As should be obvious to frequent visitors of the site, I’m rather stoked about the upcoming RPG from Big Huge Games and 38 Studios, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. And why shouldn’t I be? It’s an open-world RPG headed up by Ken Rolston (of Oblivion fame), with a dazzling artistic look provided by Todd McFarlane, a deep backstory provided by R.A. Salvatore, and gameplay design by none other than Ian Frazier, whom most of us know as Tiberius Moongazer from the Ultima V: Lazarus project.

There is, in other words, a ton of potential, and a very real possibility that this game will deliver some of that good old RPG feeling we’ve all been missing.

In keeping with something I set in motion yesterday, then, I have decided that each Wednesday from here on will feature a post which aggregates any news about Big Huge Games and/or 38 Studios and the Reckoning series.

360 Magazine interviews Ian Frazier

A lot of the discussion seems to focus on the size of the game’s world, which those of us who played the game’s demo only got the slightest taste of because of the time restriction that came into effect after completing the opening quest.

IF: It’s big. Really, really big. And perhaps more importantly, it’s incredibly dense — there’s nowhere you can go in the Faelands (the part of Amalur focused on in Reckoning) where you won’t find a ton of different peopleto talk to, quests to do and things to discover.

Beyond that, something we’re really proud of is the sheer amount of visual variety in the world — we’ve got five exterior regions that each have their own very different biome and mood, from dank swamps to arid deserts to the strange crystalline landscape of Alabastra, so you get a lot more variety than is the norm for open-world games.

360: How big is the open world, both in terms of mileage and number of dungeons?

IF: I couldn’t tell you the exact square footage of the overworld map (that’s a hard number to nail down due to how our playable space is technically constructed), but I can tell you that it takes over half an hour to sprint at full [speed] across the map, even if you somehow avoid all combat.

As for dungeons, there are around 130 of them in the game, and each one is hand-crafted (we never reuse dungeon layouts).

Amazon is hosting four “Visionary Interviews” with key Reckoning people.

So far, they have video interviews up with 38 Studios head Curt Schilling and R.A. Salvatore; interviews with Todd McFarlane and Ken Rolston will be posted before the end of the month.

Speaking of Curt Schilling…CNN’s Geek Out! blog has an interview with him.

So just how does a Major League pitcher wind up at the helm of an RPG development studio?

As a professional baseball player, “I had a glut of disposable income, and I traveled and was alone a lot,” he said. “I was perfectly suited to be a hardcore gamer and if you look at the sports world today, I think there are more gamers than not, now, in professional sports by a large margin.”

Schilling said he was using a computer and helped design software to help him become a better pitcher when most players and teams were using videotape. Of course, the computer also doubled as his gaming rig during his days off.

…

Using his connections, Schilling was able to bring in author R.A. Salvatore to write the story, designer Todd McFarlane to do the art and animation, and Ken Rolston, the lead designer of “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind” and “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” to act as the executive designer. This all-star line-up formed the backbone for the work on “Reckoning.”

“I had no interest of getting into the industry to build games,” Schilling said. “This has never been about me. We’re not making Curt Schilling’s game. This is not a vanity project, and it never has been.”

“Every bit of my focus was getting in the industry to help an intellectual property change the way people get entertained and be the best in the world at it. If you’re not going to try and win it all, I really don’t feel like playing.”

Schilling was, apparently, a rather big fan of World of Warcraft, and the initial vision of 38 Studios was the creation of an MMORPG. That project is still underway, evidently, under the code-name “Copernicus”…and Big Huge Games’ Reckoning will serve both as the means of establishing the land and lore in which “Copernicus” will be set, and also as a means of attracting an initial fanbase.

You know, in addition to injecting some fresh vigor into the fantasy RPG genre.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Visionary Newsletters

The Reckoning website is featuring two “Visionary Newsletters” (not to be confused with the Amazon videos). I’m going to violate good blogging manners for a bit here and quote both newsletters in full. Here’s the first, from R.A. Salvatore:

World-building is, mostly, an exercise in philosophy and logic. Every culture has creation and destruction myths; building a world means exploring these and, perhaps, determining if one of them might actually be true. In any case, these myths, or religions, are often shaped by the environment, both political and physical, and they, in turn help shape cultures. Mark Twain once noted that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. If you study history, you see the truth of that. Cultures follow a pattern, human needs demand certain systems, and there is a beautiful symmetry to be found in putting one culture beside another.

