As some of you may know, Big Huge Games’ upcoming RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — for which former Lazarus team leader Ian “Tiberius” Fraizer is the lead designer — doesn’t feature a class system per se. That is because the world of Amalur is a fatalist world; everyone’s life is defined by a set destiny. Everyone, that is, except you, the player. As a resurrectee (see what I did there?), you have become The Fateless One:

Anyhow, some time ago, the good Mr. Fraizer challenged me to spot the hidden Ultima reference buried in the the various Destiny Cards that had been released for public consumption to date. And I will admit that I failed this test; I didn’t spot the reference. Someone else did, however:

I like that the three prime destinies are also assigned to the tree prime colors;

Red for Warrior path

Yellow for Rogue path

Blue for Sage path

And it also follows the blending pattern for mixed archetype characters.

Orange for Warden, a mixed Warrior / Rogue.

Green for Arcanist, a Rogue / Sage blend.

Violet for Battlemage, the obvious Sage / Warrior hybrid

White and grey used for Adventurers, those who mix all three styles into one character.

In order, it even covers the rainbow spectrum but for the missing Indigo.

It’s an excellent stylistic choice, and the only thing I’d have done differently were it up to me is switch Rogue and Sage base colors, as Blue fits the “lives in the shadows” Rogue better, and Yellow for flashy magic, in my humble opinion, but that’s really just a minor thing. [This would have also swapped Battlemage to Orange and Warden to Violet.]

Mostly I just wanted to point this out to show how much I appreciate this sort of attention to detail.

I’m actually kind of hopeful this type of symbolism makes it into other parts of the game as well.

Here are the Destiny Cards for the eight classes referenced above:

[nggallery id=58]

Hmmm…does this sound at all familiar? Red for the Warrior (Fighter), Yellow for the Rogue (Bard), Blue for the Sage (Mage)…Orange for the Warrior/Rogue Warden (Fighter/Bard Tinker)…Green for the Rogue/Sage Arcanist (Bard/Mage Druid)…Violet for the Warrior/Sage Battlemage (Fighter/Mage Paladin)…and then White and Grey for the two classes that combine all three classes in different ways, the Adventurers and Seekers (Rangers and Shepherds).

That’s right, Dragons and Dragonettes; Tibby and his team have managed to give Ultima a quite fitting homage in their upcoming open world RPG.

Oh, and check out Tibby’s awesome cloth map of the world of Reckoning:

I continue to be highly interested in this game. February — which is, I believe, when its release date has been set for (though I’d have to confirm that) — can’t come soon enough!