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.

As such, and because I do periodically report on the game on the site here, I’ve decided to start putting together roundups of news, video, and whatever other material I come across related to Reckoning and spotlighting its development.

Reminder: the Reckoning demo is being released tomorrow!

Don’t expect reviews until Thursday, however, given that the SOPA blackout is planned for Wednesday.

Reminder: Downloading and installing the demo will unlock special items in Mass Effect 3. (The reciprocal will be true with the ME3 demo comes out.)

Non-combat bits!

Of course, because combat looks flashy and spoils nothing, most of what we’ve seen in advertising for Reckoning has been, well…combat. To be fair, Big Huge Games are proud of their combat system, and want to show it off as much as possible. That said, Reckoning offers a lot more than just the flashy, stabby bits…and Rock, Paper, Shotgun has linked to a video that really gets into detail about some of those other elements:

Related: GameBanshee isn’t a bit fan of the game’s interface, and they express their hope that the PC version will offer something better. Personally, I don’t see what they’re bothered by, but we’ll know soon enough what the PC version of the game has to offer.

And by soon, I (again) mean “tomorrow”.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning audio design.

Made2Game offers up a pretty solid interview with Grant Kirkhope, who worked on the game’s soundtrack. Of particular interest to Ultima fans may be the level of audio design detail that went into the game’s tavern music:

…partner in noise Mark Cromer, previously sound engineer at Civilization creators Firaxis, provides creative inspiration through his nimble guitar work:

“[Mark Cromer] is a very brilliant, classically trained guitar player so he has played all these bizarre string instruments in all the taverns you go into. There are quite a few actually. I’m not sure how many [different songs] there are but Mark has played and composed all of those himself.

“There are things throughout the game called Lorestones, which kind of tell you a story, and that’s Mark playing again while somebody talks over the music. It’s part of a story that you can read so it kind of fills you in with the lore of the game.”

Another Reckoning Community Q&A.

Lots of discussion about world design and environment in this episode!

The Reckoning Sountrack is available for pre-order!

You can order it through iTunes or Amazon. The soundtrack will be released alongside the game on February 7th.

Yet another Reckoning interview.

This time, it’s combat designer Joe Quadara and project lead Ken Rolston, sitting down and chatting with Gamespot about the game. In particular, they note that they’ve had a problem with messaging and trying to properly advertise a game that doesn’t quite fit into any of the familiar RPG categories.

“[That’s always] a difficult problem for our messaging,” Rolston said. “This is a role-playing game because I would be killed if it weren’t. I make role-playing games.”

Having created open-world and narrative-driven RPGs in the past, Rolston said his goal with Amalur was to make an RPG with top-notch combat, because he hadn’t seen that yet. He admitted that he didn’t know exactly how to pull that off when he started, noting it was made possible by the rest of the development team, including Quadara.

“I’ve never experienced a game like it before, and that’s been the difficulty of talking about this game,” Quadara said. “It’s an RPG with good combat, and people have a hard time figuring out what that means in their own heads, because there’s no example of it, really.”

GameBanshee interviews Ian Frazier!

Some stand-out questions get asked, though I think this early one is perhaps the best one to quote for how it demonstrates the fine like that Tibby and his team are walking between old-school and new-age RPG elements:

GB: You’ve mentioned that killing an NPC linked to a quest will cause that quest to end – do we have the freedom to kill any NPC in the game, or are key NPCs invulnerable? If we’re able to kill an NPC without any other NPC witnessing the crime, will the crime still get us into trouble? Finally, are we able to loot all items on a dead NPC, even quest-related ones?

Ian: Some characters are effectively invulnerable, at least for a while. In general we try to make it impossible to accidentally break the main quest or the faction quests by accidentally murdering someone important, whereas with the side quests we pretty much say “feel free to kill everyone, but don’t be surprised when suddenly you can’t do as many quests in this area.” It’s worth noting that even in the cases where we do make characters invulnerable to prevent quest breakage, we generally turn that state off when the quest is complete, so players can still indulge their darker natures afterwards if desired.

If you manage to do something devious (murder, theft, etc.) and no one manages to see you and report you to the guards, then yes, you can get away with it! For the purposes of Reckoning, a crime only exists if it’s witnessed. …I try not to ponder what that says about our designers’ personal philosophies.

As for the last question, yes, you can loot NPCs just as easily as monsters, and where appropriate you may find a quest item on them. For that matter, you might be able to pickpocket that item from them instead if you’d prefer not to opt for murder.

So Reckoning won’t quite let you do like you could in Ultima 6 or Ultima 7; in either game, offing the wrong NPC at the wrong time would prevent you from completing the game, although you probably wouldn’t realize it until much later on.

Still, it’s nice to know that not all forms of NPC murder are off the table. Not that I’m particularly an advocate of wanton NPC slaughter…but it’s nice to know that the world of Reckoning is a world inhabited (at least in part) by legitimate virtual characters instead of just talking (and occasionally mobile) invulnerable statues.

Oh, and this question was a grand one to finish with:

GB: What is your stance on user-created modifications, and how mod-friendly will the PC version of Reckoning be? Have you put any plans in place to ensure that modders are supported in any official capacity?

Ian: I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that we at Big Huge Games are very much in favor of user-created mods for Reckoning. I come from a modding background myself (mostly on Dungeon Siege) and I’d absolutely love to see anything and everything that players can do with the engine.

The bad news is that the game’s architecture makes it fairly difficult to mod, and we couldn’t afford to officially support mod tools with this title. We’re currently looking into ways to hopefully make modding a bit easier for the community, but getting the dev tools into a publically usable format and releasing them doesn’t look viable any time soon. Nonetheless, we’ve got quite a bit of faith in the ingenuity of the modding community and are hoping to see great things from them!

A Reckoning preview from The Guardian.

That would be the English newspaper, not the big red antagonist familiar to all of us here.

The interview is with R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, at least, and gets into many aspects of the game’s art, writing, and backstory.

And yet another gameplay preview.

This time, from G4:

I continue to look forward to February with great interest!

IGN posts a “review in progress” of Reckoning.

Reckoning makes equipping the best possible gear easy, and the game also makes navigating your inventory simple. You’ll quickly understand the game’s weight and encumbrance system, which isn’t as convoluted or obnoxious as it can be in other like-minded titles. And because you’re given so many options in what you can equip, you’ll find a deep level of customization worthy of your appreciation, as well.

That customization rests at the heart of Reckoning, especially in terms of two of the game’s fundamentals: Abilities and Destinies. Reckoning doesn’t bind you in and lock you down to one path and one path only. Your character, unlike everyone around you in the game world, doesn’t yet have a destiny written for him or her. That means that your destiny can essentially be written and rewritten on the fly.

By dumping points into the sub-categories under the Sorcery, Might and Finesse monikers, you can make your character better at whatever you want, even if you’re concentrating on something else entirely. For instance, you can improve your spellcraft under Sorcery even if your character wields a sword and bashes dudes’ heads in with his hammer. Likewise, your Destiny can be written and rewritten when you level up, giving you bonuses that will help you do what you do best, but not necessarily tethering you only to that path.

The Destinies system in this game just continues to astound me every time I read about it. What a way to shatter the concept of character classes, eh?