So take our own human history viewed through an honest prism. Now turn that prism just a bit to the side — for example, pretend that one of the more primitive creation-destruction myths is actually true (consider the 2012 Mayan craze currently hitting pop culture). In this skewed vision, add in elements to fit the new “truth” of history, the way Dan Brown did in “The DaVinci Code,” (and many others did before him) and you’ll find yourself amazed at how well those elements “fit” into the question of what really happened versus what we know from textbooks.

This is the secret of world-building, whether you’re recreating or reinterpreting our world history, or creating an entirely new entity. And a second secret: it’s a blast. I mean that. You are, in effect, concocting a gigantic conspiracy theory, and admit it or not, people love conspiracy theories.

This is the essence of Amalur. My team put in place the creation-destruction myth of the world and the logical, historical construct that supports the world in its game-state, whether with Reckoning in the Age of Arcana, or the MMO, Copernicus, 2,500 years later. This was my role and my stamp on Amalur overall, and it will reflect in all of its products, or at least, it had better!

My role in the specific endeavors of Amalur varies. I’ve been very involved in the MMO, of course, having spent almost four years in the office with the teams and advising on everything from narrative (world history and meta-story) to content (individual quests and zones that reinforce the larger world), to the art style and even the class and mechanics’ teams. All of it, every system and discipline, goes to support the meta, the larger world of Amalur, with its history and development.

We ask questions like, “If you can throw a lightning bolt, would you invent a gun?” or “If you can teleport, or facilitate swift travel to distant points, would you go through the laborious process of creating a highway system or airplanes?” You might go to a certain point — riding horses and plowing fields — perhaps, but the cost and time and slog from there to air travel? Would it be worth it? Similarly, I’m always asking, all the time, “How does it fit?” An idea might be cool, very cool, but how does it fit with the history, logic and philosophy of Amalur? If we can’t come up with suitable answers, the cool idea gets put off to the side for another day and another project.

The advent of Big Huge Games as a part of 38 Studios brought dramatic changes, fears and trepidations, honestly. All of a sudden, our carefully controlled hiring and team-building and micro-management of the IP got hit with the addition of nearly a hundred new workers, most of whom none of us knew, and with an RPG engine in development over which none of us at 38 Studios had any input. As we sat down to discuss the acquisition and the role BHG would play in the IP of Amalur, there was more than a bit of skepticism, and I have to admit, most of it was coming from me. This was my baby and Curt went out and adopted a sibling!

But the more I got to know the folks in Baltimore, the more realized these were great people in a creative environment and with pride and joy in what they were building. Still, when we came to realize that Amalur, which we had been working on for several years, would make its public debut through a single-player RPG from the newly-acquired Baltimore studio rather than through the MMO we were building in New England (near my home), I was, of course, terrified. Honestly, it didn’t initially help that the “visionary” of the Baltimore studio was certifiably insane — lovable, but insane. I didn’t know Ken Rolston, though I certainly knew his work, all the way back to paper game days. I also understood that he brought enough well-earned cachet to fight me, if that had been his choice.

All of those fears went away about an hour after I met the guy. I spent the first 50 minutes trying to figure out just how crazy he was, then finally realized that I was confusing “crazy” with an incredible love of life, a curiosity beyond anything I had ever witnessed and a level of honesty that was truly refreshing. Ken Rolston lacks pretense. He puts it out there with complete honesty. He is who he is, unabashedly. I’ve come to love the guy, and respect his intellect and creativity and most of all, his curiosity. It wasn’t enough for him to simply look at the IP we had created and pull out facts from it. No, no, he had to dig deeper and seek out the mysteries built behind the events, logic and philosophy of our timeline.

