Ian Frazier Talks About Reckoning

GameBanshee reports that the good folks at RPG Codex managed to score an exclusive interview with Ian Frazier, former Team Lazarus leader and currently the lead designer on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. In it, he talks about the upcoming RPG and goes into some detail about its Destinies system, its combat, its RPG elements, and the like, revealing some very interesting details.

Here’s a taste:

Other than choosing between different abilities, what other choices will the game offer? Branching storyline? Multiple quest solutions? Friends and foes?

There are tons of systemic choices in the game (abilities, Destinies, gear, skills, etc.) but if you’re talking about narrative choice, yep, we have that too!

Many quests have multiple approaches and/or multiple endings based on how you choose to handle them, and those alternate endings can sometimes grant you permanent, exclusive systemic rewards that we call “”Twists of Fate.” Dialogue and quest rewards can vary based on your skills (especially Persuasion!). NPCs can react to you differently based on your race, your gender, or even the god you worship. You can commit crimes and tick off individual NPCs or even a whole town. And in some cases those choices are directly integrated into a quest, like an NPC who asks you to do something devious and if you do as he asks without being seen, you get a very different end result than if you succeed at the mission but are spotted while you were doing it (I can’t say much more without spoilers.

Also, don’t miss the most recent preview of Reckoning that’s been released!

4 Responses

  1. Infinitron says:

    He’s done a good job appeasing the mob here.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Infini: I’m looking forward to the game, so I guess consider me appeased. I’m genuinely curious to see if and how they managed to pull off the both/and approach to crafting an RPG and an action game.

      Provided they didn’t have to subtract from something else — story, say — to pull it off, that is.

  2. Sergorn says:

    This is somewhat reassuring. Recknoning looks cool, but I’ve been worried really about the story/quests/RPGs aspect of it which are just not showcased much into gameplay vids.

    We’ll see how that goes.

  3. Sanctimonia says:

    Sounds pretty dope. I guess I shouldn’t hope for a Linux version though. Having to reconfigure my system to dual-boot between my main OS and a pirated XP installation isn’t my idea of a good time.