Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview

The latest preview for 38 Studios’ upcoming open-world heavy-on-the-action RPG comes from VG247, which had the chance to spend some hands-on time with the title and seems reasonably intrigued by it. Here’s a snip on factions and character progression:

The game’s three human factions fit the three basic classes available. The Warsworn are heavily armed fighters with aggressive combat abilities, the Scholia Arcana are warrior-mages who can comfortably engage in melee combat bolstered by spells for both attack and defence and the Travellers are shadowy rogues, capable of catching enemies unawares and delivering fatal strikes when the enemy is vulnerable.

The lines between these three can be blurred by the use of skill trees and destinies. The skill trees are entirely visible from the start, so you can map out which abilities you’d like to obtain from each tree ahead of time.

The destinies are both a narrative and gameplay device that informs the style in which you are playing, or would like to play. It’s possible to pick destinies that focus purely on one area, such as magic, or to slightly dilute the power of that magic by mixing it with a warrior or rogue destiny. In this way, many higher level characters will either be a mix of all three disciplines of magic, stealth and combat, focus on just two of these or even plough all of the upgrade points into one path to be pure mage, rogue or warrior.

At a time when many RPGs are looking to break from the traditional class-based levelling structure, it’s good to be reminded that a few focused ideas surrounding class-progression can be as rewarding or refreshing as doing away with classes entirely.