Schilling on the transition between Ascendant and Reckoning:
"I'll speak to the high-level; the technology behind Ascendant was built from the ground-up by [BHG]. So the tech pieces are absolutely them. But the IP, the story, and all that, is 100 percent Amalur and ours [38 Studios]. Artistically, it was an obvious re-do, but we had a huge headstart from that perspective."
Nelson on the developer's perspective of switching from Ascendant to Reckoning:
"What it really allowed us to do is shorten our pre-production, so we didn't have to go through a lot of the tech hurdles that we'd normally encounter. We already had an engine that did pretty much what we wanted to do anyway, we had pipelines that we liked a lot, so it really just kind of gave us a leg-up to get things moving. But beyond that it's a different game altogether — a different focus on the combat in particular, plus the different world and IP, and none of the art translated over."
Schilling on Reckoning's conception:
"So we had this rich, deep, multi-threaded 10,000-year history for Amalur that R.A. [Salvatore] created over the four years of the company. When Big Huge Games became part of the team, we wanted to find a sweet spot for them — we didn't want to just hand them something and say, 'Go make this!' That's not how you should do a buy-in. So you have Ken [Rolston] and Mark [Nelson], who both understand open-world RPGs in ways very few people do; working with R.A., we had them pick out things they like in the lore, and narrow it down further and further, until we have this sweet spot to build a game out of."
Schilling on the connection between Reckoning and Copernicus [38 Studios' MMORPG]:
"[In Amalur], the Age of Arcana is when Reckoning occurs, and this story is absolutely crucial to telling the bigger story. You're going to experience this deep, single-player story, and when Copernicus goes online, it's not going to be mysterious new IP where you walk around not knowing what things are or why the world is the way it is — it's going to be something you already know about."
"One of the core drivers behind the Amalur universe is immortality, and in every MMO or heck, every game in existence, immortality is simply, 'I respawn.' That's a game mechanic. R.A. wanted to take immortality, and turn it into a story or lore piece, rather than just a game mechanic. So you're going to see how Reckoning and Copernicus tie-in together, with things like the Well of Souls and the immortality and everything, in that regard."
EQ?
