Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning NYCC Panel Reports

We have two different reports coming from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s New York Comic-Con panel, titled “Creating a World Worth Saving” and hosted by R.A. Salvatore, lead designer Ian Frazier, creative director Steve Danuser and narrative designer Andrew Auseon. Here’s a sampling from IGN‘s report:

Salvatore told the crowd that he was striving for a world that’s believable, and that “everything” in the game “is there for a reason.” Each person you speak with has a story, each location you go to has tales to tell, and somehow, everything is interconnected. He later talked about how “everything has to have consequences” in Reckoning and the larger world he’s attempting to tell the story of. While this isn’t Salvatore’s first foray into the gaming space as a story-teller, it’s certainly — and by far — his most ambitious project to date.

Steve Danuser told the crowd more. Reckoning is “a tapestry for a much bigger experience,” he explained, and each era and age within the 10,000 year history has the potential to tell its own unique story. Since everything that’s happened has already been written within the fictional timeline, it was about picking out an event or period of time that would work well in a single-player RPG like Reckoning. The idea with the game is to “lay the foundation” of this fictional world with a “window” into that world.

The “window” in question is the Age of Arcana, a magic-heavy period in Amalur’s history during with a conflict called The Crystal War rages. The Well of Souls — a “resurrection machine” of sorts — is changing the natural course of life, and as the player, you’re thrust into that scenario. Andrew Auseon admitted that while it was a “difficult task to hone-in on and focus on a specific period” in such a meaty history (which he called “dense and amazing”), it was this focus that will hopefully allow his team to tell a compelling story that will want to keep gamers coming back for more. With hundreds of quests and side quests promised, as well as elements that give the game plenty of replayability (such as a persuasion system, a choice system and more), Reckoning seems to want to tell its story through the player as opposed to telling the story around him or her.

And one from Piki Geek‘s “semi-live blog”:

1:40 The challenge isn’t coming up with cool ideas, it’s finding a way to fit it into the universe and make a cohesive experience that reinforces the big themes of the world.

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1:44 Reckoning is set in the Age of Arcana, during a war between mortals and the Fae.

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1:46 The Fae are ageless, so they have a vastly different way of seeing the world. Akin to Dr. Manhattan.

1:47 Reckoning takes place in the Fae lands, where mortals have been encroaching over time.

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1:53 The Well of Souls is a good example of how the game approaches its world. On the first level, you need a way for players to respawn in the MMO. On the second level, you give a background to that necessary facet of gameplay through its history and internal logic. On the third, you consider the social implications of having no death. Then there’s the close knit, human impact of having such a device: people who lost loved ones before it was discovered, people who are devoutly religious, etc.

1:56 R.A. says the importance is consequence in everything.

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2:27 On a parting note, Reckoning has over 46,000 lines of dialogue. Wow.