KoA: Reckoning - Preview Roundup

There's a flurry of Reckoning activity as we getter closer to release, so here's a selection of previews and the like.

A lengthy, general preview from The Guardian:

This flexibility also extends to other areas of the gameplay. Looting and Crafting, for instance, has been designed to cater for fans of both expediency and depth. You don't need to access the Inventory to select, equip or discard items if you just want their value in credits; but if you want to delve deeper, you can head for a town and start experimenting with the game's three distinct crafting systems - Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecraft.

Use Sagecraft, for instance, and you can start socketing weapons with magical gems; if not, you can still gain bonus points (and a cool onscreen appearance) from collecting complete sets of armour items.

There are also nine non-combat skills – some which have unexpected affects on the gameplay. Improving Stealth, for instance, not only introduces some fantastic stealth kills, but opens up corrupt career paths like pick-pocketing. Neither are you all alone in your quest. There are six joinable faction, including Nomads, Travelers, Scholars and Warrior Priests.

IGN has a Review in Progress, which is usually a format they use for MMOs:

Dense. That's the first word that will likely come to your mind when you go through the introductory dungeon of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and finally find yourself outside, free to explore to your heart's content. It's not that the world itself in Reckoning is unruly or unmanageable, nor does the game give you too much to do in terms of control input. It's simply that you're going to find a world so chockfull of plot that you might have a hard time keeping up with it all.

Of course, this isn't a gripe at all. On the contrary, it's actually a testament to the incredible work done by famous fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore and his team of writers that, as I discovered back at New York Comic Con, created a world with a 10,000-year history. So as you begin to speak to people, hear the names of characters and places, and start to put everything together in your head, don't feel bad if you're a little lost. I'm only several hours into the game, and I'm already feeling a tad bit overwhelmed. 

Over at GameSpot, Ken Rolston and Joe Quadara explain they have found it difficult getting the message across:

In an interview with GameSpot this week (video below), Rolston and Amalur lead combat designer Joe Quadara discussed the difficulties of describing exactly how people should think of their blend of fantasy action and role-playing games.

"[That's always] a difficult problem for our messaging," Rolston said. "This is a role-playing game because I would be killed if it weren't. I make role-playing games." 

Shacknews has a podcast with Ken Rolston and Joe Quadara, Machinima has a 30 minute video preview and G4TV has a 16 minute preview video.