KoA: Reckoning - Roundtable Interview @ Eurogamer

RPG Gamer participated in Q&A Round Table discussion with members of the KO:A team.
As always a snip:

On Fate and Destiny:

Fate and destiny play into both the game's storyline and its mechanics. In terms of the story, the main character is the first mortal in the world to have awakened from the dead. Everyone else in the world has a deterministic fate that they cannot escape, but the player character has been released from fate via resurrection. This provides a lore-based rationale for why the main character is special. In terms of gameplay mechanics, the Destiny system allows players to choose their own fates by picking from any class that's available based on the abilities that the player has chosen. There's also the Fate Shift mechanic, which allows the player to store up fate via defeating foes in combat. When the fate bar is full, a Fate Shift can be executed, making time slow down for the enemies and making the player powerful.

In other KO:A news there has been a 24th Community Q and A newsletter released.

A sample:

Q: Amalur has 10.000 years of History and I was wondering if learning/reading more about the history/story of a place/person could sometime give you an in-game reward of some sort: clue about a secret item/place, new dialogue choices, etc... – By Cjail01

A: In the Age of Arcana, the mortal races have learned to use Lorestones -- magical objects created by the Fae that can store a person's knowledge, experiences, and stories. These stones are hidden around Amalur and contain stories about Amalur, past and present. Lorestones come in sets, and most are themed around a given area. As a reward for exploration, you will receive a permanent bonus when you uncover the entire story of a set of Lorestones. – By Erik "DoctorSpooky" Caponi, Principal Narrative Designer

And in this comment on Eurogamer Ian Frazier  says that Skyrim is KO:A's biggest competitor:

The biggest concern at Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developer Big Huge Games right now is you're still playing Skyrim.

According to lead designer Ian Frazier, if you and lots of other gamers are still playing Skyrim, you may not be interested in Reckoning, out next month.

Reckoning is a huge, open world high fantasy RPG. Sound like a game you've played?

"Frankly, Reckoning is either going to do well enough that we're going to be in a good place or people are going to go, nope, I'm still playing Skyrim, I'm not interested, in which case we're hosed," Frazier told Eurogamer.

And finally, there's a third visonary news letter, this time penned by Art Director Todd McFarlane via Totally Gaming Network.