can do it in the area (of combat)”.

Then this amazing coincidence occurs, I get to work with R.A. Salvatore – who I’m only slightly bitter that he’s a better writer than I am. I think its kinda not fair because I am a great game designer, but I admit he writes better than I do… and he’s just had to write 10,000 years of history for us, which I don’t have to do, thank god! So I feel good about this. He comes from a Dungeons and Dragons (background), he’s not just making characters, he starts of like I do with setting, that has to be logical and coherent, built with factions, all kinds of complicated time periods and relationships. So OK, lets ship it, we got that part down.

And then I said “Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn)… I wonder if he would know something about animation and combat? I wonder if that might be convergent with my lust for good combat” and it turned out, shockingly, he was good at that stuff. So it’s a great opportunity, that’s how we have this market differentiation – its a lot of stupid coincidences that come from my “brilliant vision”, and of course knowing we could do a good job with the combat. But I could never have done it without these visionaries.

And then, lets be honest, I don’t do any work as a visionary, I’ve got Big Huge Games, they had to do this shit that I said we should do! I could sell this to people, but its very hard to sell a new RPG, and very hard to sell a new IP, but at least I could do that. I could make the same kind of pitch to you guys about why this game is great, but it turns out I can’t make that game by myself, it had to be Big Huge. And they’re wonderful people, they understand action games, but since I despise them I couldn’t possibly do that, they took care of all that work. Ian did a wonderful job of designing systems, there’s the Destiny System which fits beautifully into the premise of our game. Everything fell together in the sense that the writers were with the right people in the right place at the right time. It’s partly magic and partly hard work… awfully hard work!

Tell us more about the Destiny System, we went to see the game and have a little play around earlier on and it seems you’ve basically done away with the convention of just choosing a type of character at the start of the game, and replaced it with something much better. What exactly is the whole Destiny System about.

In order to have access to the conventions and things I wouldn’t say we’ve done away with character classes, we’ve chunked them, we’ve broken them up into little bits and also we’ve removed some of the inter connections that make them so brittle. One of the problems is, if you’re going to play a role playing game and you’re going to start of as a fighter, if you don’t plunge everything in to that you’re gonna get a gimped character if you try and mix some of the other pieces in there. OK that would not work (in other RPGs), but we really wanted to be able to do that, so that meant poor Ian had to design a games system that would not suck under those circumstances and “c’est une miracle!” he actually did it, oh my god! Again it turns out if really good people are working with you and you’re a raving lunatic sometimes they feel obligated to do what you feel is best.

Reckoning's character classes are less rigid than in other RPGs

So the Destiny System, as you were saying, is essentially a way of building your character piece by piece using little bits of different character classes. The reason that’s great is of course you don’t have to commit yourself to a specific character direction, but also because we have such a seductive combat system and it works in all the different areas. For example there will be some of you that are hardcore gamers and like to play a fighter game because its simple, BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG-REPEAT, and by the way that’s great, I play that sometimes, but in this case you’ll be doing that but then you’ll find out that a magic user, when he pushes the dodge button, teleports behind his enemy and then there’s that special moment and sense of betrayal where you realise you can’t do that as a fighter and it weakens your class. You’re seduced to the dark side to use magic, which is evil, all magic is evil, obviously! So that’s the whole idea, because you begin to discover how much fun the other little bits are we want your to constantly, when it gets to be level up time, be in agony , saying I can’t stand not choosing these other cool little bits in the skill tree.

Another kinda hidden value of that is that role playing games or fantasy role playing games tend to exhaust all of their real novelty and deliciousness early on in the game, like I’m done after maybe 5th or 6th level and the idea of going to 40th or 50th level in an MMO? I just don’t care, there’s not that much novelty left. But we have got cool stuff that you’ll have to wait a long time for, but on the other hand you’re getting your money’s worth. If you keep playing you can drop comets on guys and it doesn’t suck – the meteor strike is an ass load of fun. You don’t wanna use it that often because it just makes you feel too powerful.

Do you see what you’ve done in Reckoning as the future of RPGs and do you think a lot of other games developers will be copying what you’ve done?

Yes, because I’m so modest and self-effacing yes, I do believe everyone will follow in my footsteps, and I say that only vaguely ironically. I actually do think that when people say “ya know, he took a chance, he put a lot of elements from action games in there, and yet he was not dragged behind by his fans” they’ll say “ya know it is fun”. What’s gonna happen I really believe is they’ll play it and say “aw that’s not so hard”. First of all they’re stupid because it is fucking hard! “Anyone can do that” they’ll say, and then they’ll go ahead and do it because they know it’s fun. It turns out the whole process is hellishly difficult, because of how different it is.

The problem is action game developers often loath and detest RPGs for the same reasons that RPGs detest them because their paces are different, like you’re not very patient if you an action guy, “Oh my god your taking forever to have fun, that blows!”. But I think there is plenty of room for cross pollination between the two. I know there will be I think its going to be an influential game, its got bits worth stealing, so why not.

