Reckoning!

This post will discuss the various spoilers to be found in the Demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. This, in turn, is likely to mean that it will have spoilers for the game itself. If you didn’t know, it’s an upcoming Action RPG that was designed by the guy who was the lead designer for Morrowind/Oblivion, the art was done by Todd McFarlane (GET BACK TO WORK!), and the story concept is by R.A. Salvatore. Early gameplay reminds me of a Diablo-kinda gameplay with Tomb Raider kinda-camera work and Bioware kinda-conversations. All that to say, *I* will be buying it. If you want to go into the game without any pre-conceived notions about the plot, you won’t want to go after the cut.

In our Empiricism! and Characterization! essays, we discussed the importance of getting to know your character first thing. Fallout 3 gave us a character from birth. New Vegas, by comparison, showed our character as s/he was right about to die (well, right about to get shot in the danged head). Kingdom of Amalur ups the ante and shows our corpse being dumped into a mass grave… and, soon thereafter, waking up. (Before the sheet is removed from the cart, we are given a chance to pick our gender, race, and appearance so that there is no surprise when the sheet is removed. “They’re normally mauled, he’s not in bad shape” one of the undertakers mentions in passing. “Must be born under a lucky star.”)

We wake up (in absolute horror… nice touch) don’t remember who we are or anything about ourselves. We find some (rusty or tattered… I love that little detail) equipment and explore/fight our way to a Gnome who can’t believe that, and I quote, “it worked” and we get assigned our first mission to go see the professor.

Well, along the way, we find more (cruddy) equipment suitable for either fighters or thieves or mages and, of course, it comes to light that we have an aptitude for any of these three classes (or, and this is cool, *COMBINATIONS* of these three classes).

Of course, we find the professor who has no time to talk to us beyond giving us a quest to talk to a tarot card (effectively) reader who tells us that our fate is, and no one is more surprised than he is, our own.

At which point the game proper seems to begin. Familiar quests (there’s been a crime… and the only way to rectify it is a fetch quest!), familiar shops (alchemists and blacksmiths!), familiar skills (build armor at the blacksmith’s, or take apart your old or unused armor for spare parts!), and familiar limitations (you can’t make a potion unless you have the recipe!) and so on.

It’s an interesting universe (but oh-so-familiar) and an interesting premise (but, again, familiar).

For my part, the game reminds me of pretty much every other action RPG I’ve ever enjoyed. It doesn’t look like new ground is being busted open but… well, that’s not exactly what I play games *FOR*. If you’ve found yourself thinking about Action RPGs, you should consider, at least, checking out the demo. The demo, to my surprise, was actually worth playing.