So now BHG had our timeline and the primer on Amalur. They went out and concocted a meta-story for their game, and pulled from our timeline a space and time that best supported that story. Then they came to Massachusetts with their concoction, and I and that team I had helped form at 38 Studios went over it and began asking the questions and offering the suggestions the same way we had done with our own internal fights and collaborations during the primary building of the IP. It wasn’t all happy roses, of course. Creative people like to argue, and become wedded to their ideas as passionately as a bulldog holds fast to a bone. But we got through it, and the end result was a sum greater than the individual parts each of us were bringing to the table.

Since then, my role with Reckoning has been more in the role of mentor and editor, from afar. One of my favorite days since the beginning of 38 Studios was when the entire narrative team from BHG, including Ken, flew up to Massachusetts to sit down around a table and present their side quest lines to me. This epitomized what has been the true joy for me as the old hand on the project: being able to work with wonderfully creative younger writers and artists and help guide them, and pull from them their very best efforts.

This is what an editor does. I don’t rewrite their stories, I force them to justify what they’re doing, force them to ask the questions at the second level, the third level, and so on, so that when they dig their heels in, they can say, without any doubt, why and how what they’re doing is important to the world of Amalur, why it fits and why it enhances. That day around the table, I sat and listened to each presenter (and I love that some of them were clearly nervous — I felt like a professor ready to pass judgment). Then I hit him with a barrage of questions, forcing him to justify how what he was doing fit the world. After that, when each young writer had fought back with passion, we got into the collective questioning, taking what had been presented and offering a different perspective on how those quest storylines might be tightened or expanded or otherwise improved.

And in the end, as always with 38 Studios, it became the province of the individual creator to make the final calls on how his quest line would play out, because in the end, this is truly a team project, and truly shines when you hire talented people and let them be talented. The last thing I or Todd McFarlane or Ken Rolston or Curt Schilling wants to do is stifle the creative input of the team. Our stamps are on this world, but so are the stamps of everyone involved in the creation of Amalur, at both studios. This works because we all bought in. We all came to know early on that we were doing something special here, and now we can’t wait to prove it.

And here’s the second, from Ken Rolston:

Now I can righteously smite evil… and have boatloads of fun doing it!

What a delicious discovery! I’m in a heroic tale? And I get to CHOOSE what I do next?

That was the thrill of my first role-playing game experience, long before I was a game designer. Long before computer games. Long before professionally published RPG game rules. Back when I played from typewritten, mimeographed, stapled amateur rules. When the Earth had just barely cooled.

At that point, I was just telling my gamemaster what I wanted to do next. And he took care of all the details. We had big dungeon maps on graph paper, but we never had figures or tactical maps or anything like that.

Those were more innocent times. Unlike those who came to role-playing from a wargaming and miniatures gaming past, it didn’t occur to us to have tactical movement rules or a tabletop display. In later years, I came to love tabletop battles, with all their pageantry and glorious hand-painted miniatures.

What I did NOT love, not even a little bit, was the glacial pace of combat, and the endless squabbling and rules-lawyering involved with tactical movement, first in miniatures wargames, and later in paper-and-pencil role-playing tabletop battles.

Then, when computer RPGs appeared, I was so grateful to have the computer handle all the complex rules of initiative and movement, it never occurred to me how slow and limited my combat movement options were. It was SOOOO much better than tabletop rules.

And, as time passed, and we graduated from turn-based RPGs to real-time movement, and then to more immersive third-person and first-person movement, I was so grateful to be freed from the bonds of turn-based combat that it never occurred to me to ask for more.

Like Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon, I had grown to love my familiar chains.

Because I am older than dirt, I never played console games. I owned personal computers from the earliest days, from the Apple ][ and its successors through the early Macs. But those were for WORK… not for games. I wrote my paper-and-pencil games with word processors and graphics programs on personal computers, but I never played games on them.

And later, when my moral fiber had frayed sufficiently to allow me to play computer games, I was perfectly happy with mouse and keyboard. It didn’t occur to me to try console games. Because those were clearly for kids… not for adults like me.

It was only late in life, after I was working on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, that I stooped to play my first console games. Because I HAD to. I was MAKING a console game, see, so I had to understand them. Unlike most of my colleagues then, I was completely ignorant of consoles and console controllers.

