Eric Neigher, Contributing Editor: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning -- a new role-playing game with an Elder Scrolls-ish feel, and more big names attached to in than the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- strikes me as a potential sleeper hit. If The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim fails to rock 'em sock 'em, could this be an Elder Scrolls killer? What features jumped out at you right away that made you think it could, or couldn't?
Gus Mastrapa: Contributing Editor: Apart from the game's pedigree (Elder Scrolls mastermind Ken Rolston, fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane), it seems like Reckoning's biggest claim to fame will be the way it deals with the problem of combat. In most RPGs, the fighting is just good enough -- if you're lucky. The development team at Big Huge Games consulted with tournament-level Tekken players to help them get their ducks in a row when it came to Reckoning's combat. The result is action-heavy, but not so complex that you have to memorize button combos.
Eric Neigher: Hmmm, I've often wondered about putting an honest-to-goodness fighting system in an RPG, or even an action-RPG, but it's hard to duplicate that Bayonetta perfection without a lot of trial-and-error. Tekken seems like it might be kinda button-mashy for an RPG system, but hey, that's better than The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's mouse-swing thing. So how about the storyline itself? R.A. Salvatore is a pretty well-known dude, and Todd McFarlane and all his Spawn stuff is involved. What's the tone of the game?
Gus Mastrapa: Reckoning doesn't look like Spawn at all, which is appropriate. You may remember that Todd McFarlane also did some art for the aborted Ultima Online 2 back in the day; the look of this game seems like a continuation of that train of thought. Though if you look closely, you can certainly see some of McFarlane's style come through in the universe. During one dungeon crawl, I saw characters called Bolgans, which were pink, tubby brutes not too dissimilar to the grotesque Clown from Spawn. R.A. Salvatore's contribution to the game feels even bigger: The author cooked up a 10,000-year history for the world of Amalur. 38 Studios' long-gestating MMO project will take place in the same universe, albeit sometime in the future. Reckoning's focus is on one hero's contribution to the history of the realm. With an open world and 100 hours of gameplay, it feels like you get to write that history as you see fit.
Eric Neigher: Goodness, that's a big game! How does the character system work? Do you put points in skills and customize your own classes, or does the game use preset classes? Did you see anything class/specialty-wise that looked particularly cool or unique?
Gus Mastrapa Reckoning doesn't hem you into a corner. When you start the game, you don't even select a class; you kind of fall into one, depending on the way you play. The game's "Destiny" class system sees you putting points into a variety of skill trees, making it really easy to slip into the roles of a hybrid class. A good part of the demo I saw was played with a Shadowcaster -- a character who paired agile combat with deadly magic. This character wreaked havoc with a chakram (just like Xena) and used a teleportation skill to zip through his enemy, leaving the jerk poisoned after passing through them.
Eric Neigher: I like the word "chakram," so that sounds like a class I'd want to check out. In general, I'm hoping Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning turns out to be the fighting game/RPG hybrid I've been waiting for, but since GameSpy was only willing to let one of us actually play it (while the other was forced to kill roaches in the basement with nothing but a flashlight and a wiffle bat), I guess I'll have to wait to find out.
