KoA: Reckoning - Preview @ G4TV

[Dhruin]

There's another pre-E3 preview of Reckoning over at G4TV:

It’s our first exposure to the choices you make in Reckoning, but certainly not the last. When speaking to a quest giver, we’re presented with a familiar dialog wheel allowing us to get more color on the quest at hand, to accept or decline the quest, or even engage in specific actions. For example, when offered money upon completion of a quest, I was able to attempt a dialog option to be paid up front, a racial specific skill, and one with only a 20 percent chance of success. If all that bores you, the dialog system is designed to provide the next steps front and center so that casual players or those not invested in the story can move onto their next task easy peasy.

While Reckoning is clearly being designed as an action game, it’s not skimping at all on the RPG elements. Players will encounter forges, where they can salvage weapons they find in the field into parts. These grips, hilts, etc. can be used to create all new weapons; the better the parts, the better the weapon. And whatever you make, you’ll easily be able to determine as Reckoning boasts a "What you have is what you see" philosophy, i.e., you’ll see glowing frost on ice daggers or licks of flames from a fire-based sword.

More information.

 

[Twotricks]

I am really looking forward to it.

Good blend of hack and slash, action combat and open world rpg ,with great story

 

[azarhal]

It does look like a good action RPG and I like the cartoony art-style and monster designs.

Not sure about the story being great, it seems to be quite campy from the small stuff I have seen...not that campy is bad, but it can degenerate fast.

 

[Melvil]

Based on that preview it sounded like the world, while big, was segmented into a lot of little zones (console design?). That said I'm keeping my eye on this one as well.

 

[CraigCWB]

if successful, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will be the first step in a bold, refreshing shift for RPGs. And that would be a reckoning, indeed.

RPGs don't need a "bold, refreshing shift". There have been far too many of those bold, refreshing shifts already which is why the genre is in such a sorry state. RPGs need developers who are creative types who actually give a fuck, and then they need to get back to basics. It's not rocket science, and the genre isn't new. The roleplaying game has been around for nearly 40 years. It's well understood what it is about roleplaying games that fans find compelling. At least, it's well understood by everyone who isn't trying to sell games to "casual gamers" who aren't RPG fans in the first place. WTF is it about the game industry that causes developers to think they can change genres around so much that people who don't even LIKE that genre will suddenly become converts? That's just weird and obtuse and as far as I know there aren't any people in other industries who try to pull that crap. "Oh, gee, I want to write science fiction but I want to do it in such a way that people who don't like sci-fi will buy my books! That'll work!" - bleh. Idiocy. Almost as stupid as making a button-masher click-fest RTS and thinking you're selling the hardcore wargaming crowd on it, along with the ADD kids.

Developer Pro-tip: If your customers are people who don't like RPGs, you didn't make an RPG.