And even once I had learned to play console games, I strongly preferred the PC platform to consoles. Because… who would be stupid enough to play a shooter with a controller? That’s just silly. Everyone knows a mouse and keyboard is better for shooters.

So, like most role-playing gamers, I came by my ignorance honestly. Because my expectations were shaped, first by the slow, awkward, limiting pace of tabletop role-playing, and later by the faster, but still relatively slow and awkward… and physically and tactically limiting interface of the mouse and keyboard… I was perfectly happy with computer and console role-playing games.

At the same time, however, I was studying the philosophical notions of what a great computer game might be, and from people like Chris Crawford, I was developing a notion that the ideal computer game would have you make the largest number of significant decisions per unit time. And for most decisions in role-playing games, you don’t want to change your mind very often per unit time. Now and then you’ll change weapons, and now and then you’ll expend a rare resource like a scroll or potion, but most important decisions in a role-playing game happen over long periods of time… like what class you’ll play, and how you’ll develop your character, or what narrative choices you’ll make.

The one exception I could think of was tactical movement. I always wanted to change where I was moving relative to my enemies and relative to the positive and negative possibilities of the current combat space. I was always trying to be in the rear or flank of my enemy… because those systemic advantages made so much intuitive sense to me. I always wanted to have my back to a wall or a companion. I always wanted to fire missiles and spells from high ground or behind obstacles that put multiple enemy attackers at a disadvantage. Again, those ideas made so much sense to me.

In turn-based computer games, I could make a lot of those decisions… but not in real time. And battles took a looong time to resolve, and, more importantly, they were in a not-at-all tactile, or visceral, or immersive, interface.

To the computer role-playing game audience, it may seem obvious that I should have been looking all along to action games for inspiration. But obvious as that seems, it overlooks the massive design and technical challenges involved in adapting action game systems, mechanics, conventions, and presentation to the complex and familiar world of heroic fantasy role-playing gaming.

I can’t explain the design and technical challenges to you. They are beyond my comprehension. As a narrative designer, I have only modest skills as a system designer. And I am profoundly ignorant of the gameplay of action games, much less the systems, mechanics, conventions, and presentation of action role-playing games.

That is why it is a Good Thing that Big Huge Games has assembled such a stellar team of system, combat, and animation developers. And why it has been such a delight for me… the realization of a role-playing gamer’s fantasy that I was too timid and conventional to have imagined… to play Reckoning’s combat.

The first time I could play Reckoning’s combat, even in its early, limited form, I could tell how amazing it was… how much better than I could imagine. I could dodge and roll and dash for handy corners, keep my enemy off-balance and moving to re-target me. And everything happened so fast. It took me a while to adjust. I’ve never enjoyed console action games, so it was a steep learning curve.

That first experience with an early build was the answer to all my role-playing tactical movement dreams. But it didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the other RPG combat delights that Reckoning had in store for me.

Because I am a child of the tabletop RPG and PC RPG generation, it would never have occurred to me to teleport through an enemy. That’s just not an experience that translates well to a tabletop or turn-based game. And that we would poison an enemy each time we teleported through them? Or that we could zip back-and-forth through one enemy, or through a whole room full of enemies… that just never would have occurred to me.

And magical Frisbees? That’s just silly. But that’s just what our chakrams are. Chakrams are my favorite Reckoning weapons. In D&D, the most imaginative mage-based ranged physical weapon attack we could imagine was thrown darts, or slings. But now we throw these amazing magical things in super-complicated boomerang arches, slicing and dicing opponents, shocking, frying, and freezing them. It is not only extra effective as a weapon… it looks totally awesome.

It’s been a long journey from my first tabletop RPG to Reckoning. Most of the time I’ve been so happy bashing evil things with a hammer that I forgot to look forward. And even when I felt like I wanted something better, it was hard to see what shape that “better” would take.

And even knowing what I wanted better wouldn’t have been much help… except finally, with Reckoning, I was lucky enough to work with the Big Huge team of system designers, combat designers, and animators, who were kind enough to create something delightful and stick it in my hands.

