KoA: Reckoning - Preview @ Eurogamer

Dhruin

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Eurogamer's Oli Welsh has spent 15 hours with Reckoning, which is a fair chunk of time, and has posted a positive preview:
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It's an instantly forgettable title. And it's not just meaningless and profoundly generic, it's saddled (like Dragon Age: Origins before it) with the exhausting suggestion that this isn't the birth of an exciting fantasy universe so much as the launch of a new franchising opportunity.
Having spent 15 hours or so in the company of a near-finished preview build of 38 Studios' brisk role-player - out next week - I can confirm that it deserves much better than this limp nomenclature. And yet, it's true that the title fits it like a glove.
More information.
 
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You know, the game itself, as a game, seems really attractive to me. If nothing else, the guy in charge of Morrowind seems like a guy worth giving the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, the other two members of the "dream" team, Salvatore and McFarland, seem a lot more like the "our skill at estimating the lowest-common-denominator of our customer demographic made us lots of money fifteen years ago in the nineties" team. For what Big Huge Games must have paid to bring those two on board, both the visual design and the writing in the demo were awfully generic.
 
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You know, the game itself, as a game, seems really attractive to me. If nothing else, the guy in charge of Morrowind seems like a guy worth giving the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, the other two members of the "dream" team, Salvatore and McFarland, seem a lot more like the "our skill at estimating the lowest-common-denominator of our customer demographic made us lots of money fifteen years ago in the nineties" team. For what Big Huge Games must have paid to bring those two on board, both the visual design and the writing in the demo were awfully generic.

Which is funny, since the writing was as good as anything else lately, and the art for the troll for instance wasd good...or are you perhaps stretching a bit here?
 
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I'm not expecting Proust. The writing had no character.

Bethesda's games are not very deeply written, but, although written by a team with many members, they have one distinctive voice, a mixture of flippancy and grit.

Bioware's games are all a bit ridiculous, but they have their own unique tone as well - soapiness mixed with whimsy, simmered in self-seriousness and garnished with a side-boob.

That's what I didn't get from the Amalur demo - a voice of its own. All videogames are written by committee. This one sounded like it.

As for the visual design, I don't remember the troll, but I thought it was the boggarts that provided the demo's best example of Mcfarlane's own style (which I don't care for, but is at least his own) peeking through. You can't tell me that the "elven forest" setting didn't owe more to WoW and Fable's design teams than to any idea of McFarlane's own.

If I sound like a hater, I'm not. The game takes RPGs in a direction I like, and I hope it's successful enough for a sequel. But the presentation is really by-the-numbers.
 
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I'm not expecting Proust. The writing had no character. ...
That's what I didn't get from the Amalur demo - a voice of its own. ...
But the presentation is really by-the-numbers.

I think you refer to what I call the Final Fantasy XIII-syndrome. That game was so desperately wanted to be an enormous success, that it nearly lost its identity in the process. The characters, graphics and audio were precision-engineered for a certain well-defined consumer type -- and if you happened to be out of this league, well... screw you, this is not your game then. So sayeth the holy marketing department ;)
 
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I'm pretty sure the familiar style is deliberate, to make the WoW crowd feel right at home. The average customer wants more of the same, only different, and developers know it. The same is more important than the different. I think that's one reason why Oblivion was easier to sell than Morrowind. Fans of generic fantasy want their fantasy generic and making something odd is an expensive gamble.
 
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KOAR just feels eclectic to me. 'Nuff said.
I can find *so* many influences from other gmes in the demo - and, okay, I found the "war of an immortal race against mortals" interesting, but still… "The Summer Court" and "The Winter Court" smells too much like Shakespeare's "A Summer Night's Dream" to me … I fully expect to meet a Fae called "Oberon" within the game …

And the term of "Fae" … I don't know where this comes fro, but I personally know it from the TDE Elves - "internally" they call themselves "Fey". The word "Fae" seems to be a kind of generic term for Elves.

Gnomes - yes, that was the only thing that's new to me. I knew Gnomes only from articles and screenshots about wow. But not from any C-RPG.
Not even Fable seems to have them.
(And Zanzara is a different story in itself.)

My far worst point, however, was how close the camera was to the body. I could almost count the hair on the back.

To infuse a positive pojnt here . I really love the environments. I really do. I love this "bright & shiny" setting, the buildings, the ruins - everything.
It should imho look a bit more realistic, though.
 
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Fae has been around forever, isn't unique to either the dark eye or KoA.

Gnomes are a staple in DnD as well as many other rpg's dating back as far as I can remember, they were in Bard's tale for instance.
 
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Okay, but I just don't remember many Gnomes from past games I played.
Perhaps I outright missed them ?
 
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Okay, but I just don't remember many Gnomes from past games I played.
Perhaps I outright missed them ?

You outright missed them.

And Fae (or Fey/Fay) is old Irish for Faeries, the Summer (Seelie) and Winter (Unseelie) court is part of the myth as well. KoA take upon the Celtic/Irish mythology heavily. Tuatha actually mean clan/people/nation in old Irish.
 
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I'm not expecting Proust. The writing had no character.

Salvatore and friends are walking a well-trod tightrope. Do you write something "edgy" and "different" and potentially alienate folks who are familiar with LoTR and D&D tropes or do you try and start near the center and edge out a bit and expand with each new Amalur iteration. Obviously, they chose option 2.

I agree it feels a bit same-y, but I also feel it all shows polish and promise. You have to get the foundation down before you can build on top of it. I'm OK with their decision.
 
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Gnome is a city in Alaska.
The Gnoman Empire ruled the world at one time.
Proper Gnomenclature is hard to get right.
There's no place like Gnome.

:D :D :D
 
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