Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Interview

The folks at AusGamers have published an interview with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s lead world designer Colin Campbell, in which they touch upon subjects such as his team’s day to day duties, the game’s main five regions, and the “RPGness” of the title. Here’s a snip on the latter:

AusGamers: There’s been a bit of a misconception among the audience that this doesn’t seem much like an RPG, it seems like an action game with RPG elements. I know that not to be true, because I’ve seen enough of it and had an amazing conversation with Ken Rolston (who I will touch on in a minute)…

Collin: [laughs]. AusGamers: But can you give me your pitch on why this shouldn’t just be palmed off as a generic action game with some levels and arbitrary XP and that sort of stuff?

Collin: Well I think that speaks of the development team in a lot of ways — and Ken Rolston of course — that we have people working on this game that are huge RPG fans — I’m one myself, so we wouldn’t want to make a game that isn’t an awesome RPG and the best in the genre.

AusGamers: Well that’s why Curt [Shilling] made the studio right? He’s an RPG fan, despite the fact that he was a professional Baseball player.

Collin: Yeah. So we wouldn’t settle for anything less, is the really important message in there. Also, we’ve worked hard to implement all the crafting systems, the destiny system where you can choose your path… you don’t have to stick to being a fighter, mage or rogue, you can build yourself up in all of these different ways and combine them and as you go through the game you can be iterative on yourself as a character.

There’s abilities, there’s talent trees, there’s the crafting systems and of course there’s RPG combat, but it’s amazing RPG combat. It’s marrying a lot of fighting games into an RPG, it’s not an action game that has a few small RPG elements, it’s very much a cohesive experience that way.