Yes, many years ago that first role-playing game was certainly a thrill, but nothing to compare with the thrill of having the Reckoning controller in my hands with a working build for the first time. I’ll never forget, even for a moment, what a charmed life I’ve led, simply to have my hard-working, tragically clever companions at Big Huge making my dreams come true. I can only hope that you get the same thrill when you have the Reckoning controller in your hands.

Presumably, we’ll be hearing from other key people on the project in due time. For now…well…Salvatore is right: Rolston just puts it all out there, unfiltered, doesn’t he?

Apparently there were bugs in the Reckoning demo. These will evidently not be in the final game.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Ian Frazier discusses the bugs that some people evidently encountered in the course of the recent Reckoning demo:

“There’s a lot of tension about the demo, which we didn’t build in-house,” Frazier told Eurogamer. “It was branched off our code about three months ago. It got a lot of bug fixing. We sent them what we had, but there are a lot of bug fixes they didn’t get. So we’re all nervous, like, the demo’s really buggy.

“But all the time the demo was worked on is time we spent de-bugging the main game. It should be clear from the reviews the main game is in way better shape. That’s been a source of nervousness.”

…

“I’m not going to say the game’s bug free – no game is. But it’s pretty darn solid. Final code will show it’s way better across all three platforms than the demo build. The demo didn’t see the advantages of the last home stretch of bug fixing, which is a little bit painful.”

…

“Don’t get me wrong – they did a good job with little support from us. I’m not trying to poo-poo those guys by any means. But in order to get it to fit to be a reasonable size download that would actually meet Microsoft and Sony’s requirements, they had to cut everything that wasn’t needed for the demo, like extra art and audio assets, and they cut a little much. They cut some audio that actually is in the demo. So if you talk to something and that clip’s not there, you’ll just see the words flicker across the screen.”

Well…that’s good to know! Though in all honesty, I didn’t notice anything I’d call a bug in the game, apart from a handful of graphical oddments that I just chalked up to my mid-grade ATI Radeon card being, well, mid-grade. I also didn’t notice the audio cutting out…but then, I think I mentioned in my review of it that I was playing while the kids were sleeping and my wife was working, and so was keeping the volume rather on the low side anyhow.

Reckoning could be a long damn game.

As in “200 to 300 hours” long.

[singlepic id=2436 w=400 h=400 float=center]

Inside Reckoning: Art Design

Inside Reckoning: Music and Sound

A Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview

GameBanshee offers up what I think is their own take on the promise of Reckoning:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is based on an original fantasy world created by veteran author R.A. Salvatore, whose work in the Dungeons & Dragons franchise has been reflected in a number of other games, such as Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate. Being a brand-new game world, however, Amalur instead opts for a tinge of Irish mythology rather than the traditional fantasy tropes. References to Fae (non-mortal “fairy” races), the Tuatha (in Amalur’s case, a race of demonic Fae waging war on the mortal realm), and other concepts out of folklore help to give Reckoning an original background. While it never feels particularly alien, it’s always nice to play an RPG with a slightly different source of inspiration, even if it comes from the father of so much D&D canon.

At the center of Reckoning is the notion of Fate — that all beings have predetermined lives and outcomes. A warrior-monk order, the Fateweavers, exist to read the threads of Fate and advise the inhabitants of the world in how to deal with their lives best. As the player character, you change all that. Resurrected from total death by a Gnomish experiment, the Well of Souls, you awaken in the midst of a Tuatha attack, escape from their grasp, and shortly learn from a Fateweaver that unlike every other mortal, you have no Fate whatsoever — and more, that you are able to bend the threads of fate to your will.

While it’s impossible to go into more details based on the sampling of gameplay we tried out, Reckoning holds a lot of promise both in its interesting folklore-tinged game world, and in its story setup, which to a degree recalls Planescape: Torment. Though the game doesn’t take itself entirely seriously, there’s still more here to latch onto than most other action-RPGs, and we’re eager to see where things go in the full game. There is a lot that can be done with this kind of setup, and it’d be nice to see Reckoning play it boldly rather than safely.

Do read the whole thing (if, that is, the GameBanshee site loads properly for you).

If you played the Reckoning demo, give your feedback!

The game’s lead combat designer is particularly interested to hear your thoughts on the game’s camera.

Reckoning is available for pre-order through Steam now.

