KoA: Reckoning - Miscellaneous Roundup

Here's a small Reckoning roundup.

First, GameSpy has a preview from the recent event:

During my patient, explorative two hours of playtime, I discovered a hidden cave behind a waterfall that was full of monster rats guarding loot, gathered samples of exotic plants, accidentally awoke a massive bear from its slumber and fought for my life, battled a horde of enemies, and met with a number of diverse people in the game's small town starting area of Allestar Glade – people anxious to find a hero willing to fulfill quests big and small.

...and I couldn't resist this quote:

The only glaring drawback to Reckoning's impressive world is it's look. While this is strictly a matter of taste, the Fable-meets-World of Warcraft visual style of the game is a turn off for me. And as a proud owner of The Amazing Spider-Man No. 298, it pains me to say so. While Salvatore's distinct fantasy stamp is clearly on Reckoning's world, McFarlane's artistic flourish should be posted on the back of a carton of milk.

Speaking of the art style, ZAM has an interview with Big Huge Games' art director:

ZAM: I'm here with Tim Coman, studio project art director at Big Huge Games. Thanks for the interview, Tim!

Tim Coman: My pleasure.

ZAM: Do you have any major influences when it comes to designing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning? 

Tim: With Reckoning, one thing we didn't want to do was set out to recreate one game or another. The internal team put together what we felt was the strongest art style, based off of the group that we had. Essentially, we chose a style that the team could all hit, and we built our strengths around that. Generally speaking, there are two paths that people generally go with for RPGs in this genre. Some try to make that Lord of the Rings movie feel, where it's as if you got a camera, went on location, and just tried to make everything look realistic while putting fantasy elements into that. And that's certainly a valid approach for games; I certainly don't knock it!

For our thing, however, we really wanted to come up with something more fantastical. We really wanted break away from games that are focused on browns and greys. It's great for certain games, but for us, since we're doing a fantasy game, there's almost any place we can push this from an art standpoint. This is one of the most fun places to be in development, where we're building a new IP from the ground up. We really wanted to create our own unique identity and, for me, the big thing was to have a consistent feel to the style; from the environments to the creatures, to the weapons, to the characters. We didn't want anything to feel wildly out of context. We really just wanted to create a game that people can recognize.

The Reckoning blog has a full roundup of recent articles if you want a comprehensive list.

...and for Facebook users, they've started up an Interactive Story. Here's the description from the forums with a link over to the Facebook page:

Hi everyone,

We wanted to give you a heads up that our Reckoning Interactive Story will be starting today, on our official Facebook page. We hope you'll check it out!

Before it starts, we wanted to explain how the interactive story works. Each week, we'll post a bit of the story along with a screenshot and a poll with choices that will impact the next week's story entry. Your choices will determine the story's overall direction and details, so please be sure to cast your vote!

The poll will be posted every Thursday, and we'll tally the votes every Monday at 9:00 AM Eastern Time. After the votes are in, the next story update and screenshot will be based on the choice that won.

We'll also keep a thread of the ongoing story on our official forums, so you can follow along. (We'll update this post with the thread link.)

Please let us know if you have any questions!