KoA: Reckoning - Trailer

A new trailer has been released for Reckoning titled Power & Mastery showing some of the character combat approaches, divided into Might, Finesse, Sorcery and Hybrids.
More information.

The graphics style of this game really put me off. The trails behind the weapons, the way things light up like light bulbs when you hit them.

The scene when they shoot the guy with an arrow and he goes flying in the air and they shoot him 2 more times keeping him in the air. People flying 10 feet from being hit with a dagger. Too arcade for me.

Same reason I guess that I like madden but dislike nfl blitz.

Looks fun to me. To each his own…

Originally Posted by sakichop
The graphics style of this game really put me off. The trails behind the weapons, the way things light up like light bulbs when you hit them.

The scene when they shoot the guy with an arrow and he goes flying in the air and they shoot him 2 more times keeping him in the air. People flying 10 feet from being hit with a dagger. Too arcade for me.

+1

The more footage I see of this game, the more turned off I am.

It does have a Fable sort of look going on in it. But whatever, if it's as deep as they are making it sound, I will have an absolute blast.

I agree I dont like the look of the game much either but that being said I'm interested because of the amount of lore they have put into the world and it sounds like a wide open world to explore.

Just saw the EA tag in the video, that's an other game I won't be buying.

Dear God! Too much camera shake and flashy special effects. I had to close my eyes to stop myself getting sick. I guess I won't be playing this one (not unless there's an option to turn off those migraine inducing effects).

I really want to like this game, but I'm really turned off by cartoonish combat animation and OTT effects. I want combat to have some semblance of realism, and this is just too much.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this game.

I agree with some of the comments about the art style; however, I'm willing to give it a shot based on the fact that it is an open world RPG with a rather large amount of content, several joinable factions, interesting lore, a detailed crafting system, etc.

The combat system looks a little bit street-fighterry, but it will probably be fun. The archery animations are way too fast, however. He's not even completely drawing the damn bowstring! (I wonder if Duke Patrick can make a mod for this game? )

Originally Posted by CountChocula
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this game.

I feel the same way. I actually like the MMOish 'feel' to the game. Quit WoW a few years back because it was just an endless treadmill who's end game content requires more of your time than even real life does.

A game like this might satisfy my MMO cravings with the added benefit of being able to stop on a dime, save my game, and go do my wife's bidding right when she asks as opposed to, 'as soon as we're done with this raid…'

… that never went well.

Originally Posted by Tiptoe
Dear God! Too much camera shake and flashy special effects.

A friend of mine who works in the local movie business always says (regarding newer movies) that today's youth has a very much different way to *see* movies, to perceive them, as older generations have. Faster cuts, smaller parts - these things.

I think that the "look", the way this game looks like, s especially tailored towards a younger generation of gamers - like so many newer games.

I more and more tendto believe in a shift in gaming generations - and in target audiences.

I think - just as an example - this is a bit similar like … older generations listening to music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach etc. - meanwhile a younger generation listens to pop musik. For exammple (not counting Jazz, blues, country music etc. …)

There is imho simply a shift in target audiences going on right now.

Dragon Age 2 could be another example of this.
And all of these fast-paced games with little or no story. I tend to blieve that these games just cater a completely different way of perceiving things.

Well when I played for first time Line age 2, i was dreaming for an rpg mmo looking alike, so upon looking at trailer it surprised me and increased my expectation for future, so really looking to play it and see what it has to offer, even if does not look like so loved Skyrim.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this game.

I agree with some of the comments about the art style; however, I'm willing to give it a shot based on the fact that it is an open world RPG with a rather large amount of content, several joinable factions, interesting lore, a detailed crafting system, etc.

The combat system looks a little bit street-fighterry, but it will probably be fun. The archery animations are way too fast, however. He's not even completely drawing the damn bowstring! (I wonder if Duke Patrick can make a mod for this game? )

Yeah DP's mods are a must have for me! I havent heard of any mod support for this? I'm on the line about getting this or not for the same reasons but mod support would push me over the edge

I don't have anything against the style…

And realism in combat isn't something I search for in a RPG, I want character development, C&C, great stories and a HUGE world to explore. So far the only thing that puts me off KoA is that you're supposed to be able to do all quests etc. in one playthrough, and that you can respec, making your choices in how to progress your character less important.