You know, in case that’s your primary means of game purchasing…and/or in case you haven’t already pre-ordered it from somewhere else.

IGN UK has begun a series — called a “review in progress” — looking at Reckoning. (Here’s the second installment.)

It starts off mostly as a “first impressions” look at the game, but the second installment gets a bit more into the nitty gritty details. Their impressions of the game’s rampantly fun combat mechanics echo my own:

Reckoning’s superb combat mechanics keep me happy, however, leaving mild asides like the one mentioned in the previous paragraph in the periphery of my mind. Reckoning feels almost arcadey in its combat, something that seems totally out of place in a game like this, and yet something that remains utterly refreshing. Many other like-minded RPGs feel outright clunky and archaic compared to Reckoning, and I truly believe that combat may very well be this game’s strongest aspect.

Indeed, I’ve begun to realize the importance of strategy as I wage battle. The beginning of the game lulls you into a false sense of security, and Reckoning begins to feel like a button-masher. But it isn’t. When you start encountering enemies that are more difficult, more intelligent and more aggressive than ones very early in the game, you’ll start to understand the utmost importance of using your shield and the parry button.

It really is hard to pin down an analog to Reckoning’s excellent combat system. On the one hand, it’s very action-packed, almost explosively so, and full of visual flair. Outwardly, it looks like glitzy, flashy, fluffy console-oriented combat. But it isn’t, somehow. And you realize that the first time a new enemy knocks you on your flat on your ass — repeatedly! — after you try and use the attack style that worked against the last three foes you encountered.

Three questions with Ken Rolston.

GameFront managed to get just a bit of the designer’s time. Here’s just a taste, something which may address — or exacerbate — a perennial concern amongst Aiera readers who, like me, eschew console gaming:

GF: Obviously, Skyrim is the RPG on everyone’s mind right now. One of our readers’ biggest complaints about Skyrim was that the PC version was an obvious port. How is 38 Studios structuring the PC version to avoid the issue, and will there be PC exclusive content? Also, how does Reckoning differ from Skyrim; what makes it unique?

KR: Hmm. Personally, I was perfectly happy with the Skyrim PC experience. But remember… I LOVED Morrowind and Oblivion… and loved seeing them on consoles. In fact, I feel they were too slow to embrace the potential delights of the console interface.

Am I the enemy? Do you hate me?

That would be bitter… because I was always a hardcore PC gamer, and had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from the PC towards the Xbox for Morrowind. I credit Todd Howard with the Genuine Visionary Lunacy to inspire that transition, and I am ashamed that Tood often had to drag me along behind him, on his Pilgrimage to the Promised Land.

Now I love the consoles. And though I admit to playing almost exclusively on PCs, even today, I am more and more plugging in console controllers for action games [except shooters] wherever I can.

Reckoning doesn’thave PC-exclusive content. Reckoning was developed simultaneously on each of its three delivery platforms [PC, Xbox 360, and PS3], and designed, and aggressively user-experience- tested and revised, for all three platforms. Big Huge Games has always been crazy passionate about user experience, and I share that passion.

Here’s one example of an awesome platform design detail. When playing on the PC, the game senses immediately when you move from a controller to the keyboard, and vice-versa. That is, you seamlessly and effortlessly slide back and forth between the two interfaces. The PC keyboard is better at handling text, of course, and the utility bar is easy to use in that interface, but I like the tactile feel of the controller for combat. So far, I’m really liking the hybrid experience, and wondering why it never occurred to us before.

I’m told that some people found Reckoning easier to play with a controller than with keyboard and mouse. Lacking a controller for my PC (and lacking one of the consoles the game will also be released on), I can’t speak to that, but as I noted in my review of the demo, I didn’t find the controls particularly strange. Big Huge Games did something a little different with WASD, but it’s a change that works really well in combat…and it doesn’t take that long to get used to when exploring.

But don’t take my word for it; I seemingly don’t notice control issues like this. It was the same with Dungeon Siege 3, the PC version of which was lambasted for having control issues related to it having also been designed for consoles. Personally? I failed to notice, at all…and in fact rather quite like how DS3 controls. So too, Reckoning.