Having work on Morrowind and Oblivion, slower paced games, have your surprised yourself? Because watching Reckoning it seems so fluid and beautiful, we wondered why wasn’t this done 5 years ago?

Because I wasn’t done doing the other things! To be honest Morrowind, great as it was, was slow paced, I can’t play it any more. If it was rebuilt with the Oblivion interface and better software it would be much better. But in those moments those games were exciting, having been there and done that and walked through that process and always knowing that, good god, I’m not gonna live forever, I don’t wanna make another game like that. So it was exciting to try something new. I’ll admit the moment of truth was when I could actually play it and it didn’t suck. I couldn’t make it, it had to come from the geniuses and the combat design, and animation. There were moments when I was saying “I’m writing cheques that I cannot cash” but for the some of you that have played it you can tell its just cheap cheesy fun, that’s really very satisfying.

The closest analogy we could think of for Reckoning is God of War crossed with Fable

So as part of that do you think there’s no place for the old style RPGs in the future?

Oh no no no. What we need to do is take the experience of Morrowind and make it more accessible, I don’t actually wanna do that work, I think other people should get their hands on it and do that kind of stuff; all I really wanna do is boast and rest on my glory at this point, don’t tempt the gods of fate. Right now the only excitement I have is waiting for it to get into the hands of the people. I’m excited about the prospect of Reckoning 2 because there’s so many things we didn’t do last time, I’ve got plenty to distract me in the meantime thank you very much.

Am I right in thinking that after oblivion you were very tired of that, and effectively retired. Then you’ve came back to do this, so surely now you’ve had a second wind are you just gonna think well never again, just keep going?

This is a dialogue that I have with my wife, family and friends quite a lot. They keep riding me back into this criminal syndicate! The serious answer is I’ve had so much fun working on it, why would I wanna stop? They also spoil the living shit outta me by not letting me do any honest work… occasionally I have to go mad and dance around on a stage.

Tell us about the storyline a little bit more, because it ties into the Destiny System doesn’t it?

I absolutely refuse to talk about the storyline because the worst thing I could do is reveal that, but on the other hand the premise is the biggest thing I care about as far as the narrative is concerned. I don’t think its time to build a RPG before you have a premise which makes people say “aw that’s fucking sweet, oh we gotta do dat!”. The premise of the game is that your are the first person in history to be resurrected, it has some mythic resonances in the real world, you know its cool, and at the same time you don’t know why (you were resurrected) and people wonder why. It turns out if you’ve invented resurrection people will be very interested in you; some in a nice way, some in a way that they want to dismantle you for parts and see how it worked . So we’ve created the fabulous situation of conflicts, undefined conflicts, which is my favourite open world narrative. We don’t define the character , we leave you with the idea of “was I good man? Was I a bad man?” the mystery is, I wonder if the game designers will tell me. It my job to refuse to reveal anything to you.

So would it be fair to say that you start the game with a blank slate?

Absolutely… or that’s what you think based on what I’ve told you. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a lying treacherous sack of shit.

Ken, we would absolutely love to keep talking but unfortunately our time is up. Thank you for your time. Can you tell us when the game is out?

Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning will be out on the 10th of February in Europe, and on the 7th in the USA… thank god I got that right!

Spark89 escribió:No seguía mucho este juego pero al ver el último vídeo La única pega que le veo, para mi gusto, es que es demasiado colorido, con un diseño artístico algo cartoon y eso en un juego de estas características no me gusta mucho pero bueno, lo importante, que es la jugabilidad, parece ser que será brutal así que me apunto al hilo

Un saludo

bisarma escribió:Acabo de tincarme el vídeo al completo y el tío para haber currado en Bethesda poco a aprendido.

El juego me huele en excesivo a Fable por todas partes, sobre todo en el estilo gráfico y los combates.

Claramente, para mí, el juego está a años luz de lo que podemos disfrutar a día de hoy en Skyrim. Una pena, porque a mi los fable no me tiran pero nada, aunque este tiene pinta de ser algo más complejo que el Fable en cuanto a rol se refiere, pero aún así se le ve muy descafeinado.

Que os parece a vosotros?.

bisarma escribió:Acabo de tincarme el vídeo al completo y el tío para haber currado en Bethesda poco a aprendido.

El juego me huele en excesivo a Fable por todas partes, sobre todo en el estilo gráfico y los combates.

Claramente, para mí, el juego está a años luz de lo que podemos disfrutar a día de hoy en Skyrim. Una pena, porque a mi los fable no me tiran pero nada, aunque este tiene pinta de ser algo más complejo que el Fable en cuanto a rol se refiere, pero aún así se le ve muy descafeinado.

Que os parece a vosotros?.