Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning's Narrative Design
:extralife:
More promotional material was released for the upcoming fantasy RPG that Ian “Tiberius” Fraizer — the guy who headed up the development of Ultima V: Lazarus — is the lead designer on: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Naturally, it’s another video, and in this particular case it’s a combined interview with the game’s narrative designers on what it was like to work with the trifecta of Ken Rolston, R.A. Salvatore, and Todd McFarlane.
And yes, I still want this game.
Interesting how well-spoken, precise and positive the select employees are. Maybe studios consider media presence a virtue when they hire these days? I’ve been watching GT Academy, and they had a test where a fake media grilled them. They all sucked, but these guys are good.
I still want the play the game, but that doesn’t make me forget what bullshit looks like.
To clarify, I’m not saying this game is bullshit. It looks more promising than most games I’ve seen lately. But when I see it being lubricated in a PR-heavy way I get real suspicious. And that guy’s sideburns are crazy.
There is obviously some PR polish…though to be fair, if I were in charge of putting together a design team for a game, I’d probably want my narrative guys to be articulate and well-spoken in general. I don’t care (as much) if my combat designer can’t string together three words, but the guys building the story better damn well know their way around the English language.
Just found out it isn’t open world. Bleh
Not a pure open world, no; towns, cities, and interiors are on separate maps. The exteriors (and possibly dungeons? I haven’t heard…) are one big open thing, apparently.
Which, given the involvement of Ken Rolston, is both a familiar and unsurprising design choice. And in a certain way, it’s not unlike the first five Ultimas, is it?
Surely our definition of open world isn’t just “can move through the whole world without loading screens?” I always took ‘open world’ to mean that you can go anywhere, do anything you want, and all quests/story are largely optional and can be ignored if you just want to mess around. Whether or not this happens on one big map or many many smaller maps is surely irrelevent? Dungeon Siege allowed you to play through the entire world without loading screens, but it definitely wasn’t open world….
Duke:
By that definition, Reckoning is, from what I’ve heard, an open world game as well, for the most part. In addition to having vast outdoor spaces to explore, of course.
That’s what I had thought. My comment was more directed towards Mark
When I say open world, I envision a game without artificial barriers that steer gameplay. I.e. levels or areas. No ultima (dual or single scale) ever really had these exept maybe 8. The previews i have seen have said a few dirty words; corridor for example. I just don’t get why this was a design choice for what i thought was going to be the ‘killer’ rpg. Maybe its engine selection. I don’t know. But its thing like that which make a game veer more towards diablo or zelda to me, than ultima.
A perfect “open world” would be seamless and have no invisible walls. Separate maps inherently have invisible walls, including the Ultima series. A less than perfect open world allows free exploration but still has invisible walls such as separate maps. This sounds like the latter, which is fine as long as you can’t zoom too far back or otherwise try to show two levels at once.