Still a no-brainer for me though.

I think it looks great, and I don't mind the art style at all. I like variety and not all games need a photorealistic style.

But gameplay is king, and it's precisely that which KoA seems to hold in spades.

Yea, I have to agree with Dart in this case. If the combat is diverse and satisfying gameplay it may be worth a try. I certainly don't like the WOWish cartoonish style, though, and silly OTT animations.

I wouldn't normally seek out this style - the characters are a bit ridiculous, though I do like the environments. Still, diversity is a good thing and I think the likes of Rolston and Frazier will have crafted some decent gameplay. I'm in.

A while ago, I got in a back-and-forth with somebody here (I think it was JDR) about whether Reckoning was originally supposed to be an MMO. I thought of that exchange when I came across this interview that does the best job yet of exactly describing the history of Big Huge Games and this game.

http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/…scratch/088182

An excerpt:

Big Huge Games' last release was Asian Dynasties (expansion pack for Age of Empires III). Have you been purely working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning since then?

We've been working on a 'form' of it. When we were finishing up Asian Dynasties, we made Settlers of Catan as a self-funded XBLA game because we knew we wanted to get into console development, which wasn't something that we, as a studio, knew how to do. Our experience was in RTS games for PC.

So we said 'Well, let's do this and make it through the certification process and figure out the hardware', but in our hearts what we wanted to do was a game very much like Reckoning. It would be an RPG, it'd have this amazing combat that no one had ever seen before, so we (from scratch) started building an engine that would support all of that.

So we'd been working on that since 2007 with THQ, but then THQ ran into some hard financial times and they had to let us go. This was in 2009.

THQ had actually bought us, so we were a part of THQ and they were going to lay off the studio, and right before they were going to come in and shutter the studio, Curt Schilling from 38 Studios came in. He played for the Red Sox, but in his off-time, when everyone else would run out and carouse, he would play online games as a way to keep in touch with his family (and keep himself out of trouble).

Videogames save the day yet again!

It's true! And he fell in love with Everquest. And when he retired, he started 38 Studios with the idea that he wanted to make an MMO. So, their game was an MMO. And Curt came to us and said:

We've got this world with 10'000 years of history, with all this lore coming out of your ears and we're going to have an MMO, but we don't want to hit people cold with an MMO straight away. We'd like to be able to present the lore. You guys are making this really great-looking RPG: can you keep all these elements in place that you've got and all these systems, go over our IP and find a really great place to make an RPG.

So the game mecahnics and game world were completely disparate?

Yeah, we'd been working with these systems that we knew that we wanted, and when 38 bought us, we shifted into the world of Amalur. We took our animations, our art, our sounds and scrapped it all. We went through all of their lore and looked at all the parts of Amalur, and since their game is going to happen chronologically after our game, we thought 'What would your part of Amalur look like a couple of thousand years ago?'

So we've been working on THIS game under the Amalur IP since May of 2009.

It's fine to not like what you see about this game, but hopefully people dislike it for genuine reasons related to their taste, and not for incorrect preconceptions that they're simply carrying water for an MMO, or they're at the complete mercy of EA. The fact is that Ken Rolston (designer on Morrowind/Oblivion) and Ian Frazier (designer on Titan Quest and U5:Lazarus) have been leading a team for 4 years, under 2 different publishers, to create a deep, single-player open-world RPG with a heavy emphasis on over-the-top action combat and using a stylistic (as opposed to realistic) art style.

Love it or hate it, but do so knowing that this is the exact vision that these RPG veterans have put together, without undue influence from EA, or from a completely separate MMO design team. Yes, they share a common world and overall IP, but the gameplay is 100% what these guys want it to be, for better or worse…

Game play is also the main thing for me. I don't mind different art styles as long as they don't actually turn me off (which these don't). Its a fantasy game so I don't expect overly realistic combat or art although I do like some conistency.

From what I have read the game play is rich and deep and if that holds true when the game is in my hands then I will be extremely happy.