KoA: Reckoning - Answers from the Team

The latest edition of Answers from the Team is available on the Reckoning forums - here are two good questions:

Q: Any chance we'll see some puzzles, riddles or environmental hazards (swinging blades, shooting flames, etc) in the some of the dungeons? Thanks! – By subotai
A: You'll find many dungeons to explore in Amalur that offer puzzles, hazards, and traps. In some dungeons, you may find puzzles that you must solve in order to progress on certain quests, and also to gain access to deeper reaches of the dungeon itself. You may find hidden doors and levers, as well as secret exits or jump platforms. You may also notice there are a variety of traps in Reckoning—we sometimes use these as puzzles, and also sometimes they conceal ways to get to special loot or reach other areas of a dungeon.
We also sometimes present traps themselves in the form of environmental hazards, such as pools of poison water, or the more naturally occurring plant traps that will snap at you. Some of these traps will add to the dungeon's environment in a way that affect your pacing or timing. You may have to dodge certain traps or use an ability to quickly maneuver swinging traps hanging from the ceilings. Some good advice for the stealthy hero might be to invest some points into your Detect Hidden skill, making these traps easier to spot on your map. Be careful where you tread, heroes of Amalur! – By Kitty "Neko" Hughes, Level Designer

Q: Just how "open" is the world? I know it has been said you can stray off the path, and there are five distinct zones. But how will the transition between these zones take place? Is it Elder Scrolls level "If you can see it, you can go to it?" (Within reason) – By Outlander
A: The world of Reckoning is huge, and at any point you can decide to veer off the main roads or take a break from the main quest. We strongly encourage it! The main quest does a good job of giving you a tour of the world, but it only touches on the depth and breadth of the different regions. A lot of care went into giving those explorers out there a vast world to roam and fight through. There are sweeping plains and dense forests that are stocked full of side content, but there’s also a great deal to be found from just free exploration. You might uncover some of our secret nooks and crannies that are hiding some of the best loot in the game, or even extra bits of lore.
There are load screens between the five biomes for technical reasons, but you can spend real-world days exploring the massive amounts of content of each one. There are also over a hundred and twenty hand-crafted dungeons to explore.
All in all, you could spend countless hours just wandering the world of Reckoning and uncovering its secrets. Please tell us what you find! – By Colin "Hugohan" Campbell, Lead World Designer

More information.

Puzzles? In an action rpg? BAH! Lets get serious here As much as I like what Reckoning is promising to be, I don't delude myself with false promises.

Then again, there's some superbly thought-provoking puzzles and jumping/Mario mechanics in DDO, an MMO, so I guess it's possible… but I won't hold my breath.

If they say puzzles are in, why wouldn't they be? I believe him. They may not be the most mind bending puzzles ever, but who knows, the game could pleasantly surprise us in that aspect. I'm excited to hear there will be puzzles and secrets abound. Plus traps and hazards are always fun too. It sounds like the dungeons will definitely be fun to explore.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Puzzles? In an action rpg? BAH! Lets get serious here As much as I like what Reckoning is promising to be, I don't delude myself with false promises.

Then again, there's some superbly thought-provoking puzzles and jumping/Mario mechanics in DDO, an MMO, so I guess it's possible… but I won't hold my breath.

THe impression grows more and more inside of me that this game is going - or at least trying to be - an hybrid.

Hybdrid between Action-RPG and "tradiitional" RPG.

The descriptions also remind me more and more of Divinity 2 - regarding the world.

I think we will be pleasantly surprised by this game /fingers crossed

Anyhow, I will surly post some of my questions in developer thread and I encourage everyone here to do the same. Let's see how our questions will be answered.

Furthermore, they removed quest markers (made it optional) above NPC heads because of community requests and I remember that thread was started by someone from RPGWatch.

Oh wait, this is by the studio created by Kurt Schilling and a dream team of game devs is it not?

Ok, I retract my cynicism and replace it with cautious hope.

