KoA: Reckoning - Ian Frazier Interview @ EGMNow

Webzine EGMNow has an interview with Big Huge Games' Ian Frazier, Lead Designer on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. You may remember this name because Ian 'Tiberius' Frazier was the lead on Ultima V: Lazarus, the incredible Dungeon Siege conversion. No quote because of the silly webzine format but head over for a read.
More information.

You know, the art-style isn't my thing but this just might be worth watching. Whatever people say about Salvatore, he can't possibly do a worse job than most game developers and Rolston and Frazier might just have some decent gameplay systems. Hopefully Ian has brought some of his love of Ultima along.

They are doing a weekly Q & A on their forums as well, they just released their first batch of answers to questions posted by the forum community. they can be read here:

http://forums.reckoning.com/showthread.php?397-Answers-From-the-Reckoning-Team

10 questions will be answered by the team per week, so probably worth keeping an eye on it if you're interested in the game.

Salvatore is a meat and potatoes writer, but he does have solid ideas and creativity. This game looks pretty fun to me.

From my perspective, the art style is the only thing I'm not getting. It seems teeny-bopper-Japanese-ish. A dagger seems to be longer than my arm and a sword would be physically impossible to lift in some of the screenshots. The monsters all seem way over the top; more fitted to a comic book than an alternate world where magic and metal hold sway. The Spawn dude did realize that KOA is a crpg and not a comic book, right?

crpgnut said:

From my perspective, the art style is the only thing I'm not getting. It seems teeny-bopper-Japanese-ish. A dagger seems to be longer than my arm and a sword would be physically impossible to lift in some of the screenshots. The monsters all seem way over the top; more fitted to a comic book than an alternate world where magic and metal hold sway. The Spawn dude did realize that KOA is a crpg and not a comic book, right?

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That's just typical drawings. Just look at Todd McFarlane's drawings he created the art for the game.

Every time I see or read something new about this game, I get more excited. It's pretty much my #1-anticipated game at this point, ahead of even Skyrim.

The Destiny system sounds great, and I appreciate how Frazier said in this interview that the "dirty little secret" is that Destinies provide the designers the ability to provide some extra "oomph" and game balance to off-the-wall (and likely otherwise gimped) character builds.

I don't get the concern about the graphics. I actually look at this from an old-school RPGer's perspective: Since when did I care about graphics in RPGs? I'm just not the type to get hung up if an RPG's graphics don't measure up to the top graphical games out there, and likewise I'm not going to get hung up if the art direction is more stylized or abstracted as opposed to realistic.

Of course, having said this, I will say that I think the animations look second-to-none, and that is far more important to me than the overall style. But as always, to each his own.

I am actually glad when weapons are larger or smaller then they would be on Earth since it is very unlikely that another inhabitable planet would have the same gravity as ours (and most likely would have less) which means a sentient race on that world would have a different scale for everything then on our world.

In principal I appreciate a game trying a bit more strongly for the fantastic. With regards to character design in particular I don't like much what I see here - it just seems generic in its fantasy, in some ways. There have been glimpses of the environment that I found intriguing, though. I am at least curious how the whole package will turn out.

I agree with that last statement, GBG. I have high hopes for Amalur because Dragon Age doesn't really do much for me and I would like to see someone besides Bethesda make AAA games that I like to play. I like what the Two Worlds franchise is doing, but the more the merrier.

At my current level of interest, Amalur is a game that I'll wait for reviews and the chatter here before deciding to buy. The art/animations are enough for me to hold off until I find out about stuff other than combat. The destiny system sounds strongly like Oblvion's system of "every character will be uber". Have we seen many interiors in this game? I'll have to check out more screenshots, but it seems like all the combat scenes have been in huge outdoor areas.

crpgnut said:

I agree with that last statement, GBG. I have high hopes for Amalur because Dragon Age doesn't really do much for me and I would like to see someone besides Bethesda make AAA games that I like to play. I like what the Two Worlds franchise is doing, but the more the merrier.

At my current level of interest, Amalur is a game that I'll wait for reviews and the chatter here before deciding to buy. The art/animations are enough for me to hold off until I find out about stuff other than combat. The destiny system sounds strongly like Oblvion's system of "every character will be uber". Have we seen many interiors in this game? I'll have to check out more screenshots, but it seems like all the combat scenes have been in huge outdoor areas.

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If you go to their media page, there are some lenghty gameplay videos (from PAX or somesuch, part 2 to 4 in particular, IIRC) that showed a lot of dungeon crawling - and of course combat.
http://www.ea.com/reckoning/videos

Thanks, GBG. I'll take a look at these when I get home.

Weirdly they don't seem to have the part 1 of the E3 demo/chat on the page GBG gave you, only parts 2 & 3.

Their Youtube channel has it though:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReckoningTheGame

I'd recommend the 45 minute long E3 demo, I think its more interesting than the PAX demo since it's got more non-combat stuff in it. Inaudible sound on the dev who isn't Ian Frazier tho'

I want to believe this will be ok... but the art style just screams WoW/Fable... not a good combo. But I have Risen 2, Deus Ex 3, and a slew of older games to enjoy.

I have nothing against Fable (I'm currently playing the first game), but on the other hand, I do have something against WOW …

Whereas Fable at least *attempts* at looking realistically, WOW doesn't seem to have this at all …

This is my opinion on the graphics of both games.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

(I'm currently playing the first game).

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By far the best one... it shows a promise that never arrived in sequel