Hmmm I hope it will be as good as Divinity 2, just before the sucky dragon parts.

I kinda teeter-totter between hope and apathy on this one too. The hope comes from the Ian Frazier lead team. The apathy from the MMO leanings of Kurt Schilling and company. Kingdoms is a lead-in game to a MMO they're designing. It seems as if the game is going to be deep, but I'm disappointed in the supposition that even if the game does well, there won't be any other single-player game to follow it. I'm just not social enough to even try an MMO

Who is this Kurt Schilling you guys keep mentioning?

Originally Posted by crpgnut
I kinda teeter-totter between hope and apathy on this one too. The hope comes from the Ian Frazier lead team. The apathy from the MMO leanings of Kurt Schilling and company. Kingdoms is a lead-in game to a MMO they're designing. It seems as if the game is going to be deep, but I'm disappointed in the supposition that even if the game does well, there won't be any other single-player game to follow it. I'm just not social enough to even try an MMO

Hmmm I will try to find the reference, but I am sure I heard Kurt said that they will make many expansions for this game because there is great story that they want to tell.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Who is this Kurt Schilling you guys keep mentioning?

Nobody told you? It's fancy to change "C" into "K".

Sue me, never been a baseball fan But, having read several interviews over the years and playing Everquest while he was part of it, I have respect for Kurtis Schlichebacher and how he views gaming.

Did you ever see him pitch? His parents missed the opportunity, but this Curt really needs to be (K)urt because he's put up so many K's in his life. I still hope his Phillies lose to my Cardinals Friday though

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Sure, but would they do away with slugs, roods, and stones? Noway!

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
THe impression grows more and more inside of me that this game is going - or at least trying to be - an hybrid.

Hybdrid between Action-RPG and "tradiitional" RPG.

The descriptions also remind me more and more of Divinity 2 - regarding the world.

It also reminds me of Divinity 2. Especially the exploration, which they are promising is going to be very rewarding and fun. They say you can find something cool around every corner, such as hidden caves, a beautiful vista to look at, rare alchemy reagents, hidden treasure stashes, etc, and that's exactly how Divinity 2 was. I have high hopes for the exploration in this game.

Originally Posted by kalniel
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Surprisingly funny! Good job!

Originally Posted by Fluent
It also reminds me of Divinity 2. Especially the exploration, which they are promising is going to be very rewarding and fun. They say you can find something cool around every corner, such as hidden caves, a beautiful vista to look at, rare alchemy reagents, hidden treasure stashes, etc, and that's exactly how Divinity 2 was. I have high hopes for the exploration in this game.

Yes I have to agree with this one. I read a preview/hands on on tweakers.net (Dutch site) and I must say I'm getting some good vibes from this game.

Originally Posted by SveNitoR
Surprisingly funny! Good job!

I can't take any credit, it's been around for at least 10 years now

I've been actively following this game for some time (kinda funny to see Fluent talk up the game so much here while also asking the toughest rpg-related questions on the official forums…keep representin' Fuent!), and I've also come to the conclusion that the closest game to compare to this is Divinity 2 (the first half). The 3rd-person perspective and action-RPG combat is similar, the open-ness looks similar with several large regions but not one go-anywhere world, the loot system is similar with set items and uniques, advancement is somewhat similar with skill points in melee, magic, and ranged, etc.

The biggest difference I can see is that most of these aspects have been made exponentially bigger/over-the-top in KOA. It appears likely that the entire Div2 explorable area will be no bigger than one of KOA's 5 continents, while the loot system has been taken to the extreme, with one quote indicating that there are 280 armor sets. And the combat has obviously been taken up a notch in intensity, although I know some here will find that to be a negative (I personally can't wait to try out the combat). Advancement looks to be rewarding too with a tangible reward for all playstyles.

So yeah, I recommend that folks ignore any comparisons to Fable or WoW, which are made simply based on having a stylistic art style as opposed to a realistic one. IMO, Div2 should be your reference point when evaluating this game…